Quotations

A ministry of presence

An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness; it is a ministry of presence. These moments remind us that we are not alone in our darkness and that our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time.

~ Brené Brown in BRAVING THE WILDERNESS

Brené Brown Braving The Wilderness suffering

The tragic gap between reality and possibility

There are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.

~ Parker Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS

Parker Palmer A Hidden Wholeness suffering

We belong to each other

The problem of the world is that we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

~ Mother Theresa

Mother Theresa suffering

We are one

We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suffering

We are all one

Survival is the second law of life.
The first is that we are all one.

~ Joseph Campbell in A JOSEPH CAMPBELL COMPANION

Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion connection

Everything in connection with something else

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in CONVERSATIONS OF GOETHE WITH JOHANN PETER ECKERMANN

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Conversations Of Goethe With Johann Peter Eckermann connection

The Oneness of All

What seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. For the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels. It's for us to perceive the warp and woof of the Oneness of All as best we can and learn to follow our own threads through the tapestry of life with authenticity and resolve.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn from WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE

Jon Kabat-Zinn Wherever You Go, There You Are connection

Love

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

~ Czeslaw Milosz from "Love" in NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS 1931-2001

Czeslaw Milosz New And Collected Poems 1931-2001 connection

We are knee deep in a river

We are knee deep in a river, searching for water. We are part of an invisible river, but we are so distracted by outer things and what we imagine they could mean to us that we lose contact with the source of our own Being. When we are caught in desire, in form, in externals, we are pulled out of ourselves into a fantasy world, a desire world. We lose touch with the invisible river, the waters of life, through our identification with unconscious inner processes and with outer demands.

~ Kabir Helminski in LIVING PRESENCE

Kabir Helminski Living Presence connection

Singing Everything

The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.
You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful-
They are the most rare.

~ Joy Harjo from "Singing Everything" in AN AMERICAN SUNRISE

Joy Harjo An American Sunrise connection

Transubstantiation

Lord, most of what I love
Mistakes itself for nothing.

~ Molly McCully Brown from "Transubstantiation" in THE VIRGINIA STATE COLONY FOR EPILEPTICS AND FEEBLEMINDED

Molly McCully Brown The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And Feebleminded connection

The Force of Friendship

What draws Friends together
Does not conform to Laws of Nature.
Form doesn’t know about spiritual closeness.
If a grain of barley approaches a grain of wheat,
An ant must be carrying it. A black ant on black felt.
You can’t see it, but if grains go toward each other,
It’s there.

A hand shifts our birdcages around.
Some are brought closer. Some move apart.
Do not try to reason it out. Be conscious
Of who draws you and who not.

~ Rumi from "The Force of Friendship" in THIS LONGING

Rumi This Longing connection

Our kinship with all beings

We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is we only become more fearful, more hardened and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us—a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don't close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.

~ Pema Chodron in WHEN THINGS FALL APART

Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart connection

All we can do is to participate

If the world is a temple, then our enemies are sacred, too. The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. It doesn't even stop with human beings and enemies of the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. EVERYTHING becomes enchanting with true sight...All we can do is to participate.

~ Richard Rohr from EVERYTHING BELONGS

Richard Rohr Everything Belongs connection

We are not the first

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die.

~ Alice Walker in HER BLUE BODY EVERYTHING WE KNOW

Alice Walker Her Blue Body Everything We Know connection

Your presence

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

~ Thich Nhat Hanh in NO DEATH, NO FEAR

Thich Nhat Hanh No Fear, No Death connection

Fortune

It could take a tribe
to find the way back
to what you love.
A day's wandering
could become a season,
then another. At times
it may all signal chaos.
But take heart.
Sometimes
there is intelligence
even in the crumbling
of things.

~ Steve Godwin from "Fortune" in FINDING HEART

Steve Godwin Finding Heart heart

Human spirit

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence, and it is fragile.

~ Bernard Beckett

Bernard Beckett heart

If You Were Water

The creek is wearing its usual disguise,
braiding and unbraiding itself
through narrows and pools as it pleases,
proving its force by taking the path
of least resistance, taking apart the stone
one grain at a time.

If you were water, what part of your will
would you be willing to dissolve?
Which of your ways would you have to learn
not to want to have?
And how, if you always ran downstream,
would your desire know how to live?

~ Steve Godwin from "If You Were Water" in FINDING HEART

Steve Godwin Finding Heart heart

We must not be defeated

We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose.

~ Maya Angelou from an interview in Psychology Today, February 2009

Maya Angelou heart

Don't grieve

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.

~ Rumi

Rumi heart

Burning the Old Year

...Quick dance,
shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn't do
crackle after the blazing dies.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye from "Burning the Old Year" in WORDS UNDER THE WORDS

Naomi Shihab Nye Words Under The Words heart

Acceptance wraps itself around your heart

What if dying weren't a bad thing? Caroline's death had left me with a great and terrible gift: how to live in a world where loss, some of it unbearable, is as common as dust or moonlight. And then, finally, unwittingly, acceptance wraps itself around your heart.

~ Gail Caldwell in LET'S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

Gail Caldwell Let's Take The Long Way Home heart

Sanctuary

Will you be my refuge,
My haven in the storm,
Will you keep the embers warm,
When my fire's all but gone?
Will you remember, And bring me sprigs of rosemary,
Be my sanctuary,
'Til I can carry on, Carry on.

~ Carrie Newcomer from the song "Sanctuary"

Carrie Newcomer heart

West Wind

There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe...When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long fall plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life toward it.

~ Mary Oliver from "West Wind" in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, VOL. 2

Mary Oliver Vol. 2, New And Selected Poems heart

Bright possibilities

Those are red letter days in our lives when we meet people who thrill us like a fine poem, people whose handshake is brimful of unspoken sympathy, and whose sweet, rich natures impart to our eager, impatient spirits a wonderful restfullness which, in is essence, is divine...The perplexities, irritations, and worries that have absorbed us pass like unpleasant dreams, and we wake to see with new eyes and hear with new ears the beauty and harmony of God's real world. The solemn nothings that fill our everyday life blossom suddenly into bright possibilities.

~ Helen Keller in THE STORY OF MY LIFE

Helen Keller The Story Of My Life heart

Lesson of the moment

Lesson of the moment: I am not a little autonomous being, deciding this or that about my own life without interference. I am a thread in a tapestry of people.

~ Deborah Good in LONG AFTER I'M GONE: A FATHER-DAUGHTER MEMOIR

Deborah Good Long After I'm Gone: A Father-daughter Memoir heart

What Divides

A fragment of fence long trampled
by those who needed most to pass.
Pilgrim, immigrant, refugee,
all journeys severe, all made in longing.
Most cross over what's already breached,
but the step is long and touches down
In a world that takes heart
in the breaking of what divides.

~ Steve Godwin from "What Divides" in FINDING HEART

Steve Godwin Finding Heart heart

Just Another Song

Sometimes I can sit under a tree
looking into the spaces
between branches,
And wait on the silence...

~ Steve Godwin from "Just Another Song" in FINDING HEART

Steve Godwin Finding Heart heart

Far better things ahead

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

~ C.S. Lewis in THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF C.S. LEWIS

C.S. Lewis The Collected Letters Of C.s. Lewis heart

November

You are not obliged to be beautiful
You don't have to shine.
Blooming will happen when it happens.
If you can be still for a moment
you might notice that
the roots that feed you
are still reaching silently through the dark.

~ Lynn Ungar in "November" from THESE DAYS: POEMS FOR THE PANDEMIC AGE

Lynn Ungar These Days: Poems For The Pandemic Age forgiveness

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

~ Khaled Hosseini in THE KITE RUNNER

Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner forgiveness

Falling and rising again

If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

~ Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich forgiveness

The heart broken open into new capacity

...there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about—a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity—a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.

~ Parker Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS: THE JOURNEY TOWARD AN UNDIVIDED LIFE

Parker Palmer A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life forgiveness

We carry soul medicine

Our apprenticeship with sorrow has led us here, to the very edge of culture and the wild, uncertain times we are in...We are being called upon to gather the wisdom we have found on our long walk with sorrow and make it available for others. We must enter the healing ground as elders who have been seasoned by grief, recognizing we carry soul medicine for those who are beginning their apprenticeship. Perhaps now we can begin to build a new culture, one that honors soul and the soul of the world.

~ Francis Weller in THE WILD EDGE OF SORROW

Francis Weller The Wild Edge Of Sorrow forgiveness

Anthem

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

~ Leonard Cohen from "Anthem"

Leonard Cohen forgiveness

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

~ Mary Oliver in "The Uses of Sorrow" from THIRST

Mary Oliver Thirst forgiveness

Forgiveness has many layers

...many people have trouble with forgiveness because they have been taught that it is a singular act to be completed in one sitting. That is not so. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes in WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves forgiveness

Mutual forgiveness

All intimate relationships—close friendships and good marriages—are based on continued and mutual forgiveness. You will always trespass upon your friend's sensibilities at one time or another, or your spouse's. The only question is, Will you forgive the other person? And more importantly, Will you forgive yourself? We have to deepen our understanding, make ourselves more equal to circumstances, more easy with what we have been given or not given. We must drink from the deep well of things as they are.

~ David Whyte

David Whyte forgiveness

Oremus

So let us pick up
the stones over which we stumble,
friends, and build altars...

Let us name the harsh light and
soft darkness that surround us.

Let's claw ourselves out from the graves we've dug.

Let's lick the earth from our fingers.

Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and
our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.

~ Padraig O'Tuama in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY

Padraig O'Tuama Daily Prayer With The Corrymeela Community forgiveness

To live with forgiveness

To live without forgiveness is to live separated from the sacred and from the most basic instincts of our heart. To live with forgiveness is to reveal in each moment the beauty and value of life. To live with forgiveness is to choose in each moment an active role in creating relationships, organizations, communities, and a world that works for everyone.

~ Robin Casarjian in FORGIVENESS

Robin Casarjian Forgiveness forgiveness

To endure is to forgive

Finally, "love endures all things."... Everything that is tough and brittle shatters; everything that is cynical rots. The only way to endure is to forgive, over and over, to give back that openness and possibility for new beginning which is the very essence of love itself. And in such a way love comes full circle and can fully "sustain and make fruitful," and the cycle begins again, at a deeper place.

~ Cynthia Bourgeault in LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH

Cynthia Bourgeault Love Is Stronger Than Death forgiveness

A gracious invocation

A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart. There is nothing more intimate in a life than the secret under-territory where it anchors...there is no heart that is without this inner divine reference.

~ John O'Donohue in TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US

To Bless The Space Between Us forgiveness

The world in cohesion

Contemplation is that activity which situates us in an open space from which we can observe and contribute to the course of the universe ... that activity that delights in the well-being of all beings, that maintains the world in cohesion.

~ Raimundo Panikkar in BLESSED SIMPLICITY

Raimundo Panikkar Blessed Simplicity wonder

Wisdom in the first place

If you seek Wisdom in the first place, you will find that Wisdom is joyous. If you seek the joy of Wisdom in the first place, you will fall prey to illusions.

~ Valentin Tomberg in MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT

Valentin Tomberg Meditations On The Tarot wonder

In wonder

If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things.

~ Gospel of Thomas, Logion 2

wonder

Creative love

The person who makes all cares into one care— the care for simply staying present— will be cared for by that presence which is creative love.

~ Kabir Helminski

Kabir Helminski wonder

Cushion for Your Head

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest
For your separation from God
Is the hardest work in this world
Let me bring you trays of food
And something that you like to drink
You can use my soft words
As a cushion for your head

~ Hafiz from "Cushion for Your Head" in THE GIFT

Hafiz The Gift wonder

Stay with the hunger of the question

All those magical, predestined, and irreplaceable people and places are not really that, not really the answer. Rather, we have to stay with the hunger of the question and from its energy fill the space with our own choices, and then with the new things which will be called forth from us in the unexpected poverty and limitation in which our necessarily imperfect choices necessarily situate us.

~ Bruno Barnhart in SECOND SIMPLICITY

Bruno Barnhart Second Simplicity wonder

Fluent

I would love to live
like a river flows,
carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding.

~ John O'Donahue from "Fluent" in CONAMARA BLUES

John O'Donohue Conamara Blues wonder

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