(Not quite) Wordless Wednesday

Our hearts can become filled with praise and thanks without the use of words.

~ Paul Tillich

I know a few of you out there practice yoga and/or meditation and some have chosen the word Gratitude for this year’s word or theme.  So, I thought I’d share with you that Spirit Voyage has a 40-day meditation practice going that began yesterday (but you can climb aboard today or anytime, really).  It’s called A Grateful Heart.  The meditation is beautiful.  Join me, if you’re interested.  (For those who don’t like signing up for stuff via email, you don’t have to.  Just use the link I provided.  I enjoy the daily messages and reminders, but they really aren’t necessary.)

If we were having coffee on a Friday: January passes through winter

A sunrise in early January.

1.
The cloud is free only
to go with the wind.

The rain is free
only in falling.

The water is free only
in its gathering together,

in its downward courses,
in its rising into the air.

2.
In law is rest
if you love the law,
if you enter, singing, into it
as water in its descent.

3.
Or song is truest law,
and you must enter singing;
it has no other entrance.

It is the great chorus
of parts. The only outlawry
is in division.

4.
Whatever is singing
is found, awaiting the return
of whatever is lost.

5.
Meet us in the air
over the water,
sing the swallows.
Meet me, meet me,
the redbird sings,
here here here here.

~ Wendell Berry, The Law That Marries All Things

A Monday meander: Comfort zones

One foggy morning. (Looking out at the neighbor’s new dock.)

When we pause, allow a gap, and breath deeply, we can experience instant refreshment. Suddenly we slow down, look out, and there’s the world. It can feel like briefly standing in the eye of the tornado or the still point of a turning wheel. Our mood may be agitated or cheerful. What we see and hear may be chaos or it may be the ocean, the mountains, or birds flying across a clear blue sky. Either way, momentarily our mind is still and we are not pulled in or pushed away by what we are experiencing.

~ Pema Chodron

Wishing you all the best for 2019

Reflections swirling on the water.

Listen with Ease

Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still?  Then you hear everything, don’t you?  You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds — which means really that you are listening to everything.  Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel.  If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change that comes without your volition, without your asking, and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.

~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life