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.
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.
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.
The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don’t know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.
~ Thich Nhat Hahn
A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
~ Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
To know a physical place you must become intimate with it. You must open yourself to its textures, its colours in varying day and night lights, its sonic dimensions. You must in some way become vulnerable to it. In the end, there’s little difference between growing into the love of a place and growing into the love of a person.
Yawn. (One of the young, and not yet weaned at the time, on Assateague Island.)
The sense of respiration is an example of our natural sense relationship with the atmospheric matrix. Remember, respiration means to re-spire, to re-spirit ourselves by breathing. It, too, is a consensus of many senses. We may always bring the natural relationships of our senses and the matrix into consciousness by becoming aware of our tensions and relaxations while breathing. The respiration process is guided by our natural attraction to connect with fresh air and by our attraction to nurture nature by feeding it carbon dioxide and water, the foods for Earth that we grow within us during respiration. When we hold our breath, our story to do so makes our senses feel the suffocation discomfort of being separated from Earth’s atmosphere. It draws our attention to follow our attraction to air, so we inspire and gain comfort. Then the attraction to feed Earth comes into play so we exhale food for it to eat and we again gain comfort. This process feels good, it is inspiring. Together, we and Earth conspire (breathe together) so that neither of us will expire. The vital nature of this process is brought to consciousness when we recognize that the word for air, spire, also means spirit and that psyche is another name for air/spirit/soul.
~ Michael J. Cohen, Reconnecting with Nature: Finding Wellness Through Rebuilding Your Bond with the Earth
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