summer

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

A good story gives shape to the human experience and touches us in our innermost places. It picks us up right where we are and leaves us somewhere else — changed, transformed, more awake and alive and aware.

Fall seven times and stand up eight.

To wrestle with, and for, the light, for some meaning in life, is always a way of being in the presence of God.

A voice from the dark called out,
'The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.'
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living

The Master always left you to grow at your own pace. He was never known to "push." He explained this with the following parable:

"A man once saw a butterfly
struggling to emerge from
its cocoon, too slowly
for his taste, so he began
to blow on it gently. The
warmth of his breath speeded
up the process all right. But
what emerged was not a butterfly
but a creature with mangled
wings.

"In growth," the Master concluded, "you cannot speed the process up. All you can do is abort it."

A man traversed land and sea to check for himself the Master's extraordinary fame. "What miracles has your Master worked?" he said to a disciple. "Well, there are miracles and miracles. In your land it is regarded as a miracle if God does someone's will. In our country it is regarded as a miracle if someone does The will of God."

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Courage doesn't always roar.

God is with those who persevere.