“What if our religion was each other.
If our practice was our life.
If prayer, our words.
What if the temple was the Earth.
If forests were our church.
If holy water the rivers, lakes, and ocean.
And what if meditation was our relationships.
If the teacher was life.
If wisdom was self-knowledge.
If love was the center of our being.”-Ganga White
Ecstatic in the bounty of the rain today.
Its waters slow sinking into our earth,
A deep and boundless love offering,
A joyful pour of life.
Today, I am in gratitude for the rain.
“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head
with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
-Langston Hughes
“How quick we are to find the rainbow,
before being thankful for the rain.”
-Dieter Uchtdorf
“No matter how old you get, may you always stop to fill your pockets with smooth stones, empty snail shells & other little treasures.”
-Nicolette Gowder
“The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key.”
-G.K. Chesterton
“Once upon a time… there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
-Terry Tempest Williams
The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”
-Mark Nepo
“This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.”
-St. Teresa of Avila
“I think 99 times and I find nothing.
I stop thinking, swim in silence,
and the truth comes to me.”
-Albert Einstein
“I sat staring, staring, staring – half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect.
So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.”
-Emily Carr
What to Remember Upon Waking by David Whyte.
I’m endeavoring, and am successful more and more often, to remember to pause, to settle, to be grateful, before moving into the plans and tasks, upon waking…
“In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?”-David Whyte
