Our shifting energies

6a00e553838b918833012875a596a0970c-400wi

The source of our unease is the unfulfillable longing for a lasting certainty and security, for something solid to hold on to. Unconsciously we expect that if we could just get the right job, the right partner, the right something, our lives would run smoothly.  [Instead,] we are encouraged to get comfortable with, begin to relax with, lean into, whatever the experience may be. We are encouraged to drop the storyline and simply pause, look out, and breathe. Simply be present for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a whole lifetime, with our own shifting energies and with the unpredictability of life as it unfolds, wholly partaking in all experiences just exactly as they are.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

Always starting over

dawn sun

There is only one day left,

always starting over:

it is given to us at dawn

and taken away from us at dusk.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Beautiful things

File:Frosted window, nature's version of net curtains - geograph.org.uk - 1652846.jpg

We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us

Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes

photo pauline eccles

Broken Open

File:Broken tree 03.jpg

There is a lot of debris around after the recent storms. Trees broken and uprooted. Most faiths tell us that in its many ways life is the main teacher, and it is by being fully present to what happens in life that we grow, not by moving away from events. This is true even if they are painful. How we do this,  each day,  is to stay open to each moment, see what it has to say to us, training in this way the heart to stay open:

A rabbi always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put the Word of God in their hearts. One of them asked “Why ‘on’ our hearts and not ‘in’ them?” The Rabbi answered “Only God can put his Word within. But reading the sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when the heart breaks open, the holy words will fall inside”

from Joan Chittister, Aspects of the Heart

photo norbert nagel

Remembering we are sustained

File:Mont Blanc Massif.jpg
A beautiful poem by Denise Levertov, putting the journey of our life and its cares and distractions into perspective
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
Denise Levertov, Primary Wonder.  US poet, 1923 – 1997.
photo of the Mont Blanc Massif

Sunday Quote: Paths

Following your path

There are no wrong turns,

only unexpected paths

Mark Nepo,