Tag: Mindfulness

The question is not, never, ever, whether or not we will be given challenges and limitations. We will. 

The question is, how will we hold them, how will we be changed, how will they shape us, what will we bring to the healing of them, what,  if  anything will be born in its place.

Wayne Muller, A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough

Western culture is astonishingly disembodied and uniquely so. The way I like to say is that we basically come from a post-alcoholic culture. People whose origins are in Northern Europe had only one way of treating distress: with a bottle of alcohol. North American culture continues with that notion. If you feel bad, just take a swig or take a pill.

The notion that you can do things to change the harmony inside of yourself is just not something that we teach in schools and in our culture, in our churches, in our religious practices. But if you look at religions around the world, they always start with dancing, moving, singing, physical experiences. The more “respectable” people become, the more stiff they become, somehow.

Bessel van der Kolk in Krista Tippet, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

There are many kinds of light. There’s the light that allows people lost in the dark to find their way home. There’s the light of compassion that comforts everything it touches. There’s the light of truth-telling about ourselves that allows us to see what we are doing — or allowing — that has helped bring this darkness upon us. There’s the light that shows us the way forward toward a better world. There’s the light of courage to walk that path no matter who says “Stop!“

No one of us can provide all of the light we need. But every one of us can shed some kind of light.

Every day we can ask ourselves, “What kind of light can I provide today?”

Parker Palmer, The Light for Another