Rilke

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor—let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real.

Rilke 

Patience

Infinite patience brings immediate results.
-  Wayne W. Dyer

Ignorance

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.
-  William Channing

Peaceful Warriors

"Peaceful warriors have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water clears. They remain unmoving until the right time, so the right action arises by itself. They do not seek fulfillment, but wait with open arms to welcome all things."
-   Dan Millman

Patience

Patience is the art of caring slowly.
-   John Ciardi

Surviving

"How does one survive cancer? Of course -- good doctors, good insurance, good luck. But the real healing comes from not being forgotten. From attention, from care, from love, from being surrounded by a community of those who demand information on your behalf, who advocate and stand up for you when you are in a weakened state, who sleep by your side, who refuse to let you give up, who bring you meals, who see you not as a patient or victim but as a precious human being, who create metaphors where you can imagine your survival. This is my medicine, and nothing less will suffice."  Eve Ensler

New Consciousness Leaders

"While we will probably never grasp the entirety of God's thoughts or the wisdom of the universe, or whatever you call the vast organizing principle of existence, we can listen more deeply for inklings, we can pay closer attention to the cause and effect of our actions.  We can raise our own standards of behavior toward something kinder and grander. 

What might leadership look like if generated from a wise consciousness?   Here's my stab at some answers.  A New Consciousness Leader knows the difference between strength and force.  Strength comes from a deep, inner confidence; from loving and respecting and expressing one's own authentic self.   That kind of strength opens the gate to real love of others and life itself.  Force comes from a deep inner wound that spawns the urge to dominate and even the score.  A New Consciousness Leader uses her strength.  She is bold, direct and decisive.  She views terror and violence as the tactics of cowards and fools.  A New Consciousness leader also knows the difference between outrage and rage.  I think of outrage as Holy Anger.  Strong emotional responsiveness to the pain of others; to injustice, to ignorance.  Outrage is fierce but it never dehumanizes.  It fills a leaders sails with the winds of action, but it also fills her heart with discernment and compassion.  Rage, on the other hand, is like a forest fire.  It is impatient and it is vindictive and it is short sighted.  A New Consciousness Leader uses the energy of outrage to persuade and guide and include and create."

Waiting

"It takes a strong ego to hold the darkness, wait, hold the tension, wait, waiting for we know not what.  But if we can hold long enough, a tiny light is conceived in the dark unconscious, and if we can wait and hold, in it's own time it will be born into full radiance.  The ego then has to be loving enough to receive the gift and nourish it."  Marion Woodman

Awakening

"When your soul awakens,you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary voices and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. The normal way never leads home.

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for old patterns. Now you realize how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the roster of expectation which promises safety and the confirmation of outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits. When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. When your inner senses are blurred, you can see nothing in or of yourself; you become a respectable prisoner of received images. On this journey, you begin to see how the sides of your heart that seemed awkward, contradictory and uneven are the places where your treasure lies hidden. You begin to become truer to yourself. The journey shows you that from this inner dedication you can reconstruct your own values and action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgment , comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever , you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. At the deepest level, this adventure of growth is in fact a trans-figurative conversation with your own death. And when the time comes for you to leave, the view from your death bed will show a life of growth that gladdens the heart and takes away all fear."

Gift Me

 GIFT ME

Gift me with your presence
Show up fully, but only when you really want to
Not out of obligation or fear of disappointing.

Gift me with your stories
Of joy and pain, for through them you grow
To love life and learn wisdom
And in hearing them from you, I deepen too.
Tell it all, every detail...
What was said, felt and discovered
And how it changed you

Gift me with honesty
Tell me when I hurt or disappoint you
When I make you proud or just that you love me.
Tell me the truth, as you see it,
In me, the world and life
As the unfolding Mystery


Gift me with forgiveness
An honest attempt to give
Not only me, but all you meet
The benefit of the doubt
That even in my faults and frailties
You see the inherent worth and Light of God
Most of all...

Gift me with a chosen silence
When it would be easier to judge
Or you feel you can't resist the urge
To share with another the latest amusing, confusing
Insane thing you saw me do...or refrain from
For time has a way, of bringing all things full circle

Gift me with a compassionate, listening ear
When I seek a witness to my life and experience
And open your heart even wider,
That it may take it ALL in
And love me even more when I most confuse you

Gift me with a place at your table
A phone call just because
An invitation to adventure
And the assurance that
Not a day goes by without a smile lifting your lips
In fondness for memories we have yet to create

Gift me with patience
As time slows my steps
And mind's edges dull
Allow me the dignity and freedom of which I am capable,
But if the time comes that I am not safe or sane enough,
Care for me, as I tried to do for you
when you still fit in my arms
And needed a shoulder to sleep on.

Valerie Wilkins Alder  

Patience

"Sometimes if you stay the course long enough, divergent paths reveal themselves to have the same destination."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Forgiveness

Please do not believe me
if ever I should say that you've upset me.
Sometimes I forget the true source of my feelings.

You cannot make me sad,
impatient,
angry,
or otherwise dis-eased.
Only a hope or expectation of you on my part,
which you have not fulfilled,
can move me thus.

Yet I am much too human
to be without hopes and expectations,
and I am also much too human
to live always in the knowing
that my hopes and expectations
have no claim upon your being.

So if I say that you've upset me,
please forgive me for attempting
to disinherit my own self's creation of my pain.
And please do not ignore my deeper message:
I care enough about you
to include you in my hopes and expectations.
~Noel McInnis

Truth and Love

"So much of what we do each day is a diversion from what our lives are really about.  A traumatic event is like a knife slicing through our diversionary tactics and exposing the vein of truth; the truth of what we really want, of how we really feel, of the wrongs we have visited upon each other, of the love we crave from each other.  In our habitual lives, we exercise the foolish luxuries of complaining, avoiding and blaming.   We gossip about the annoying behaviors of friends or colleagues, shutting them out of our hearts, turning our backs on their complicated beauty in favor of their obvious flaws.  It seems easier to do this than to take responsibility when it is ours to take, or to speak directly to others when it is theirs.   All the while, the truth waits patiently."   Elizabeth Lesser