Quotations

In the gift of this new day,
in the gift of the present moment,
in the gift of time and eternity intertwined,
let us be grateful,
let us be attentive,
let us be open to what has never happened before,
in the gift of this new day,
in the gift of the present moment,
in the gift of time and eternity intertwined.

How shall the mind keep warm
save at spectral fires—how thrive
but by the light of paradox?

Isn't that the saddest thing in the world... A comma forced to be a period?

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat," “Go ahead — you first," “I like your hat."

We must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.

The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and likely to quit the road.

The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company: finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.

The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us.

What you need to know about me
is not that I survived the war
or that I write poetry
or that I am African,
but that I live in this world
just like you.

That I wake up every morning
to get the children ready for school,
that I comb my hair
and worry about its gray,
that I love my strong coffee
in the morning...

That I listen to music
and laugh out loud
when the mood is right,
that I cry when I read the news...

What you need to know about me
is not what country I am from
or how many languages I speak
or how I pronounce my name,
but that I believe
we are connected
by the simplest thread—
the need to be seen,
to be held,
to be heard.

The wild goose is a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit. Geese in a flock have greater range and fly faster than single geese as they benefit from the lift of their wings. When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another flies at the point position. We fly in sacred community, interdependent with one another.

I want a new ritual for when we meet each other—
strangers or beloveds, friends or rivals, elders or children.
It begins by holding each other's eyes
the way we behold sunrises or the first cherry blooms,
which is to say we assume we'll find beauty there.
And perhaps some display of open hands—
a gesture with palms up—that suggests both
I offer myself to you and I receive you.
There should be a quiet moment in which
we hear each other breathe—
knowing it's the sound of the ocean inside us.
If there are words at all, let them be formed
mostly of vowels so they're heard more as song
than as spitting, more like river current and less
like throwing stones, words that mean something like
I do not know what you carry, but in this moment
I will help you carry it. Or something like,
Everything depends on us treating each other well.
And if we said it enough, perhaps we'd believe it,
and if we believed it enough, perhaps we'd live it,
treating every other human like someone
who holds our very existence in their hands,
like someone whose life has been given us to serve,
even if it's only to walk together safely down the street,
hold a door, pass the salt, share a sunset,
offer a smile, and say with our actions you belong.

Our communities may not conform to any blueprint, but we know we have them...I once knew two elderly shut-ins, longtime friends, both of whom lived alone. Every day they watched a religious program on television and as it ended each would offer a prayer for the other. They knew who formed their unique community...

Why is community a near-universal experience—especially for people of faith? One person put it this way: "Community is God's strategy for reaching the world." That's a neat way of saying that as community—rather than as individuals—we model what God has in mind for humanity.

Spiritual community is not about being nice to one another. It is about being real enough to allow grace to operate through our wounds.

Though we know one another's names and recognize one another's faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind's light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.

To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise. Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We merely need to trust.

You have to allow disruption in your life. You have to take account of the parts of yourself you would throw out. You have to look in the places you look away from. And this is so the divine comes into birth. The divine wishes to come into birth in every moment.

True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible, and the heart has turned to stone.

The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small.

We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become.

The truth of one's Self can be discovered in everyday life. To live with care and kindness is all that is necessary. The rest reveals itself in due time. The commonplace and God are not distinct.

The Witness is that which is capable of observing the flow of what is—without interfering with it, commenting on it, or in any way manipulating it. The Witness simply observes the stream of events both inside and outside the mind-body in a creatively detached fashion, since, in fact, the Witness is not exclusively identified with either. In other words, when you realize that your mind and your body can be perceived objectively, you spontaneously realize that they cannot constitute a real subjective self. As Huang Po put it, "Let me remind you, the perceived cannot perceive."

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Everyone talks about how traveling back in time and doing something small, like killing a butterfly, can drastically change the present, but no one talks about how doing something small today, like planting a tree, can drastically change the future.

That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

You have seen so much of the outer world and had so many experiences of people, places, and things—and of course those experiences will keep coming. But now, in the second half of your life, as the outer world seems more unstable and dangerous than ever, we want you to take the same rapacious curiosity that once thrust you all over the planet with a hungry, fascinated appetite, and we want you to turn it inward.

Jubilee, wasn't it a jubilee!
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
We were singing out together —
shouting revelries.
Jubilee‚ Lord wasn't it a jubilee!

Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!
We were dancing by the river,
dancing by the sea,
Bouncing all the babies,
up and down upon our knees,
Laughing out happy,
crying out free;
Jubilee‚ wasn't it a jubilee!

We were banging on the banjos,
picking on guitars,
Blowing out the bass notes,
on the crockery jars,
Sliding on the washboards,
banging spoons upon our knees;
Jubilee, wasn't it a Jubilee!

We came from the valleys,
we came from the towns,
We came to see the paddlewheel
and the show boat clowns,
We came from the farmlands,
we came from the sea;
Jubilee, wasn't it a Jubilee!

A blue-bell springs upon the ledge,
A lark sits singing in the hedge;
Sweet perfumes scent the balmy air,
And life is brimming everywhere.
What lark and breeze and bluebird sing,
Is Spring, Spring, Spring!

The cricket doesn't wonder
if there's a heaven
or, if there is, if there's room for him.

It's fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.
If he can, he enters a house
through the tiniest crack under the door.
Then the house grows colder.

He sings slower and slower.
Then, nothing.

This must mean something, I don't know what.
But certainly it doesn't mean
he hasn't been an excellent cricket
all his life.