Sometimes I need only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed
Mary Oliver, It was Early
Sunday Quote:Blessed
Tag: Present moment
The key insight
Groundlessness, uncertainty, insecurity, vulnerability — these are words that ordinarily carry a negative connotation. We’re generally wary of these feelings and try to elude them in any way possible.
But groundlessness isn’t something we need to avoid. The same feeling we find so troubling when we open to it can be experienced as a huge relief, as freedom from all restraints. It can be experienced as a mind so unbiased and relaxed that we feel expansive and joyful.
Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change
Yes and No
By teaching “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1), the great teachers are saying that you cannot start seeing or understanding anything if you start with “no.”
You have to start with a “yes” of basic acceptance, which means not too quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as in or out, good or bad, up or down. You have to leave the field open, a field in which God and grace can move. Ego leads with “no” whereas soul leads with “yes.
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now
What is in front of you
Happiness lies not in finding what is missing,
but in finding what is present
Tara Brach
Don’t hide love
Don’t hide love.
If you feel it, express it – not to demand that others love you back, but simply to live outwardly the best of what you feel inwardly.
The worst that can happen to your heart is not rejection by another person but failure to act on the love you feel.
Martha Beck
Stretch upwards
Saw some Giant Redwood trees walking in the grounds of Emo Court last weekend. They are quite young compared to the ones in California – only 170 years – being planted in 1853, but still an impressive size
Some of these trees have been here since Jesus walked on water
Some of these trees have been here
since Vikings drove their boats
onto the shores of Newfoundland…
Some of these trees have survived lightning strikes and forest fires…..
They have grown beyond
their trauma and focus now
on the daily climb, the adding-on
of needle and bark, on nature’s drive
to rise above and see beyond
until the day when death will fell them
and the earth will add them to its riches.
We can be like these trees, pull on the layers of living like fine
new garments, house the needy
in the caverns of our grief, grow
beyond the stories of our scars
stretch our branches toward the bristling stars.
Tamara Madison, American poet, Sequoia Sempervirens [extract], from the A Year of Being Here blog
