As Martin Buber saw it …. the world of ordinary days “affords” us that precise association with God that redeems both us and our speck of the world.
God entrusts and allots to everyone an area to redeem: this creased and feeble life, “the world in which you live, just as it is and not otherwise.”
Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
Sometimes, to achieve something, it is best if we step back or let go, as the Daoist-sounding great Zen Master reminds us
When you leave the way to the way,
you attain the way.
Dogen, Bodaisatta-Shishobo, The Bodhisattva’s Four Methods of Guidance, 1234
Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty;
inside the body and out of it,
before gardens and after gardens
Kabir
To live without roads
seemed one way not to get lost.
Naomi Shihab Nye
What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until it all ends.
Mary Oliver What Can I Say [extract]
Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know that there is no such thing as a work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
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