winter

Traveling light—imagine this meaning: unencumbered journeying, a graceful way of traveling through life like a single leaf. Now imagine another: the light by which we journey, the light that shows the way. Our traveling light...

What would it mean to live like a single leaf? What would it mean to make one’s life a journey of simplicity? a journey unencumbered, uncluttered, without distraction—a journey of focus and intention? a journey of lightness and light?...

We take delight in things; we take delight in being loosed from things. Between these two delights, we must dance our lives.

We look with uncertainty
Beyond the old choices for
Clear-cut answers
To a softer, more permeable aliveness
Which is every moment
At the brink of death;
For something new is being born in us
If we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
Awaiting that which comes...
Daring to be human creatures,
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

Busyness is not a reason for not getting other things done. It is an excuse for not claiming your true priorities.

I think over again my small adventures
my fears
those small ones that seemed so big

For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach

And yet there is only one great thing
the only thing

To live to see the great day that dawns
and the light that fills the world.

When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.

...I have another choice—to accept what I didn’t get to choose...what I finally get to choose is that tiny space between all the givens. In that tiny space is freedom...

Having limits, subtracting distractions, making a commitment to do what you do well, brings a new kind of intensity...

Before I went to the Amish, I thought that the more choices I had, the luckier I’d be. But there is a big difference between having many choices and making a choice. Making a choice— declaring what is essential—creates a framework for a life that eliminates many choices but gives meaning to the things that remain. Satisfaction comes from giving up wishing I was somewhere else or doing something else.

No one has ever become poor by giving.

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give me one thing more – a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

We were born with silence, and as we grew up we lost the silence and we were filled with words. We lived in our hearts, and as time passed we moved into our heads. Now the reverse of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from the head back to the heart, from words back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence.

The Comforter came to me:
"With joy are you ever at home
in my Heart,
as I have lived in yours.
You are mine; I belong to You...
Who will enter the Heart of Love?"