Rumi: In Every Joy and Sorrow

Find new meaning in every joy and sorrow ~ 

see another world where the end is another beginning. 

 

- Rumi

 

 

from Rumi Quotes

A Noble Heart

A noble heart will refuse the happiness built 

on the misfortune of others.

- Saadi Shirazi
 

Francis of Assisi: The Light

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish 

the light of a single candle.

― Francis of Assisi, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi
 

Kabir: Friend, Hope for the Guest While You Are Alive

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
      before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment
      in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
      you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being search for,
      it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
      that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

- Kabir 
 

Robert Adams: Reflection

A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything.

- Robert Adams
 

***

from StillnessSpeaks.com

 

Francis of Assisi: Become Prayer

We should seek not so much to pray 

but to become prayer.

― Francis of Assisi

 

Pema Chödrön: What We Are

You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.

― Pema Chödrön

 

Do Not Try to Save the Whole World

Do not try to save the whole world 
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.

—Martha Postlewaite

 

************

 

from Spiritual Ecology 

 Via Song of the New Earth. 

Photo of the rarely seen Heaven Lake near Baekdu Mountain 

on the border between China and North Korea.

Personal Reflections on School Shootings and Violence and Healing in America, In the World, In Our Own Hearts

There are many others left off the above list, including the shooting at Reynold's High School outside of Portland last spring. Our children are symptom bearers of our larger culture, and some are so much more vulnerable than others to it's toxicity. My deep prayer is that our country, our world, and each and every one of us will work with increasing passion to heal and awaken and be brave and be a light in the darkness that all too often permeates what our children and all of us are exposed to.
 
There is a reason why school shootings - and so many other forms of violence - are so horrifically common in America. There is a reason why our culture manifests such suffering. Among my longtime teachers is Michael Meade, who illuminates how a culture is in deep trouble when it disrespects its youth and ignores its elders. This is a profound truth, and a tragic reality of what has so often become "normal" in America.

May we each lower our tolerance in ourselves and others for insensitivity, blame, shame, projections, polarizations, judgements, neglect and abuse, addictions, racism and all the "isms", separation and isolation, fear and greed, obscene redistribution of wealth upward, and all the overt and often subtle forms of violence that have been rooted in our culture since the earliest days of America that included genocide of native peoples and slavery and more. 
 
We have much healing to do individually and collectively. May each of us hold the intention, and back it up with fierce compassionate action, that we are all in. We are all in! We each can increasingly find our part, our place, our role - no matter how large or small - to affect change, heartfelt change. We are all in this together. Another world is possible.
 
Let us love the children, all the children. Let us love and care about one another and all beings. This very much includes ourselves. We can only allow love in and bring love into the world to the degree that we have healed and opened our own hearts. 

May we be courageous enough to deepen our commitment to the ongoing work of becoming and growing in consciousness. To the degree that we are asleep is the degree that each and every one of us causes harm to ourselves and others. To the degree that we illuminate, heal, and transform those dark places in our own hearts is the degree that we bring much needed healing to the world. We are all connected. We are all Sacred.

Bless us all ~ Molly

***********

 

Photo and quote below from George Takei

This is of course but a handful of the terrible tragedies 

devastating our schools and communities. 

Please share this, and let us first come together, 

then find an answer, together. 

 #EndTheList

Carl Jung: Below the Surface

Whatever is rejected from the self, appears 

in the world as an event.
 

 Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. 

But deep down below the surface of the average conscience 

a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.
 

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. 
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
  

 ― C.G. Jung