I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing
but only know where the rarest wildflowers are blooming
and who goes
and finds that he is smiling not by his own will
Wendell Berry
photo ross
Tag: Life
Sunday Quote: Trust
Sometimes things happen that we do not understand and we wish were otherwise. Rumi offers some solace:
Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave until it gets to the shore
Rumi
photo CC-BY
Dont waste it
Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright….Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock – more than a maple – a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
An invitation to fullness
There is really no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully?
There really is nothing to do. Can we let go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling” because whatever you are experiencing in this moment is already special, already extraordinary, by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced.
The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here.
And the only important thing is – to be the knowing that awareness already is.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners
The two dynamics
We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.
John O Donohue
photo benson kua
Sunday Quote: No need for words
I like the silent church
before the service begins,
better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
photo jose luis filpo cabana
