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quote du jour ~einstein

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~Albert Einstein

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walking sightless among miracles

Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illuminates the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”
 ~prayer excerpted from My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen

“…we walk sightless among miracles.”

How true this is for so many of us so much of the time. We rush here and there, commuting to our jobs, doing the grocery shopping and the laundry, mowing the lawn, carpooling the kids. We rarely stop to look at the brilliant sunset above the parking lot or the rufus-sided towhee nesting in the shrubs next to the house. How many of us stop to think about the miracle of turning on the tap and filling our glass with water?

Of course we can’t stop every minute and stand in awe of everything we encounter. We would get nothing done. However, I think the compromise is to approach our days with a sense of reverence and awareness. Continue reading →

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quote du jour ~lamott – grace is…

[Grace] is unearned love–the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

~Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

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keeping on keeping on…

It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything but post quotes du jour here, and I haven’t done even that with any regularity. Of course, if you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you know that I’ve been dealing with a cancer diagnosis since last June, so my priorities and energies have shifted dramatically to say the least. I don’t want to go into it all here, but if you’d like, you can go to my Caring Bridge site and get the details on the ups and downs I’ve been through, especially in the last six months.

With illness—and the definite possibility of my life ending from it—being front and center for me, I nonetheless continue to search for meaning in my life as it stands now and in my life that has gone before. What have I contributed? What do I/can I contribute now? Continue reading →

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quote du jour ~the dalai lama

If we think only of ourselves, forget about other people, then our minds occupy very small area. Inside that small area, even tiny problem appears very big. But the moment you develop a sense of concern for others, you realize that, just like ourselves, they also want happiness; they also want satisfaction. When you have this sense of concern, your mind automatically widens. At this point, your own problems, even big problems, will not be so significant. The result? Big increase in peace of mind. So, if you think only of yourself, only your own happiness, the result is actually less happiness. You get more anxiety, more fear.

~Dalai Lama XIV, The Wisdom of Forgiveness