The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…
How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?
It is natural – you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.
Thich Nhat Hahn
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world
Mary Oliver
Over and over we break
open, we break and
we break and we open.
For a while, we try to fix
the vessel — as if
to be broken is bad.
As if with glue and tape
and a steady hand we
might bring things to perfect
again. As if they were ever
perfect. As if to be broken is not
also perfect. As if to be open
is not the path toward joy.
The vase that’s been shattered
and cracked will never
hold water. Eventually
it will leak. And at some
point, perhaps, we decide
that we’re done with picking
our flowers anyway, and no
longer need a place to contain them
We watch them grow just
as wildflowers do — unfenced,
unmanaged, blossoming only
when they’re ready — and mygod,
how beautiful they are amidst
the mounting pile of shards.
Rosemery Wahtola Trommer, American Poet, The Way it is
Another Saturday, another Mary Oliver poem:
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
Wild Geese, (extract)
The other morning a friend shared that when he was a little boy, he loved to watch his grandfather prune trees, and his memory of it has become a helpful metaphor during the COVID-19 crisis.
He explained that after the pruning, once the trees were down to their bare essence, they entered a period of botanical seclusion and apparent dormancy. But in time, the trees stood tall again – more lush and beautiful in the morning light.
We are in a time of tremendous pruning and seclusion, said my friend.
Let’s hope and trust that when this period ends, we, too, will emerge from our global seclusion more vibrant and beautiful than before.
Kelly Barron, Finding Opportunities for Insight and Growth During Isolation
Just the wind blowing: allowing life to move through this moment:
Take a comfortable position,
Now imagine you are in a beautiful place in nature. Surrounded by beauty you can feel the wind blowing around you
Let all of your conscious experience — sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions, everything — become the wind.
Feel all of it moving and changing, arriving, moving around and over you, and then going.
Notice how the wind takes on different qualities — soft, strong, harsh, gusty, gentle.
Relax as the wind blows around you.
Let it come and go in all its forms. You remain here, in calmness, abiding.
Jeffrey Brantley and Wendy Millstine, Daily Meditations for Calming Your Anxious Mind,
Mindfulbalance 