Saturday ~ November 5, 2016

In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education... But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being; honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others - qualities within the reach of every soul - are the foundation of one's spiritual life. Never forget that a saint is a sinner that keeps on trying.

( Nelson Mandela, 1918 - 2013 )

Friday ~ November 4, 2016

Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object. But when you look at it more closely, you will see that it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretch across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it: all form part of the tree. As you think about the tree more and more you will discover that everything in the universe helps make the tree what it is - that it cannot be isolated from anything else and at every moment its nature is subtly changing.

( Soygal Rinpoche, 1950 -   )

Thursday ~ November 3, 2016

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me also occupied in the search, that certain environments , certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conductive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.


(Ann Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001)

Wednesday ~ November 2, 2016

Gratefulness is the only appropriate response to that which is given... and this life is a given. Every human being can realize: we didn't make ourselves, we didn't even choose this life. If you train yourself to be grateful for everything, every moment, then when you come to something that you don't like, you realize it's still given and you have to deal with it. You will be alert to the gift within every gift, which is opportunity.

( David Steindl-Rast, 1926 - )

Monday ~ October 31, 2016

Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days til they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor.

Annie Finch (b. 1956 )