The realm of the sacred

The realm of the sacred and the realm of wisdom is the big realm. And that’s where the oneness happens, but it happens in the heart. It’s not something out there; it happens in the heart.

~ Matthew Fox, Bowing to the Heart Over Authority

be crumbled

Queen Anne’s Lace in the mountains.

Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
so wildflowers will come up
where you are.

You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different. Surrender.

~ Rumi

The sea

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

The sea is a mirror, not only to the clouds, the sun, the moon, and the stars, but to all one’s dreams, to all one’s speculations… . The sea tells us that everything is changing and that nothing ever changes, that tides go out and return, that all existence is a rhythm.

~ Arthur Symons, In a Northern Bay, 1918

To see our own light

We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others.  An interpreted world is not a home.  Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

~ Hildegard of Bingen

Paddling in.

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

~ Denise Levertov

The nature of nature

Spring ephemerals.

There is no more liberating feeling, or better way of deciding one’s priorities in life, than to acknowledge one’s objective insignificance within the immensity of the universe. Change is the nature of nature. Things come and go: species, ideologies, regimes, geographies, planets, and galaxies. Do what you can with what you can but never lose track of the gifts available to you within the blink of conscious existence you get. You cannot save a life; you cannot save a country; you cannot save a place; and you cannot save a planet. You can make life better, more satisfying, and more meaningful for yourself and others. Take a deep breath; appreciate what you have; help those you can; and trust that on the scale of nature, things unfold as they should.

~ Guy Tal, More Than a Rock

Observers

River rocks

Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Collecting words

A peace mandala.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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