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

Light

The lamps are different,
But the light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain's lamp-shop,
Forget about them.
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,
The Light streams towards you from all things,
All people, all possible permutation of good, evil, thought, passion.
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,
Endlessly emanating all things
One turning and burning diamond.
One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down,
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.

- Rumi

Communication

...the deepest level of communication is not communication but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words and it is beyond speech and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

-Thomas Merton

Love and Commitment

"Love does not put everything at rest; it puts everything in motion. Love does not end all risk; it accepts every risk which is necessary for its work. Love does not separate the good people from the bad, bestowing endless bliss on one and endless torment on the other. Love seeks the reconciliation of every life so that it may share with all the others." -Daniel Day Williams

War

"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers." (Francois de Fenelon)

Obuntubotho

The essence of being human.  You know when it is threatened when it is there and when it is absent.  It speaks about humanness, gentleness, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable.  It embraces compassion and toughness.  It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. 

Religion

"I am neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim.
Doing away with duality, I saw the two worlds as one.
I seek One, I know One, I see One, and I call One."
~Rumi

Oneness

"If we're not planting seeds that are going to reveal that oneness to us, we're simply perpetuating our own pain, because all of our suffering comes from being lost in separateness." --Krishna Das

Oneness

"I understand that if I were to look deeply
into Anything I would see You. Then, I would see Me. But the Human Being
runs from flower to flower, never to make love - not even pausing to
kiss those perfumed lips... And we wonder why we Just Can't Seem to
Find God." (From Flower to Flower, Em Claire)

Listening

“Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.” Ram Dass

Oneness and Compassion

"What is necessary in these critical times is that all sensitive and caring
people make a personal discovery of the fact of oneness and allow
compassion to flow in their lives. When compassion and realization of
oneness becomes the dynamic of human relationship, then humankind will
...evolve." ~ Jean Houston

St. Francis and The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Healing and Loving What Is

Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is Now to move us closer to God. ~Ram Dass ♥

Beloved

In truth everything and everyone
Is a shadow of the Beloved,
And our seeking is His seeking
And our words are His words ...
We search for Him here and there,
...While looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side, we ask:
"O Beloved, where is the Beloved?"
-Rumi

Oneness

"While there is a lower class, I am in it;
while there is a criminal element, I am of it;
and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."  Eugene Debs