Advent reflections: Hope Peace Joy Love

I asked for peace – You offered your presence. I asked for hope – You came to my side. I asked for joy – You lit my journey. I asked for love – You gave me yourself. David Adam – The Glory of Light

Hope is like a road in the country; there never was a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence… Lin Yutang

In the broken place where we live, hope can be found in the cracks….we too can bloom in our brokenness where we live and see more. Joan Taddonio

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope…. Live right in it.   Barbara Kingsolver – Animal Dreams

Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands. Henri Noewen

The hub of calmness — that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that centre and you’ll always find peace. Elizabeth Gilbert – Eat, Pray, Love 

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.  Wendell Berry

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.   Alan Watts

Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the constant effort to maintain harmonious existence between all peoples, from individual to individual, and between humans and the other beings of this planet.  Haudenosaunee Declaration, 1979

True wealth … is the radiant joy of Being and the deep unshakable peace that comes with it. Eckart Tolle

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. Rabindranath Tagore

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? Kahlil Gibran

Joy.. … is a spiritual engagement with the world based on gratitude. Richard Wagamese

Solitude and silence teach me to love others for what they are, not for what they say. Thomas Merton

Do you know that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of humankind, animals and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain? Albert Einstein

Beyond the binary is love.

Call upon the help of those who love you.  These helpers take many forms; animal, element, bird, angel, saint , stone or ancestor. Joy Harjo

What we reflected on the week ending Oct 29

To be in acceptance is to have a relationship with what you are impatient about – what you usually run away from.  Acceptance goes beyond mere tolerance. (adapted from Gurdjieff – Talks on Transformation)

 The amount of happiness that you have depends upon the amount of freedom that you have in your heart. Thich Naht Hahn

Science tells me Gd must exist,  My mind tells me I will never understand god.  And my heart tells me, I am not meant to.  And that is okay. Dan Brown – Angels and Demons

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Thomas Merton

Aging … invites you to become aware of the sacred circle that shelters your life. Within the harvest circle, you are able to gather lost memories and experiences, bring them together, and hold them as one. John O’Donohue

Without solitude, no plant or animal can survive, no soil can remain productive for any length of time, no child can learn about life, no artist can create, no work can grow and be transformed. Solitude is not the absence of Love, but its complement. Paulo Coelho

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you. Hafiz

Each soul is a gust of God’s breath unfolding in the great energy that surrounds us like an ever-moving stream. The goal is not to cheat death, but to live in the stream with a humility and aliveness that only acceptance of death can release. Mark Nepo

Openness to Growth

#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

What we reflected on Weeks ending September 19

#mystery #openness

You alone can become yourself, but you cannot become yourself alone

If you ever feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t have it figured out, listen close. Life is not tidy. Growth is not linear. We are ALL wanderers.  We are all still learning. Erica Layne

We dredge up soil from the bed of mystery and build ourselves room to grow. And still the mystery surrounds us. It laps at our shores. It permeates the land. Scratch the surface of knowledge and mystery bubbles up like a spring.  Chet Raymo –  Honey From Stone

The divine mystery is not a collection of problems. As the mystics keep chanting, it is a light so bright that it blinds us, that we are bound to experience it as darkness.   John Carmody – How to Handle Trouble

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night. If you want a rose, do not run from the thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself. Rumi

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.   Psalm 23

What we reflected on in the weeks ending September 2nd

#failure

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt that I had a beehive here in my heart and the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.  Anthony Machard – Heart of my Failures

#suffering

Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love.  Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Dream of a Ridiculous Man 

That is my simple definition of suffering: whenever we are not in control.  Richard Rohr – The Naked Now

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. Hermann Hesse – Baume Betrachtungen und Gedichte

#perfectionism

The eternal test of character — our great moral triumph — is the ability to face our own imperfections with composure, reflecting on them with lucid and luminous determination to do better. Maria Popova

#love

The blending of light and darkness into beauty is love.

Vulnerability

#friendship

Perhaps intimacy is the ability to be fragile and vulnerable.  You can love someone very, very much and still not be able to be intimate with them.  Judy T

According to the teaching of the Buddha, in true love there is no place for pride. Thich Nhat Hanh

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. Buddha

Love your neighbour as you love your coffee (Seed group wisdom)

#purpose

Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is yours alone to sing falls into your open cupped hands and you recognize and greet it.  Only then will you know how to give yourself to the world so worthy of rescue.   Martha Postlethwaite

You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place…. The offering of that gift—your true self—is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs.   Bill Plotkin – Soulcraft

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night.  If you want a rose, do not run from the thorns.  If you want love, do not hide from yourself.  Rumi

Is it not true that somewhere deep down in the silence of our troubled hearts, we have always looked for God’s coming? Yet … we need only say our yes to who we are … we need simply to become more responsive to the secret yearning of our heart.  Johannes Beptist Metz –  The Advent of God 

May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer, but do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more.  John O’Donohue

What we reflected on the week ending August 12, 2022

#Light

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t get in.   Isaac Asimov

But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!  Matthew 6:23-24. 

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.  To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.   Wendell Berry

So let the darkness shape you, let it reform you, let it cradle you and birth you into a new life; a new way of being.  Let the spark flame again, in the darkness is where you will find it.    LJ Vanier – Ether: Into the Nemesis 

#Kindness

The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.  Leo Tolstoy

Truth without kindness is cruelty.  Kindness without truth is pandering.

And now these three remain.  Faith, hope and love.  And the greatest of these is love.   Corinthians 13:13

It was humbling to watch a small bird work, singing as it went, leaving what it couldn’t use as it found it. If we could only treat each other with such simple kindness. Mark Nepo – Twig and Nest

It is a service to other human beings to look at them, confused and self-concerned as they may be, with the eyes of love and to resist for as long as possible letting the cataract of judgment occlude our view.  Maria Popova – Marginalian website

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  2 Corinthians 12

My still center, my True Self, does not need to oppose, differentiate, or compare itself. It just is and is content. Richard Rohr – Everything Belongs

What we reflected on in the weeks ending July 21st

#love

Give a piece of your HEART, not a piece of your mind.

LOVE is the picking up of something that has dropped, and the giving of space for someone to discover for themselves what it means to be human, and the forgiving of mistakes when we realize that they are.  Mark Nepo.

#beingwith

ALL SHALL BE WELL, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…for there is a Force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go. Julian of Norwich

In the noisy confusion of life, keep PEACE with your soul.  With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.  Max Ehrmann

#belonging 

It was when I stopped searching for HOME within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself I found there were no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.  Rupi Kaur

Our sense of BELONGING can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.  Belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are.  It requires us to be who we are.   Brene Brown

#allinthistogether

St. Francis moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous ECONOMY OF GRACE, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly.  CAC Newsletter

Never assume malice, if stupidity can also explain the situation.

Those who act with toxicity of any manner,  we have to understand it is almost as if they are ASLEEP.  You have to understand that if they knew what they are doing, they would not have done it.  Eckart Tolle

There is none who needs a smile more than one who does not have one.

Meditations on letting go

There are things you can’t back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it’s up to you to decide what them things are. (Mildred D. Taylor – Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry)

Worry is rust upon the blade.  We are simply not as sharp when we worry. (Henry Ward Beecher)

I didn’t cause.  I can’t control.  I can’t cure.  But I can contribute.

Is the inventor of the ear unable to hear? Is the creator of the eye unable to see? (Psalms 94:9)

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.  (John O’Donohue – Beauty: The Invisible Embrace) 

“How do I cultivate the quietness of my being, where ‘what I should do with my life’ will become apparent?”  Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. The journey is constant, between listening to the inner voice and making the choice to take an action. The minute you make a decision, if you feel it is disharmonious with some other plane of existence, you must go back inside again…. My work constantly requires me to empty so that I become more of an instrument for some other kind of wisdom or presence or force. It’s true for each of us. (Ram Dass)

Letting go is never easy. The desire to have, to hold, to possess and to control is part of our nature. But the more powerful part yearns to learn the lesson of growth and openness; to enter the mystery of secret loving without desiring, to live in emptiness and stillness and therefore in a state of receptivity and readiness so that the quality of our being and “our being present to” are all that matter.  (Daniel J. O’Leary – Year of the Heart)

What we reflected on June 1 – 10, 2022

Our reflections recently have touched on the wisdom of simply BEING WITH – ourselves, our struggles and one another.   Enjoy.

TRAGEDIES happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you can do to stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. William Stafford – The Way It is

STILLNESS can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself.  John O’Donohue – Anam Cara

There is no “back to the old me.” YOU ARE DIFFERENT NOW, full stop. This is not a wholly negative thing. …. The goal of healing is … to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom and all — with courage. Catherine Woodiwiss

When you feel yourself breaking down, may you BREAK OPEN instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. Elizabeth Lesser

LOVE DOES.  I could simply say to you, ‘you are in our thoughts and prayers’.  But I am going to babysit, so you can fly to the funeral.  Love does. Anon

Of course I’LL HURT YOU. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Letter to a Hostage

A moment of happiness, YOU AND I SITTING on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden’s beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land. Rumi – A Moment Of Happiness