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| Photo by Molly |
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| The sacred arbor, 2022 |
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| This is the planning committee for the 2002 Ceremony - my last ceremony as a matron |
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| 2010 Ceremony with dear friends |
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| 2022 Ceremony - I was honored to be Intercessor |
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Kindness
Before
you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the
future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What
you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all
this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between
the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus
will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will
stare out the window forever.
Before
you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You
must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who
journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that
kept him alive.
Before
you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know
sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with
sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread
of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is
only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties
your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only
kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to
say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you
everywhere
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| Photo by Molly |
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has or ever will have something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we're giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That's one of the things that connects us as neighbors—in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.
We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that's what's important.
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.
Even though no human being is perfect, we always have the chance to bring what’s unique about us to life in a redeeming way.
Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero.
There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.
Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort.
* * * * *
You can't really love someone else unless you really love yourself first.
When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
Feeling good about ourselves is essential in our being able to love others.
Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.
Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.
It's good to be curious about many things.
Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.
It's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it's the opposite that's true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!
Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence...And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives.
It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
* * * * *
Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.
Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in this world.
Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you're thinking or feeling unless you share it.
Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.
Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.
The only thing evil can't stand is forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life.
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.
I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.
* * * * *
How many times have you noticed that it's the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?
We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.
If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.
Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.
The media shows the tiniest percentage of what people do. There are millions and millions of people doing wonderful things all over the world, and they're generally not the ones being touted in the news.
The thing I remember best about successful people I've met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they're doing, and they love it in front of others.
It’s not so much what we have in this life that matters. It’s what we do with what we have.
Real strength has to do with helping others.
* * * * *
I don't think anyone can grow unless he's loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.
Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect.
There's a part of all of us that longs to know that even what's weakest about us is still redeemable and can ultimately count for something good.
You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.
The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.
Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.
Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.
Taking care is one way to show your love. Another way is letting people take good care of you when you need it.
Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.
It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.
* * * * *
When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.
In every neighborhood, all across our country, there are good people insisting on a good start for the young, and doing something about it.
There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.
Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given.
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I love this poem. Here is illuminated our interconnection with all that is. While so many be continuing to build barriers of disconnection, there are those who bless us with remembrance of deeper truths. In the words of Thích Nhất Hạnh, "We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." So true. And in this awakening, this remembering of the sacred thread that is woven through all of life, we are transformed. Blessed be. 🙏 Molly
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| Photo by Molly |
― Vandana Shiva
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| Photo by Molly |
