William Carlos Williams, Winter Trees
With life as short as a half taken breath,
don’t plant anything but love.
Rumi
photo gila national forest
Patience and letting time stretch out achieve more than forcing and passion
(Patience et longueur de temps font plus que force ni que rage)
Jean de La Fontaine, Le Lion et le Rat
If we can possibly learn to trust darkness, to understand that life is a pattern of starts and stops, of celebrating the past, of coming to terms with the present and of believing the future to be kind, then we can come to understand that the dark parts are only those closing-down moments, like flowers at night, till the sun shines again……Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that not all growth takes place in the sunlight.
Joan Chittister, For all that Has Been, Thanks
photo 4028mdk09
Even though we are having very mild weather this year, there is still a sense that these early November days hold a sense of change, an understanding that we’re moving from one way of being to another. As Terri Lynn Simpson at the Washington National Cathedral Centre for Prayer and Pilgrimage wrote, they “are like open doorways that invite us to a particular kind of mindfulness where we are aware that we’re moving from one way of being to another. One foot is in the past and one foot is in the future, and in the midst of the two is the present. We can put our weight on one foot or another, superficially living in the past or the future, but true balance comes only when we live deeply in the moment”
In the deep Fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Mary Oliver, Song for Autumn
The deepest words of the wise…teach us…
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing
Antonio Marchado
photo of the Allondon river near Crozet, France.
Mindfulbalance 