That the silent presence of your death
Would call your life to attention,
Wake you up to how scarce your time is
And to the urgency to become free
And equal to the call of your destiny.
That you would gather yourself
And decide carefully
How you can live
The life you would love
To look back on
From your deathbed.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
In the garden of Gethsemane, the last words Jesus spoke were, “Stay awake.” In fact, he says it twice. The Buddha offered the same wisdom; “Buddha” actually means “I am awake.”
Staying awake comes not from willpower but from a wholehearted surrender to this moment – as it is. It’s largely a matter of letting go of resistance to what the moment offers or of clinging to a past moment. It is an acceptance of the full reality of what is right here and now. It will be the task of your whole lifetime.
Richard Rohr, Just This
Move through life living from one moment to the other,
wholly absorbed in the present,
carrying with you so little from the past that your spirit could pass through the eye of a needle;
as little distracted by the worries of the future as the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
Anthony de Mello
Everything is ceremony
in the wild garden of childhood
Pablo Neruda
People wish to be settled;
only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chuang Tzu tells about a man crossing a river when an empty skiff slams into his. The man does not become angry, as he would if there was a boatman in the other skiff.
So, says Chuang Tzu, “Empty your own boat as you cross the river of the world.”
In solitude, I can empty my boat. Can I do it when I’m in the company of other people? Maybe: Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one’s self. It is not about the absence of other people – it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others.
Parker J. Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old
