I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Book of Hours, I 2

Soulmate

A soulmate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.
~Thomas Moore

Grace

"This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace."  Hafiz

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye from “Words Under the Words”

Now Is The Time

Now is the time to know



That all that you do is sacred.



Now, why not consider



A lasting truce with yourself and God.



Now is the time to understand



That all your ideas of right and wrong



Were just a child’s training wheels



To be laid aside



When you can finally live



With veracity



And Love.



Hafiz is a divine envoy



Whom the Beloved



Has written a holy message upon.



My dear, please tell me,



Why do you still



Throw sticks at your heart



and Soul?



What is it in that sweet voice inside



That incites you to fear?



Now is the time for the world to know



That every thought and action is sacred.



This is the time



For you to deeply compute the impossibility



That there is anything but Grace.



Now is the season to know



That everything you do is sacred.

Imperfection

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight... When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
-   Helen Keller

Effort

"As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain freefall, and float into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace, knowing no effort... earns that all-surrounding grace." --Denise Levertov

Letting Go

"Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if ...you let go completely you will have complete peace."  –Ajahn Chah

Grief

"Grief brings us closest to life's great paradoxes; to live in order to be able to die; to be helpless and therefore be guided; to surrender to the unknown so as to know."  Inayat Khan

Nobility

"Nobility of spirit is the grace—or ability—to play, whether in heaven or on earth." ~Joseph Campbell

Heartfulness

"Heartfulness is knowing what your love and having the guts and grace to go for it.   It is a balanced blend of wisdom and passion."  Elizabeth Lesser

Gratitude

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird-
equal seekers of sweetness
Here the quickening yeast, there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters;
this is my walk.

Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth, with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy, dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

Mary Oliver

A Blessing

"We may not recognize a blessing when it is given, or we may have ideas about life that keep us from experiencing what we already have.   Sometimes we become frozen in the past or unaware of the potential of the present.   We may even come to feel entitled to what has been given by grace.  Or we become so caught up in what is missing in the world that we allow our hearts to break.   There are many ways to feel empty in the midst of our blessings."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Prayer

"At it's deepest, prayer is a statement about causality.   Turning toward prayer is a release from the arrogance and vulnerability of an isolated and individual causality.   When we pray; we stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life.   It is an opportunity to experience humility and recognize grace."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Wholeness

"With certain people we may get to try on a greater wholeness for a time, to actually experience being more.   These experiences are a sort of grace.   They help us to know not only the direction of our personal wholeness, but how it feels and even tastes.   Everyone's wholeness is unique.   Our wholeness will look different than theirs.   Our wholeness fits us better than theirs.   Our wholeness is much more attainable for us than theirs could ever be."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Laughter

"There should be great dollups of wild laughter among believers.  And that laughter in it's sense of irony should be a recognition of the helplessness and smallness of their own little projects compared to the graciousness and dignity and the wonder of the great divine calling.   Because more often than not, it's when humans really try to make it work out and get it together that they make the greatest disaster out of the whole thing.   I'm sure if we could listen to the music of the spheres that we would hear deep within it the divine laughter at the attempts of the little humans to work out all of their miriad projects which are so serious and solomn to them but in the context of the great and touching divine graciousness are very small indeed."   John O' Donahue

Divine Truth

"You need never be ashamed of anything that is within you when you're in the presence of God.  You need never feel inferior.  You need never feel guilty about anything you've done that you shouldn't do.  You need never feel guilty about what you haven't done that you should have done.  And you should never feel in any way judged by the loving tenderness and intimacy of the Divine Presence because any Divine Presence  that could judge or see  according to the smallness of our narrow ways of viewing wouldn't be worthy of the name of the Divine.  There's a graciousness in the Divine that is beyond all the smallness of our limitations."  John O' Donahue

Relationship

"Relationship is not a project, it is a grace.  Responding to the grace of relationship, it is important to appreciate, to give thanks, to honor, to celebrate, to tend, and to observe."   Thomas Moore

Strength

s"When our minds are quiet and our hearts are strong, we see that the whole world is full of grace."  Elizabeth Lesser

Grace and Acceptance

"To go with the drift of things
To yield with a grace to reason,
To bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season."
Robert Frost