If the angel deigns to reappear
It is because you have persuaded him
not with tears but with your humble decision always to begin again
Rainer Maria Rilke
photo mark voorendt
Tag: Life
Trust
When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on.
You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness.
Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you.
It is trust, not certainty.
Flannery O’Connor, American Author, 1925 – 1964, A Prayer Journal.
photo chi king
What’s wrong with maybe
I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs;
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway.
What’s wrong with Maybe?
You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.
Mary Oliver, The World I live in
Inspired by s and with thanks to a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.ie
photo robinhood22
Dropping the filter
A similar idea to yesterday’s, this time from the Eastern traditions, to guide us as we “wander” through this day. What we think we know can sometimes get in the way, or close us down, to what is happening before us:
Jizo asked Hogen, “Where are you going?”
“I just wander aimlessly” replied Hogen.
“What is the nature of your wandering,” asked Jizo.
“I don’t know,” replied Hogen.
“Not knowing is the most intimate,” replied Jizo.
And at this Hogen experienced great enlightenment.
Zen Story
One Zen story states, “Not knowing is most intimate.” I understand this to mean that what is most essential is not understood through the filter of our judgments, past knowledge, or memories. When not-knowing helps these to drop away, the result can be a greater immediacy – what some might call being intimate. This practice of beginner’s mind is to cultivate an ability to meet life without preconceived ideas, interpretations, or judgments.
Gil Fronsdal
photo: Pfctdayelise
Not knowing
The great Meister Eckhart knew that life was much greater than what he could grasp or make sense of. He reminds us that holding a space for what we do not know is just as important as our ideas and concepts about what is happening. What do we really know about ourselves, our experience, our world?:
“I ask God to rid me of God,” Meister Eckhart says.
The God, who is known and familiar, is far too small for him.
Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance
photo sayhey1111
Many directions
When we live superficially, we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions – we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives. “Why spend your money on what is not food and your earnings on what fails to satisfy?” (Isaiah 55)
Thomas Merton, Love and Living
photo Highways agency
