Sunday quote: Even in darkness

Deep in their roots, 
all flowers keep the light.

Theodore Roethke

The first gift

Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway.  This is the heart of blessing.  To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing. As Rilke says: Heir zu sein ist so viel – “to be here is immense”.

John O Donohue, Benedictus, To Bless the Space Between Us

Really taste life

Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry.

Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

Ernest Hemingway

Always reaching

I long for a small respite from the reaching, a moment of sweet stillness, quiet darkness, the great silence that can penetrate and loosen the small, hard knots of endless trying. I want to be willing and able to move only as fast as I am capable of moving while still remaining connected to the impulse to move from deep within, stopping when I have lost that slender thread of desire and having the courage and faith to wait, in stillness, until I find it again.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Your own myth

Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others.

Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,

so everyone will understand the passage,
we have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy and tired.

Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown,
lifting.

Rumi

Sunday Quote: Teachings all round

All the colours of the mountain peaks,

all the echoes of the valleys

are the form and the voice of the Buddha

Dogen