This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained. No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life.
~ Jeff Foster, Falling in Love with Where You Are
I believe that if one fathoms deeply one’s own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed.
~ Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
You can’t know who you are until you know where you are.
~ Wendell Berry
We are often unprepared for life’s challenges and at times our reaction to certain individuals, instances, or events can leave us feeling ugly. Such feelings of ugliness can be pretty powerful, sometimes strong enough to cause us to lose sight of, and disconnect from, the innocence and beauty of our true essence. Slowing down and easing gradually into stillness while concentrating on the energy that fills our heart, the same energy that connects us to each other, will bring us back to the everlasting beauty of ourselves.
~Mary Dunlop
It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.
What is most beautiful is least acknowledged.
What is worth dying for is barely noticed.~Laura McBride, We are Called To Rise
Sometimes you’ve got to jump off cliffs and grow wings on the way down.
~ Ray Bradbury
You can learn from everybody, not only from people but also from animals, from trees, from clouds, from rivers. But there is no question of imitating. You can’t become the river, but you can learn some quality that is river-likeness: the flow, the let-go. You can learn something from a rose flower. You cannot become a rose flower, you need not, but you can learn something from the rose. You see the rose so delicate yet so strong in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. By the evening it will be gone but has no care about it, is joyous in the moment. You can learn from the rose how to live in the moment. Right now the rose is dancing in the wind, in the rain, unafraid, unconcerned for the future. By the evening the petals will wither away, but who bothers about the evening? This moment is all and this dance is all there is.
Learn something from the rose. Learn something from the bird on the wing — the courage to go into the unbounded.
~ Osho, from Tarot in the Spirit of Zen
We are now more than halfway removed from what the unwritten word meant to our ancestors, who believed in the original, primal word behind all manifestations of the spirit. You sang because you were answered. The answers come from life around you. Prayers, chants, and songs were also responses to the elements, to the wind, the sun and stars, the Great Mystery behind them. Life on earth springs from a collateral magic that we rarely consult. We avoid the unknown as if we were afraid that contact would lower our sense of self-esteem.
~ John Hay, A Beginner’s Faith in Things Unseen
