There are so many positions of love:
each curve on a
branch,
the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,
the infinite shapes each mind
can draw,
the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,
the currents of light combusting like
passionate
lips,
the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds
contain other worlds,
our every sigh that falls against
His inconceivably close,
omnipresent,
divine
body.
Hafiz
It’s up to us
to re-enchant this planet Earth
We are the elves and giants
we are the shining ones
daughters of the Moon and
sons of the Sun
We are the shapeshifters
we are the mysterious light
shrouded in mists at
the dawn of our time
it’s up to us to re-enchant
this living planet Earth
Up to us to midwife
at our own rebirth
up to us to send our dead
along their
ancient pathways to the future
up to us to re-enchant this
living planet Earth
It’s up to us to break the spell
that steals the colours
from the world
and leaves it lifeless
it was our spell
we can break it
It’s up to us to break the spell
that steals the music from
the Wind and the Rain
it is our spell
we can break it
We will dance the magic dance
and our bodies will remember
we will sing the magic songs
and together we’ll remember
how to live together
how to love each other
how to ride the eagle
how to call the deer
Home
Will Ashe Bacon
A prominent Jewish prayer concludes “May He who made peace in the heavens grant peace to us on Earth.” What does it mean to create peace in the heavens? Ancient man looked up into the sky and he saw the sun and the rain clouds. And he would say to himself “How can fire and water, sun and rain coexist in the same sky? Either the water would put out the fire, or the fire would dry up the water.” How do they get along? It must be a miracle. The sun says, “If I dry up the rain clouds, as I probably could, the world will not survive without rain.” The clouds say, “If we extinguish the sun, the world will perish in darkness.” So the fire and the water make peace, realizing that if either one of them achieved a total victory, the world could not endure.
When we pray for God to grant us the sort of peace He ordained in heavens, this is the miracle we ask for. How can men and women live together happily? They are opposites; their needs are different, their rhythms are different. It takes a miracle for them to bridge those differences and unite the masculine side of God’s image with the feminine side.
How can Arabs and Israelis learn to live together? Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants? Black South Africans and white South Africans? It takes a miracle for them to realize that if they won, if they had it all and the other side had nothing, the world could not survive their victory. Only by making room for everyone in the world, even for our enemies, can the world survive.
May God showed us the miracle of Shalom, of making room for each other and giving up the illusion of victory in the heavens, grant a similar miracle to all of us who inhabit the earth.
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner
After a while you learn
The subtle difference
Between holding a hand
And chaining a soul.
And you learn
That love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn
That kisses aren’t compromises
And presents aren’t promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman or man
Not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your loads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in midflight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you ask too much.
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting for someone to buy you flowers.
And you learn
That you really can endure
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth.
And you learn.
And you learn.
With every failure you learn.
Anonymous
All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.
Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.
Every act reveals God and expands His Being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.
All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.
Enough talk for the night.
He is labouring in me;
I need to be silent
for a while,
worlds are forming
in my heart.
Meister Eckhart
I make the effort
to maintain a ground of oceanic silence
out of which arises the multitude
of phenomena of daily life.
I make the effort
to see and to passionately open in love
to the spirit that infuses all things.
I make the effort
to see the Beloved in everyone
and to serve the Beloved through everyone
(including the earth).
I often fail in these aspirations
because I lose the balance
between separateness and unity,
get lost in my separateness,
and feel afraid.
But I make the effort.
Ram Dass
Just give me this:
A rinsing out, a cleansing free of all my smaller
strivings
So I can be the class act God intended,
True to my purpose,
All my energy aligned behind my deepest intention.
And just this:
A quieting down, a clearing away of internal ruckus,
So I can hear the huge stillness in my heart
And feel
How I pulse with all creation,
Part and parcel of Your great singing ocean.
And this, too:
A willingness to notice and forgive the myriad times
I fall short,
forgetting who I really am,
What I really belong to.
So I can start over,
Fresh and clean
Like sweet sheets billowing in the summer sun,
My heart pierced with gratitude.
Belleruth Naparstek
It is I who must begin…
Once I begin, once I try -
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying that things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
- to live in harmony
with the “voice of Being,” as I
understand it within myself
- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon the road…
Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost…
Vaclav Havel
I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul,
to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long long time,
only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake,
and the
freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.
D.H. Lawrence