The last day of the year in the Christian calendar. Advent starts this evening
How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames, our one work
is to open ourselves, to be
the flames?
Galway Kinnell, Another Night in the Ruins
I have a certain faith in our ability to find the wisdom we need to co-create necessary change, if we are willing to sit with what is hard and the vastness of what we do not know.
Sometimes the darkness is a place of rest. And sometimes it is a place where we gather wisdom and strength to deepen our participation in the world.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
We examine each day before us with barely a glance
and say, no, this isn’t the one I’ve been looking for.
Tom Hennan, 1942 – American Poet
Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering.
Oh praise the soul’s migration.
I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you.
I am again in love with the world.
Mark Nepo, In love with the World
This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.
Mary Oliver, Poem of the One World
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed – that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Seungsahn Haengwon, 1927 – 2004, Korean Zen Master
