Yesterday morning I was delighted to see the first waxwings of the year alighting in the trees in our yard and in the neighbors’ yards– birches, may tree, crabapple. Their fluttering wings, twittering, and restless energy were invigorating to my soul.

As I reflected on what quality of being I wished to imbibe for the day,  however, I found it in the presence of the trees just being themselves. By being there, by being themselves, they were inviting a visit from the waxwings.

Human beings are more malleable than trees. We have a choice about how we open ourselves to experiences. What do I want to invite into my life in each moment, each hour, each day? In order to create an intention about what I will invite, I must enter the inner stillness, the place of silence. For that, I must pause, breathe with awareness, surrender the chattering mind.

While our culture is all gloss and pace on the outside, within it is too often haunted and lost. The commercial edge of so-called ‘progress’ had cut away a huge region of human tissue and webbing that held us in communion with one another. We have fallen out of belonging. Consequently, when we stand before crucial thresholds in our lives, we have no rituals to protect, encourage and guide us as we cross over into the unknown.

John O’Donohue

Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.

— Rumi

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

–Marc Chagall

http://youtu.be/DU18DDriPxQ

I love the way the moon is always playing hide-and-seek with me.  The times and places it rises and sets change. I have to keep track of whether it is waxing or waning. Sometimes I look and look and can’t see it– and then, all of  a sudden, there it is.

at night,
deep in the mountains,
I breathe…
everything is still,
all thoughts emptied
into the night.
my robe has become
a garment of frost.
suddenly, above the
highest peak,
the full moon appears.

~ Ryokan

 

If the full moon loves you, why worry about the stars?

-Tunisian Proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness.

– Eckhart Tolle

There are no guarantees that what comes next will be lovely to behold, or easy, or always fun.

There is no simple comfort that this new chapter will be painless and wildly successful.

She does not nod in acquiescence to our desires and longings.

There flourish in the sunlight of my soul

The ripened fruits of thinking;

To conscious self-assurance

The flow of feeling is transformed.

I can can perceive now joyfully

The autumn’s spirit-waking:

The winter will arouse in me

The summer of the soul.

— Rudolf Steiner

It’s not all pretty. The earth knows terrible things. She receives all deaths, gentle and brutal. She bears the pain of every birth. She turns all things back into herself; she worries the bones to dust. She is changing, always changing. Layers shift. Her own bones crash and break. Tides heave. Rock erupts into fire. It’s not all pretty. Beauty never is.

— Elizabeth Cunningham, Magdalen Rising