A Friday walk around the ranch

I don’t know how this photo happened. It’s as if the clouds went swooping by, in a hurry to be somewhere.  It created a double exposure look without any editing on my part.

Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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Brighter day

The roses glow on dark and stormy days.  (Shot through the window while the rain was coming down in sheets.)

Patience from a Buddhist perspective is not a “wait and see” attitude, but rather one of “just be there”… Patience can also be based on not expecting anything. Think of patience as an act of being open to whatever comes your way. When you begin to solidify expectations, you get frustrated because they are not met in the way you had hoped… With no set idea of how something is supposed to be, it is hard to get stuck on things not happening in the time frame you desired. Instead, you are just being there, open to the possibilities of your life.

~ Lodro Rinzler, The Buddha Walks Into A Bar…

Waiting for Dorian

Scene from a bike ride on Labor Day.

Whatever we are waiting for — peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance — it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and graceful heart.

~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.

~ Morris West

A Tuesday ramble

At the edge of dawn.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

~ Wendell Berry

The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.
In healing the scattered members come together.
In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

~ Wendell Berry, excerpt from What Are People For?: Essays (you can read more here)

All aboard

It will soon be time to board car 172.

I remember in ’37 when trolley cars were so big in New York.  It was five cents for a ride… There used to be open-air buses, and you could go up a spiral staircase and sit up on top.  Those were great, great days.

~ Tiny Tim

Between

A moment, in-between.

The solid ground we once took refuge in has disintegrated underneath us, sending us into unknown territory.  We were so sure we were beyond breaking yet again, that we had finished with all that, but the beloved is not interested in maintaining the status quo.  It is the nature of all form to disintegrate, so that new forms may emerge.

Between the worlds, burning up, longing for an end to the contradictions.  We have found ourselves in the liminal, but how do we rest there?  Where is the healing, the transcendence, the resolution?  How could we be asked to surrender more?  It can seem that we are falling apart, but were we ever together to begin with?  Is that even the right lens from which to attempt navigation?  Or were we always something more whole, more majestic than all that?

Slow way down.  Breathe deeply from the lower belly.  Feel your feet in the mud of the earth.  Sink into the womb of now.  For just this moment, set aside the need to understand, to figure it all out, or to replace this moment with another.  Today may not be the day for answers, but to let your heart break open to the vastness of the question.

Look up into the new summer sky.  Something is longing to be born, in you, as you, as the poetry of your life and as the gifts you will share with others.  Lay your hands on your heart.  Listen.  Receive.  There are blues coming into existence that have never made their way into this dimension.  Oranges, reds, yellows, and purples that have been sent to remind you of the rarity and outrageousness of one human heart.  Stay right here.  Don’t move from this moment.  Open your senses.  Step into the mystery.  See through the veil.  Everything that has ever happened and everyone you have ever met, has led up to right here and now.  Trust in the fires of disintegration and renewal, and in the timeline that is written within the cells of your heart.

~ Matt Licata

Wonders of summer

Waiting for someone to come along and enjoy the view.

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.

~ Ben Okri