heartsteps

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.

Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart 1260-1328

When I dwelt in the ground,
in the bottom, in the stream, and
in the source of the Godhead,

No one asked me where I was going or
what I was doing.

Back in the womb from which I came,
I had no God
and merely was myself.

And when I return
to God and to the core, the soil, the ground, the stream and the source of the Godhead,
No one asks me wher I am coming from
or where have I benn.

For no one misses me
in the place
where god ceases to become.

Now the moment I flowed out from the Creator
all creatures stood up and shouted:
“Behold, here is God!”

They were correct.
For you ask me: Who is God? What is God?
I reply: Isness,
Isness is God.

Where there is Isness, there God is.
Creation is the giving of isness from God.
And that is why
God becomes
where any creature expresses God.

Meister Eckhart

As swimmers dare
to lie face in the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

Denise Levertov

And a poet said, “Speak to us of Beauty.”
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”
The tired and the weary say, “beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”
At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, “we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”
In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”

All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Kahlil Gibran

This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival…a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep the house empty of its furniture.

Still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whomever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill-health.
There is no way to escape having ill-health.

I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love
are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

Buddha

In the point of rest at the centre of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

Dag Hammarskjold

Dear God.
As I rise up, I thank you for the opportunity to be on this earth.
I thank you for my mind and body,
I thank you for my life.
please bless my body and use it for Your purposes.
May I rise up strong today, and may my body and soul radiate Your love.
May all impurities be cast out of my mind, my heart, my body.
May every cell of my being be filled with Your light.
May my body and mind be illumined for Your sake and for the sake of all the world.
Amen.

Marianne Williamson