After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spent nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic , in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that “Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”
Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness
Written during the COVID pandemic but can apply to all setbacks and seasons in our lives.
There is a giveaway in all of the apocalyptic sections of the three Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew 24:8, hidden there in the middle of the wars and earthquakes it says, “All this is only the beginning of the birth pangs.” Apocalypse is for the sake of birth not death. Yet most of us have heard this reading as a threat. Apparently, it’s not. Anything that upsets our normalcy is a threat to the ego but in the Big Picture, it really isn’t.
In Luke 21, Jesus says right in the middle of the catastrophic description: “Your endurance will win you your souls.” Falling apart is for the sake of renewal, not punishment. Again, such a telling line. In Mark 13, Jesus says “Stay awake” four times in the last paragraph (Mark 13:32–37). In other words, “Learn the lesson that this has to teach you.” It points to everything that we take for granted and says, “Don’t take anything for granted.”
We would have done history a great favor if we would have understood apocalyptic literature. It’s not meant to strike fear in us as much as a radical rearrangement.
It’s not the end of the world. It’s the end of worlds – our worlds that we have created.
Richard Rohr, This is an Apocalypse
All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience.
This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ‘tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, ii
Awareness is completely simple; we don’t have to add anything to it or change it. It is unassuming or unpretentious; Awareness is not a thing, to be affected by this or that. When we live from pure awareness, we are not affected by our past, our present, or our future. Because awareness has nothing it can pretend to, it’s humble. It is lowly. Simple. Practice is about developing or uncovering a simple mind.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special, Living Zen
One part of meditation practice is not holding on too strongly to the past or leaning too far into the future. This allows us to savour the present fully.
And if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal.
Enter into the happiness, and burst.
Mahmoud Darwish, 1941 – 2008, Palestinian poet and author, Journal of an Ordinary Grief
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