We may need to bid farewell to parts of ourselves rooted in safety but not in truth.
In the end we will only carry the reflection, “did I love well”. This will be the residue that either gladdens or aches our heart. As this year comes to an end, let us honor ourselves and those we love by letting go. We can bring fresh eyes to this moment and birth that which enlivens us. As for loving well, we can begin now. We can fly with the angels as we take ourselves lightly.
Ram Dass
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness.
Once you make this all-important discovery,
you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
André Gide
To live in an enchanting world we also have to assume a receptive posture rather than an exclusively active one.
We can become skilled at allowing the world in, taking its secrets to heart and finding power outside of ourselves.
Thomas Moore, The Education of the Heart
Even in the dark of winter we get reminders of colour and light
Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped
from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of
light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart: Poems
Continuous practice, day after day, is the most appropriate way of expressing gratitude.
This means that you practice continuously, without wasting a single day of your life, without using it for your own sake.
Why is it so? Your life is a fortunate outcome of the continuous practice of the past. You should express your gratitude immediately.
Dogen quoted in Kazuaki Tanahashi, Enlightenment Unfolds Kazuaki Tanahashi
Past and present join
in the winter solstice.
The days will stretch and we survive.
with losses, yes, and lessons too
to reap the honey of the hive
of history. The yield of what is given
insists a choice – to live; to thrive
Peter Fallon, 1951 – Irish Poet, A Winter Solstice
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