The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever
Mary Oliver, Dream Work
And this, our life…..finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Shakespeare, As You Like It.
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.
Be kind to yourself, dear – to your innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or any touch you knew that did not help you to dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.
Rumi, found in Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems From God
Your true home is something you have to create for yourself. When we know how to make peace with our body, take care of and release tension in our body, then our body becomes a comfortable peaceful home for us to come back to in the present moment. When we know how to take care of our feelings, how to generate joy and happiness and handle a painful feeling, we can cultivate and restore a happy home in the present moment. And when we know how to generate energies of understanding and compassion our home will become very cosy and a pleasant place to come back to. Home is not something to hope for but something to cultivate.
Thich Nhat Hahn
That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance. If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet. We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach. We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment which will magically appear once this and this and this happens. But what’s happening right now is “it” and it’s the only “it” we have. The rest is just fabrication.
Tenzin Palmo
The first snowdrops in my garden, a very welcome sign of life in this pandemic winter.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us, as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.
Pablo Nerudo, Keeping Quiet
