Dear friends~ This next year my beloved and I will be married 50 years. I have "known" Jackie for more than 53 years, and yet I can still wake up beside her in the morning and realize that this person whom I have walked with over the decades is still a mystery and so much unknown. The truth is that we are growing old together. But if we can embrace our physical diminishment with gentleness and grace, our heart's surrender becomes, as Jackie calls it, "the sacrament of diminishment." This morning she gave me a folder full of her favorite quotes about relationship and love. Here are a few of hers and a sprinkling of mine. ~ Bob
Love is frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love. Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them.
May all that is broken within me be healed.
May I awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May your heart be opened.
May all that is broken within you be healed.
May you awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May our hearts be opened.
May all that is broken within us be healed.
May we awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now. That's the story. That's the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they're all running around like chickens with heads cut off. I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, it's why I'll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.