Things are as they are.
Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars,
nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts
Tag: Life
Sunday Quote: Grandeur
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life
as in hoping for another life
and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus
photo Håkon Dahlmo
Life’s journey
I do not understand the mystery of grace –
only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
Storms of life
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
photo huhu uet
A kind of frontier
It is possible to attain a state where we are free from suffering. We free ourselves from suffering by being fully in the conversation, rather than something static, having a conversation at every turn. As an individual, I must learn to live at a kind of frontier between what I think is me and what I think is not me, so that my identify is more of a meeting place; an edge between past and present rather than an island around which the events of life swirl and move on…Even grief and loss, if felt in a timeless way, can be free from disconnection or suffering.
David Whyte, The Three Marriages
photo svickova
Whole even if not perfect
[Thomas] Merton taught me the importance of looking at life not merely in terms of either-or, but also in terms of both-and. Paradoxical thinking is key to creativity, which comes from the capacity to entertain apparently contradictory ideas in a way that stretches the mind and opens the heart to something new. Paradox is also a way of being that’s key to wholeness, which does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life…..To be whole I have to be able to say I am both shadow and light.
Parker Palmer, A Friendship, A Love, A Rescue
photo wabi-sabi tea bowl by ottmarliebert
