In the very last conversation we ever had, five days before his death, the subject came around to gratitude ...
"If you're quiet enough, as still as that mountain, you can hear in your heart a silent ‘thank you.' The whole universe, if you listen in your heart -- every blade of grass, each bird, each stone -- it is all ‘thank you.' We are born into ‘thank you' ... every step of the way is ‘thank you.' "
Rafe may not have heard the stars move. But I believe he was hearing "the Love that moves the stars and the sun."
~ from LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH by Cynthia Bourgeault
One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but that it was merging with the moist soil in order to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, "You are pretending." Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including that leaf. The Buddha said, "When conditions are sufficient, the body reveals itself, and we say the body exists. When conditions are not sufficient, the body cannot be perceived by us, and we say the body does not exist." The day of our "death" is a day of our continuation in many other forms.
~ from LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST by Thich Nhat Hanh
