Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills— A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Make a nesting now, a place to which the birds can come, think of Kevin’s prayerful palm holding the blackbird’s egg and be the one, looking out from this place who warms interior forms into light. Feel the way the cliff at your back gives shelter to your outward view

Happiness depends on inner peace, which depends on warm-heartedness. There's no room for anger, jealousy or insecurity. A calm mind and self-confidence are the basis for peaceful relations with others.

Help me, love poem, rise up from the broken glass, The time to sing has come. Help me, love poem, to reestablish integrity, And to sing again about pain. The world isn’t free of war, it’s true, It isn’t washed of its blood, hate still exists, It’s true.

La distancia entre nosotros es suelo sagrado para atravesarse con los pies desnudos alzadas las manos en danza jubilosa para que una vez cruzado las huellas de nuestro peregrinaje brillen en la oscuridad y alumbren nuestro encuentro con luz brillante y fija. ~Rafael Jesús González

When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets into you, may a flock of colours, indigo, red, green and azure blue, come to awaken in you a meadow of delight.

How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness and the closed bud shrugs off it’s special mystery in order to break into blossom: as If what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious ~Lisel Mueller. "In Passing" #poetry

I've broken through to longing Now, filled with a grief I have Felt before, but never like this. The center leads to love. Soul opens the creation core. Hold on to your particular pain. That too can take you to God. ~Jelaluddin Rumi #poetry #spirituality #grief #love

Proclamation . Whereas the world is a house on fire; Whereas the nations are filled with shouting; Whereas hope seems small, sometimes a single bird on a wire left by migration behind.

Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word is enough to change the course of our lives. If we don’t, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference.

I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that thinking for a moment it was one day like any other. But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room,

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, because the mass man will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death. In the calm water of the love-nights, where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

The Thing Is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs;

It didn’t behave like anything you had ever imagined. The wind tore at the trees, the rain fell for days slant and hard. The back of the hand to everything. I watched the trees bow and their leaves fall and crawl back into the earth. As though, that was that. This was one hurricane

The blessing of the morning light to you, may it find you even in your invisible appearances, may you be seen to have risen from some other place you know and have known in the darkness and that that carries all you need.

You are not surprised at the force of the storm you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Their flight sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one you move toward. All your senses sing him, as you stand at the window.

The temple of Love is not love itself; True Love is the Treasure, Not the walls about it. Do not admire the decoration, But Involve Yourself in the Essence, The Perfume that invades and touches You- ...

Sun says, “Be your own illumination.” Wren says, “Sing your heart out, all day long.” Stream says, “Do not stop for any obstacle.” Oak says, “When the wind blows, bend easily, and trust your roots to hold.”

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe,

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.

How quietly I begin again from this moment looking at the clock, I start over so much time has passed, and is equaled by whatever split-second is present from this moment this moment is the first. ~ Wendell Berry “Be Still in Haste” #poetry

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind’s commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer. ~ Wendell Berry, from Sabaths 2001 #poetry

We were made to understand it would be Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge, Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst in us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down.

“Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, & certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.” ~ Henri Nouwen

It only takes a reminder to breathe, a moment to be still and just like that, something in me settles, softens, makes space for imperfection. The harsh voice of judgment drops to a whisper and I remember again that life isn’t a relay race; that we will all cross the finish line;

"Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." ~Viktor Frankl

Sometimes, you need the ocean light, and colors you’ve never seen before painted through an evening sky. Sometimes you need your God to be a simple invitation not a telling word of wisdom. Sometimes you need only the first shyness that comes from being shown things far beyond your understanding,

Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue

I’m listening But I don’t know If what I hear is silence Or God. I’m listening But I can’t tell If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing Or a keen consciousness That at the ends of the universe Deciphers and watches me.

As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges.

It's Pi Day, though I prefer donuts.

The rising hills, the slopes of statistics lie before us. the steep climb of everything, going up up, as we all go down. In the next century or the one beyond that, they say,

I had a lovely driveway moment this morning, listening on NPR to this sweet remembrance of Coleman Barks. (about 10 minutes - worth it!) www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2...

Twist to be straight. Be empty to be full. Wear out to be renewed. Have little and gain much. Have much and get confused. .

There is a place where the sidewalk ends and before the street begins, and there the grass grows soft and white, and there the sun burns crimson bright, and there the moon-bird rests from his flight to cool in the peppermint wind.

We are here like profligates, three camels with muzzles plunged in provender. Other camels rage with their lips stuck out, foaming, but they remain down below in the valley.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him. . ~Ralph Waldo Emerson #spirituality #friendship

To write down all I contain at this moment I would pour the desert through an hour-glass, The sea through a water-clock, Grain by grain and drop by drop Let in the trackless, measureless, mutable seas and sands.

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them--those are you, Those are why you are in the world. . ~William Stafford #poetry #wisdom

The ancient Masters were profound and subtle. Their wisdom was unfathomable. There is no way to describe it; all we can describe is their appearance.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.

Were the gods to take all the moments of our lives and scatter them across the heavens like stars, for all to see, could we bear the beauty and the majesty and the mystery of our ordinary being, made visible so? Could we?

I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs. The world I live in and believe in Is wider than that. And anyway, what’s wrong with Maybe?

Do you feel astonished at your great luck just to be here? To have breakfast? Maybe two eggs and buttered toast. Maybe good hot coffee. Maybe there’s running water that flows at any temperature you like. Maybe you’ve forgotten what miracles these are.

“The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words ...

On days we feel like scorched earth, Like corroded rust or trampled dirt, All we have to do is turn our faces, Toward the gentle breeze, And be sprinkled into the four directions, Be swept away by the wind’s tender breath. .

“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb, aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. . 1/4

I have walked down many roads and cleared many paths; I have navigated a hundred oceans and anchored off a hundred shores. . All over, I have seen caravans of sadness, pompous and melancholy men drunk with black shadows, .