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The Guest-House
This being human is a guest-house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~Rumi, Say I Am You: Poems of Rumi, Translation by John
Moyne and Coleman
Barks. Maypop, 1994. |
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver, from Dreamwork, Beacon Press, Boston,
1992. |
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now
~David Whyte |
Today like every other
day
We wake up empty and scared
Don’t open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument
let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of way to kneel
And kiss the earth.
~ Rumi, Translated by Robert Bly |
WAGE PEACE
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings
and
flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and
freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships
intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean
rivers.
Make soup. Play music. Learn the word for thank you in three
languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of
fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute.
~ Judyth Hill, written September 11, 2001 |
Our Home is the present moment. The miracle
is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present
moment.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
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The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
The most basic and powerful way to connect to
another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most
important thing we ever give each other is our attention. A
loving silence often has more power to heal and to connect
than the most well-intentioned words.
~ Rachel Naomi Remen |
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