Courage

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made."  David Whyte

Love and Fear

"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."

"Our eyes are not just viewers.  They're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time.  Fear is writing that script.  Fear is going to be a player in your life.  You get to decide how much.  So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.  What we really want seems impossibly  out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it.  I'm saying that you can ask the universe for it.  Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.  As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.  Why not take a chance on faith.   Not religion but faith.  Not hope but faith.   I don't believe in hope.  Hope is a beggar.  Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.  You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world.  You'll only ever have two choices.  Love and fear.  Choose love and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart."  Jim Carey 

Broken Heart

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”
— Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Kahn

and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire

Stillness to Listen

"May we find a little stillness- a place for rest & daydreaming, a time for letting our deepest longing guide us back to our soul desires in those places where we may have wandered a little from who we are in the busyness of life. Of course there are risks in living close to those desires- risk of faillure, risk of fulfillment, risk of living with the fullness & messiness & heart-opening beauty of being human every day. May we find the courage to live a soul-directed life."

We Have Come To Be Danced

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
We have come.

by Jewel Mathieson

Patterns

"We need to examine the nature of patterns and how healthy ones (meaningful practices) can calcify into unhealthy ones (habitual routines).   We need to consider the art of softening habitual routines back into meaningful practices.  We need to discern when the rigid ones just need to be broken so our hearts can once again breathe."

Trails of Life

"Isn't the trail of our relationships the time it takes for the heart to practice it's part in the movement we call Love?  Isn't the trail of our honest questions the time it takes for the mind to practice it's part in the movement we call Wisdom?  Isn't the trail of our changing beliefs the time it takes for the spirit to practice it's part in the movement called God?  Isn't the trail of our Oneness, those brief moments when everything comes together, isn't this the time it takes for Love and Wisdom and God to bring the common place in us alive?" Mark Nepo

"Often, confusion is the tension of trying to make sense of things too soon, before enough of the inner players have learned their parts.  Often, experience is the way that the heart and mind and spirit practice what they need to play."  Mark Nepo

Silence

"Silence is something that comes from our own hearts, and not from someone outside. If we are truly silent, then no matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can enjoy the silence. Silence does not only mean not talking and not doing loud things. Silence means that we're not disturbed inside, there's no talking inside."   - Thich Nhat Hanh

Love and Friendship

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
~Bruce Lee

Relationship

A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself – to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.
~Leo Buscaglia

At the end of the talk someone from the audience
asked the Dalai Lama, "Why didn't you fight back against
the Chinese?" The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet
just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, "Well, war is obsolete, you know " Then, after a few moments,
his face grave, he said, "Of course the mind can rationalize
fighting back...but the heart, the heart would never understand.
Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind,
and the war would be inside you."

Listening from the Heart

From the one heart...

Hear from the heart wordless mysteries!
Understand what cannot be understood...
In our stone-dark hearts there burns a fire
That burns all veils to their root and foundation,
When the veils are burned away,
the heart will understand completely...
Ancient Love will unfold ever-fresh forms
In the heart of the Spirit, in the core of the heart.

- Rumi

Institutions

"What happens when our institutions no longer serve us, no longer reflect the truth of our own experience? We sit on pews and feel a soul-stirring disconnect as we are preached sermons spoken from the dead. What we know is not what we hear. We mistake our confusion for guilt. Our hearts close. Our minds wander and we walk away. Inspiration returns when another voice is heard, one that recognizes that the past and the future are contemporary. How can we learn to speak in a language that is authentic,faithful to our hearts? The ceiling is raised by our imagination. Authentic acts reform.

-Terry Tempest Williams.
"Leap"

I Got Kin

Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.
Love
So God will think
"Ahhhh,
I got Kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
for coffee and
Rolls."

Sing
Because that is a food
Our starving world
Needs.
Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.

Hafiz

Aspirations for Living

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony."   William Henry Channing, 1810 - 1884

Life

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit."

Dawna Markova

Peacemaking

“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds--our own prejudices, fears and ignorance...To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women.” --Thich Nhat Hanh

When You Can Endure

WHEN YOU CAN ENDURE

When

The words stop

And you can endure the silence

That reveals your heart's

Pain

Of emptiness

Or that great wrenching - sweet longing.

That is the time to try and listen

To what the /Beloved's

Eyes

Most want

To

Say.

Hafiz