December 2011
8 posts
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Effortlessly
Effortlessly, Love flows from God to man, Like a bird Who rivers the air Without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world One in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, Humanity sings - The Holy Spirit is our harpist, And all the strings Which are touched in Love Must sound. —Mechtild of Magdeburg (1210-1282)
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“The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them...”
– Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 204
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An excerpt from "Happy Medium" →
What does it mean to find the Middle Way? Not in the sense of picking up a book on Buddhism or contacting a teacher, but in ourselves and in our lives. There is always a draw to act, a restless wish to move, to create, to do something. And there is also a wish to submit–and I’m not talking about depression or being a mouse or some unwholesome slavish quality here but to a wholesome...
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“What’s the matter with you? What is it? What is it you’re doing here? I don’t...”
– Yúnmén Wényǎn (862 or 864 -949 CE), a major Chinese Zen master in Tang-era China.
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“Poetry is knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. An operation capable of...”
– Octavio Paz, quoted in Bruce McEver’s essay “Poetry: A Bridge to the Sacred,” from the current winter issue: “Many Paths, One Truth.”