Quotations

Lean in Toward the Light

The shadows of this world will say—
There's no hope why try anyway?
But every kindness large or slight—
shifts the balance toward the Light...
When justice seems in short supply,
lean in toward the Light.

~ Carrie Newcomer from the song "Lean in Toward the Light"

Carrie Newcomer light

The Buddha's Last Instruction

"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness....
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields...
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves...
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value...

~ Mary Oliver, excerpts from "The Buddha's Last Instruction" in HOUSE OF LIGHT

Mary Oliver House Of Light light

Seeking Clarity

if each day falls
inside each night
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.

we need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.

~ Pablo Neruda, "Seeking Clarity" in THE POETRY OF PABLO NERUDA

Pablo Neruda The Poetry Of Pablo Neruda light

Entirely lit up from within

Throughout my whole life, during every minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Heart Of The Matter light

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

~ Wendell Berry, "To Know the Dark" in THE SELECTED POEMS OF WENDELL BERRY

Wendell Berry The Selected Poems Of Wendell Berry darkness

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

~ Sarah Williams, from "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil" in BEST LOVED POEMS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Sarah Williams Best Loved Poems Of The American People darkness

A shining Owl Moon

We walked on. I could feel the cold, as if someone's icy hand was palm-down on my back. And my nose and the tops of my cheeks felt cold and hot at the same time... When you go owling you don't need words or warm or anything but hope. That's what Pa says. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon.

~ Jane Yolen in OWL MOON

Jane Yolen Owl Moon darkness

A liturgy for the night

On the first night God said: 'Let there be darkness.' And God separated light from dark; and in the dark, the land rested, the people slept, and the plants breathed, the world retreated. The first night.
And God said that it was Good.

On the second night God said: 'There will be conversations that happen in the dark that can't happen in the day.' The second night.
And God said that it was Good.

On the third night God said: 'Let there be things that can only be seen by night.' And God created stars and insects and luminescence. The third night.
And God said that it was Good.

On the fourth night God said: 'Some things that happen in the harsh light of day will be troubled. Let there be a time of rest to escape the raw light.' The fourth night.
And God said that it was Good.

On the fifth night, God said: "There will be people who will work by night, whose light will be silver, whose sleep will be by day and whose labour will be late.' And God put a softness at the heart of the darkness. The fifth night.
And God said that it was Good.

And on the sixth night God listened. And there were people working, and people crying, and people seeking shadow, and people telling secrets, and people aching for company. There were people aching for space and people aching for solace. And God hoped that they'd survive. And God made twilight, and shafts of green to hang from the dark skies, small comforts to accompany the lonely, the joyous, the needy and the needed. The sixth night.
And God said that it was Good.

And on the last night, God rested. And the rest was good. The rest was very good.
And God said that it was very Good.

~ Padraig O'Tuama, "A liturgy for the night" in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY

Padraig O'Tuama Daily Prayer With The Corrymeela Community darkness

Put your thoughts to sleep

Put your thoughts to sleep,
do not let them cast a shadow
over the moon of your heart.
Let go of thinking.

~ Rumi

Rumi darkness

The silence is all but absolute

But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute, and listening to it one slips out of time. Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element, and the world is suspended there, and I in it...

~ Nan Shepherd in THE LIVING MOUNTAIN

Nan Shepherd The Living Mountain darkness

That winter hour

Our disenchantment of the night through artificial lighting may appear, if it is noticed at all, as a regrettable but eventually trivial side effect of contemporary life. That winter hour, though, up on the summit ridge with the stars falling plainly far above, it seemed to me that our estrangement from the dark was a great and serious loss. We are, as a species, finding it increasingly hard to imagine that we are part of something which is larger than our own capacity. We have come to accept a heresy of aloofness, a humanist belief in human difference, and we suppress wherever possible the checks and balances on us – the reminders that the world is greater than us or that we are contained within it.

~ Robert Macfarlane in THE WILD PLACES

Robert Macfarlane The Wild Places darkness

Air and Light

Dwarfed by the sky at night
These fearless mountains are nearly lost from sight
Track the hill with a harvest moon
Moving, shifting on across a winter sky

My thoughts drift away
An Illusion of light
Feel the rain in the air
Where the thin mist is hiding, shrouded
[I'm] there

~ Jenny Sturgeon, from the song "Air and Light"

Jenny Sturgeon darkness

Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme

You, darkness, of whom I am born–
I love you more that the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illuminates
and excludes all the rest.
But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations–just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme" in RILKE'S BOOK OF HOURS: LOVE POEMS TO GOD

Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke's Book Of Hours: Love Poems To God darkness

What Issa Heard

Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.
I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,
since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.

~ David Budbill, "What Issa Heard" in MOMENT TO MOMENT

David Budbill Moment To Moment darkness

The deep-down dark

To understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark.

~ Robert Macfarlane in UNDERLAND

Robert Macfarlane Underland darkness

Psalm 139

If I say, "Let only darkness cover me,
And the light about me be night,"
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
The night dazzles as with the sun;
The darkness is a light to You.

~ Nan Merrill, from her interpretation of "Psalm 139" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING

Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying darkness

Listen to silence

Listen to silence. It has so much to say.

~ Rumi

Rumi harvest

Ripe for harvest

Open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest.

~ John 4:35

harvest

As I Watche'd The Ploughman Ploughing

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there, too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

~ Walt Whitman, "As I Watche'd The Ploughman Ploughing,” in LEAVES OF GRASS

Walt Whitman Leaves Of Grass harvest

You are beyond that

You are the Silence
Beyond birth, beyond death, beyond experiences,
Beyond doubts, beyond opinions.
Beyond whatever it is your body is going through,
Whatever thoughts your mind thinks.
You are beyond that.

~ Robert Adams in SILENCE OF THE HEART

Robert Adams Silence Of The Heart harvest

Harvest Moon – The Mockingbird Sings in the Night

No sky could hold
so much light -
and here comes the brimming,
the flooding and streaming
out of the clouds
and into the leaves,
glazing the creeks,
the smallest ditches!
And so many stars!
The sky seems stretched
like an old black cloth;
behind it, all
the celestial fire
we ever dreamed of!
And the moon steps lower,
quietly changing
her luminous masks, brushing
everything as she passes
with her slow hands
and soft lips -
clusters of dark grapes,
apples swinging like lost planets,
melons cool and heavy as bodies -
and the mockingbird wakes
in his hidden castle;
out of the silver tangle
of thorns and leaves
he flutters and tumbles,
spilling long
ribbons of music
over forest and river,
copse and cloud -
all heaven and all earth.

~ Mary Oliver, "Harvest Moon – The Mockingbird Sings in the Night,” in TWELVE MOONS

Mary Oliver Twelve Moons harvest

A life of grateful receptivity

To live a contemplative life is to be open enough to see, free enough to hear, real enough to respond. It is a life, and so has its own rhythms of darkness, dying-rising. Simply enough, it is a life of grateful receptivity, or wordless awe, of silent simplicity.

~ S. Marie Baha in MEDITATIONS ON NATURE, MEDITATIONS ON SILENCE

S. Marie Baha Meditations On Silence, Meditations On Nature harvest

Go deep into the silence

Go deep into the silence. Absorb it. Let it scare you. Let it reshape you and expand your awareness.

~ Pythagoras, as quoted in GOLDEN: THE POWER OF SILENCE IN A WORLD OF NOISE by Justin Zorn and Leigh Mars

Pythagoras Golden: The Power Of Silence In A World Of Noise harvest

Psalm 105

Gentle us, O Compassionate One, that
We tread the earth lightly
And with grace,
Spreading peace, goodness, and love,
Without harm to any creature.
For in gentle serenity is strength
And assurance;

Confusion and suspicion find
No home here.
In all things may we be be grateful,
Our hearts open to joy.

~ Nan Merrill from her interpretation of "Psalm 105” in PSALMS FOR PRAYING

Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying harvest

Dig their roots and reach out for others

Surviving is for those who have no hope...as God’s child you were meant to thrive... You were meant to dig deep and reach out...Balanced believers dig their roots and reach out for others.

~ Mark Hall in THRIVE

Mark Hall Thrive harvest

The water of wisdom

She will give the bread of understanding to eat,
And the water of wisdom to drink.

~ Joyce Rupp from her interpretation of Ecclesiastes in THE STAR IN MY HEART: EXPERIENCING SOPHIA

Joyce Rupp The Star In My Heart: Experiencing Sophia harvest

Harvests

Harvests are a time to remember your sacrifice.

~ William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer in THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND

William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind harvest

The seeds you sow

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you sow.

~ William Arthur Ward

William Arthur Ward harvest

Thanks and Praise

We have to say "Thank you” whenever possible even if we are not able to reconcile the human creatures’ free will with the Maker’s working out of a pattern. Thanks and Praise are, I believe, some of the threads with which the pattern is woven.

~ Madeleine L’Engle in GLIMPSES OF GRACE

Madeleine L’Engle Glimpses Of Grace harvest

Silence isn't just the absence of noise

Silence isn't just the absence of noise. It's a presence that brings us energy, clarity, and deeper connection.

~ Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz in GOLDEN: THE POWER OF SILENCE IN A WORLD OF NOISE

Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz Golden: The Power Of Silence In A World Of Noise harvest

Psalm 132

Enter into the Silence,
into the Heart of Truth;
For herein lies the Great Mystery
where life is ever unfolding...
Listen for the Music of the
Spheres in the resounding
Silence of
the universe.
May balance and harmony be your aim as you are
drawn into the
Heart of Love.

~ Nan Merrill from her interpretation of "Psalm 132" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING

Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying mystery

Seven Directions Prayer

Let us turn to the West:
the place of oncoming darkness,
the place of the departed spirits and of letting go; the
home of Bear and night-time dreams
and the season of Autumn.
We thank you for your gifts of Mystery and Transformation.

~ from the Seven Directions Prayer* (This prayer has many versions, source unknown)

source unknown mystery

A sense of Mystery

We have not been raised to cultivate a sense of Mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a personal failing. Seen this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But Mystery does not require action; Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen in MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSINGS

Rachel Naomi Remen My Grandfather's Blessings mystery

Navigating the Mysteries

What if we reframed "living with uncertainty" to "navigating mystery"? There's more energy in that phrase. The hum of imaginative voltage. And is our life not a mystery school, a seat of earthy instruction?

~ Martin Shaw from the essay "Navigating the Mysteries" on EMERGENCE MAGAZINE

Martin Shaw mystery

One broken beautiful thing at a time

You can relish a rainbow and a cup of tea, sunrise and a flock of birds, a cemetery walk and a friend's newborn, the first blush of wildflowers in a patch of dirt and the looping rapture of an old favorite song. ... You can't mend a world, but you can mend the hole in the polka- dot pocket of your favorite coat. They are not the same thing, but they are part of the same thing, which is all there is — life living itself through us, moment by moment, one broken beautiful thing at a time.

~ Maria Popova in THE MARGINALIAN e-newsletter, May 15, 2022

Maria Popova mystery

La Prisonniere

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is.

~ Marcel Proust from "La Prisonniere" in REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

Marcel Proust Remembrance Of Things Past mystery

The Ponds

...Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

~ Mary Oliver from "The Ponds" in HOUSE OF LIGHT

Mary Oliver House Of Light mystery

To be reminded

The most important work can be birthed from the place where uncomfortable silence seeps between us. In those moments we're faced with the decision of whether to respond immediately with the assuredness of our truth or to let the silence work in us. To feel the sadness and anger and grief. To be reminded that there's more at work in the story of the other ...

~ Ashlee Eiland in HUMAN(KIND)

Ashlee Eiland Human(kind) mystery

In the immense field of divine compassion

In the immense field of divine compassion, countless small life fields are interwoven with each other. When human hearts deepen through some form of contemplation, there emerges in them an intuition of human oneness prior to all separation ... a "communion of saints". In each religion's communal story, there is a way of handing on from generation to generation this transforming perception of universal solidarity in the Mystery. We do not learn such wisdom on our own. We receive this wisdom from someone else.

~ Carolyn Gratton in THE ART OF SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE

Carolyn Gratton The Art Of Spiritual Guidance mystery

Come to Dust

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring's green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth's dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin, "Come to Dust" in SO FAR SO GOOD

Ursula K. Le Guin So Far So Good mystery

Life is a good teacher and a good friend

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, non-aggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior.

~ Pema Chödrön in WHEN THINGS FALL APART

Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart stillness

I sat still for three days

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage. So I sat still for three days.

~ Kabir in LOVE POEMS FROM GOD

Kabir Love Poems From God stillness

Degree of presence

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

~ Alan Watts in THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY

Alan Watts The Wisdom Of Insecurity stillness

Entering the Kingdom

The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees —
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.

~ Mary Oliver from "Entering the Kingdom" in DEVOTIONS

Mary Oliver Devotions stillness

If the heart wanders or is distracted

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently... And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

~ St. Francis de Sales in INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE

St. Francis de Sales Introduction To The Devout Life stillness

The relation of contemplation to action

What is the relation of contemplation to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.

~ Thomas Merton in THOMAS MERTON SPIRITUAL MASTER: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS

Thomas Merton Thomas Merton Spiritual Master: Essential Writings stillness

The whole world falls in

May God break my heart so deeply the whole world falls in.

~ Mother Teresa in MOTHER TERESA: QUOTABLE WISDOM

Mother Teresa Mother Teresa: Quotable Wisdom stillness

Deep awareness

When you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh in TOUCHING PEACE

Thich Nhat Hanh Touching Peace stillness

Proverbs and Tiny Songs

I love Jesus, who said to us:
heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will still remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were
one word: Wakeup.

~ Antonio Machado from "Proverbs and Tiny Songs " in THE SOUL IS HERE FOR ITS OWN JOY

Antonio Machado The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy stillness

The hardest spiritual work

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor in AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD

Barbara Brown Taylor An Altar In The World stillness

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