waves

on Assateague Island

Like the sea, we are always in motion. The waves loom in our dreams and in our nightmares through all of time, their rhythms pulsing through us. They move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves.

~ Susan Casey

Blessing

After the storm

Some wish blessings, others pray for them.  Some send blessings and they become one.

~ Joyce C. Lock

a dumb experiment

listening

…We listen to words
so we can silently
reach into the other.

Let the ear and mouth get quiet,
so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we have been saying poetry,
talking discourses, explaining the mystery outloud.

Let us try a dumb experiment.

~ Rumi

gardeners of the spirit

In the desert.

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

~May Sarton

slowing down

Morning paddle.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

Enthusiasm

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

~Charles Kingsley

life and death

life and death in the cemetery

It is a seeing of every moment of life against the horizon of death, and a challenge to incorporate that awareness of dying into every moment so as to become more fully alive.

~ David Steindl-Bast

stillness

morning by the pond

My heart is tuned to the quietness
that the stillness of nature inspires.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

fear and love

opening to life

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

~ John Lennon

consciousness

light in the garden

Consciousness gives everything a transformation.  Your love is no longer addressed to anybody in particular.  It does not mean that you stop loving.  It simply means you become love, you are love, your very being is love.  Your breathing is love, your heartbeats are love.  Awake you are love, asleep you are love.

~ Osho, from Tarot in the Spirit of Zen