Saturday ~ March 14, 2020

Pandemic

What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath - the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world different than it is.
ing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives are in one another's hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

(Lynn Ungar, composed on 3/11/20)

Friday ~ March 13, 2020

Grace is the ability to redefine the boundaries of possibility.

(Manning Marable, 1950 - 2011)

Thursday ~ March 12, 2020

I think one should forgive and remember... If you forgive and forget in the usual sense, you're just driving what you remember into the subconscious; it stays there and festers. But to look, even regularly, upon whet you remember and know you've forgiven is an achievement.

(Faith Baldwin, 1893 - 1978)

Wednesday ~ March 11, 2020

Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

(Seneca, 4 BCE - 65 CE)

Tuesday ~ March 10, 2020

To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit. There is no way to elude apathy, or escape discontent; none other to guard the temper from that itself, which ultimately ends in quarreling with all humankind.

(Fanny Burney, 1752 - 1840)

Monday ~ March 9, 2020

Failure is good preparation for success, which comes as a pleasant surprise, but success is poor preparation for failure.

(Sarah Manguso,b. 1974)

Sunday ~ March 8, 2020

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old... Out of each old self that dies some precious essence is preserved for the new self that is born; and within the child-self that is part of us all, there is perhaps nothing more precious than the fathomless capacity to trust.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)