The Great Soul

We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul
of the universe may fill us with its breath.
~Laurence Binyon

Beautiful Things

We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us.
~Joyce Rupp
Praying Our Goodbyes

Jack Kornfield

Life

Life has an astonishing way of taking care of you when you no longer mind
what happens.
~J. Krishnamurti

What about letting the heart take the lead? What about showing up empty with openness, willingness and trust. Knowing and trusting deeply that everything always works itself out, and a willingness to be moved upon by something so grand and mysterious.
~Excerpts from the newsletter, Simply Blessed

A Few Turns Of The Moon

For all the hardships that life throws at us, I have always felt that life keeps living. Perhaps not in the same form or in a way that is recognizable. But life keeps pulsing under everything. And no matter the pain or confusion I face, something in me keeps reaching for that irrepressible pulse. This poem comes from my reaching.

A FEW TURNS OF THE MOON

From the balcony of this restaurant, I watch
a hundred lives below: burrowing and laughing
and finding their way. And perhaps because
I’ve lost my father and our beloved dog in the
last year, perhaps because at sixty-three, I see
over the final hill more clearly, I also see the
hundreds on the other side, still burrowing
and laughing and finding their way. I don’t
know if this is alarming or a comfort: that
we go on the same, that the gleam pressed
out of every hardship is the jewel of existence,
here and on the other side. So I spoon my
soup and sip my wine, knowing the balcony
is the gutter and the gutter is the balcony,
that the dark waits all curled up in the light,
and the light, thank God, waits all curled up
in the dark.
~Mark Nepo

Darkness

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn
to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.
~Joan Chittister

A Calling to the Lightworkers

I am putting out a calling this day ~

A calling to the lightworkers. To the bringers of peace. To the villages that raise the children. To those who live in the forefront of dearest Love.

A calling to Rise Up and show yourselves…like never before in your lives. To take the hands of those sisters and brothers next to you…no matter who they are, what they believe, or where they came from…and put that great Love, that light, to work. To reconnect our lives as they are meant to be… To heal us, once and for all.

Not just for us here in this country…this would be simply another form of divisiveness…but for the world around. All of us.

Love CAN conquer all.

Can you hear my call?
~Kathleen Boylan

Kathleen Boylan

Gratitude

Why is more and more always better if it can never be enough?
~David Loy

Spirituality & Health
The Zen of Gratitude

Suffering

There is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive, so we want to distance ourselves from it. Like if you have a toothache, it becomes that toothache. It’s not us anymore. It’s that tooth. And so if there are people suffering, you want to look at them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them, because you are afraid you will drown in it. You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable – and the fact of the matter is you have to. You finally have to, because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you. You are then at the mercy of suffering.

And then having finally dealt with suffering, you have to consume it into yourself. Which means you have to – with eyes open – be able to keep your heart open in hell. You have to look at what is, and say, “Yeah, Right.” And what it involves is bearing the unbearable. And in a way, who you think you are can’t do it. Who you really are can do it. So that who you think you are dies in the process.
~Ram Dass

Hold On

Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way from here. Hold on to life, even when it is easier letting go. Hold on to my hand, even when I have gone away from you.
~Pueblo Blessing