The rivers will return to their beginnings.
The wind will cease in its turning about.
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror –
They are children again.
The dead will wake up, not comprehending.
Till everything that happened has unhappened.
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much.
Czesław Miłosz
Embrace uncertainty.
Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later
Bob Goff, 1959 – , lawyer and author
Occasionally, weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses.
Then wash your face. Trust God.
And embrace the life you have.
John Piper, Theologian and Pastor
Today is Candlemas in the Christian tradition, the lighting of candles to look towards the end of winter, layered on the earlier Celtic feast of Imbolc.
Beauty changes; it’s not static. The seasons change. All the leaves fall off the trees, all the flowers disappear. Everything becomes bleak in winter when there is hardly any noticeable contrast, except in shades of dark and light. Now we might say that spring is more beautiful than winter, if we prefer vibrant colors, beautiful flowers, an the kind of energy that spring brings. But if we open our minds, we also begin to recognize the subtle beauty of winter. We can appreciate the lack of color and silence of winter as much as the energy of spring.
This appreciation comes from not having opinions about things being perfect in a static way. It comes from seeing that the rose is a perfect rose in spring, summer, autumn and winter. For static perfection, you need a plastic rose, but that’s never as satisfying.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way
The first day of Spring in the older Celtic tradition
By gently letting go of everything – not through force, not by slaying it, but simply seeing all the content as a passing show, as process and flow – we become the whole of our experience and open to our natural understanding.
If fear or wanting arises, it is seen within the spaciousness that surrounds it. We don’t get lost by becoming it, but simply see it as just another moment in the mind flow, another something which arose uninvited and will pass away in the same manner.
Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening
My favourite poem from David Wagoner is ‘Lost’:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.
The truth of the poem is an old truth. There are places you wish to go, there are places you desperately wish you never left. there are places you imagine you should be, and there is the place called here. In the…poem, it is the rooted things – trees and bushes – that tell the truth to the person who is lost, the person with legs and fear who wishes to be elsewhere. The person must stand still, feel their body still on the ground where they are, in order to learn the wisdom….It is true there are some things that we fear, but there is, even deeper, a fear of fear. So we are prevented from being here not only by being frightened of certain places, but by the fear of being frightened of certain places.
from Padraig O’Tuama’s lovely book, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World
Mindfulbalance 