January 2025 was tumultuous as swift, unanticipated actions disrupted our old ways of being.  Our meditation group felt a lot of uncertainty about what would come next, coupled with some assurance that there will be suffering – if not for us, then for our friends and neighbours.  No wonder our readings were filled with reminders that we can find stability and hope in our own stillness and companionship. Our contemplative practice is ballast.

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Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. (Viktor E. Frankl) 

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand. that this, too, was a gift. (Mary Oliver – The Uses of Sorrow)

Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. (Wendell Berry)

The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions, you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge. (Howard Thurman)

1.

We come into this stillness like snowfall, the air alive with angels, every blessed flake singular and mysterious, what’s outside quiet now, and changing form.  Quickening, we breathe silence.  Presence holds our lives in hush. Light dazzles.  Listening, we learn to answer, and we keep each other warm.

 Silence wraps us close.  We’re comforted, although the angry world is cold.  We love the spell of falling snow, and tell how beautiful it is inside together here with God who may want us wiser, other, clumsy great Saint Bernards rising from beside the fire to go out across blizzard mountains, carrying rescue into the wild air. (Jeanne Lohmann ~ Between Silence and Answer)

..it is not the thing itself…that is the problem; but it is our clinging to the thing even when it causes us, ourselves, and others mental or physical pain, which blinds us to a bigger view and snowballs into more suffering. Ultimately, the challenge of letting go becomes a spiritual act in some way: in many spiritual traditions, surrender is the backbone, as Mohammed says in the Qur’an, “True religion is surrender.” And so as we grasp at the beautiful red leaf, we just might let it spin again in the autumn wind, delighting in that tiny leaf-filled and empty moment. (Patricia Donegan)

maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone. For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea (e e cummings)

I’m slowly learning that even if I react, it won’t change anything, it won’t make people suddenly love and respect me, it won’t magically change their minds. Sometimes it’s better to just let things be, let people go, don’t fight for closure, don’t ask for explanations, don’t chase answers and don’t expect people to understand where you’re coming from. I’m slowly learning that life is better lived when you don’t centre it on what’s happening around you and centre it on what’s happening inside you instead. (Rania Naim)

#openness #growth

“Love is a form of death. And you have to learn how to die in order to learn how to love,” Dr. Cornel West

To learn and not to do, is really not to learn.  To know and not to do, is really not to know. Stephen Covey

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.                                                                                          Leo Buscglia

All the works of God proceed slowly and in pain, but then their roots are the sturdier and their flowering the lovelier.  Carolina Gerhardinger

It is beyond your control to cause any positive response from life and others based on your own inner work. This is why it is best to not expect any outer reward from your inner efforts. You are not that powerful.  Any positive response towards you should be a surprise and gift which sparks gratitude.  David Tensen

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. Pema Chödrön

Joy unspeakable is that moment of mystical encounter when God tiptoes into the hush arbor, testifies about Divine suffering, and whispers in our ears, “Don’t forget, I taught you how to fly on a wing and a prayer; when you’re ready let’s go!”   Barbara Holmes