September 2024 (Vol. XXXVII, No. 8)
Dear friends~ This next year my beloved and I will be married 50 years. I have "known" Jackie for more than 53 years, and yet I can still wake up beside her in the morning and realize that this person whom I have walked with over the decades is still a mystery and so much unknown. The truth is that we are growing old together. But if we can embrace our physical diminishment with gentleness and grace, our heart's surrender becomes, as Jackie calls it, "the sacrament of diminishment." This morning she gave me a folder full of her favorite quotes about relationship and love. Here are a few of hers and a sprinkling of mine. ~ Bob
Another name for God is surprise.
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast in GRATEFULNESS, THE HEART OF PRAYER
Love is frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love. Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them.
~ Anthony De Mello in THE WAY TO LOVE
This is how we are: we fall in love with each other's strengths, but love deepens towards permanence when we fall in love with each other's weaknesses.
~ Salman Rushdie in THE GOLDEN HOUSE
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone. It has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
~ Ursula K. LeGuin in THE LATHE OF HEAVEN
To love someone long term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. It is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.
~ Heidi Priebe in THIS IS ME LETTING YOU GO
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another.
~ Thomas Merton in LOVE AND LIVING
Honestly accept the journey into physical diminishment as the new learning curve in your life and embrace it with curiosity and beginner's mind. Keep facing forward with a gently yielded heart; that is always the direction from which the new integration emerges.
~ Cynthia Bourgeault from the "Ten Practical Guidelines for Conscious Aging" essay at WisdomWaypoints.org
May my heart be opened.
May all that is broken within me be healed.
May I awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May your heart be opened.
May all that is broken within you be healed.
May you awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May our hearts be opened.
May all that is broken within us be healed.
May we awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May all that is broken within me be healed.
May I awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May your heart be opened.
May all that is broken within you be healed.
May you awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
May our hearts be opened.
May all that is broken within us be healed.
May we awaken to this moment, just as it is.
May all hearts be opened to one another.
~ Anonymous
You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
~ Sam Keen in TO LOVE AND BE LOVED
When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery – that intimate relationship can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are... This kind of unmasking – speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges – is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply.
~ John Welwood in LOVE AND AWAKENING
Before fixing what you're looking at, check what you're looking through.
~ Mark Nepo in THE BOOK OF AWAKENING
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
~ Pema Chodron in THE PLACES THAT SCARE YOU
Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now. That's the story. That's the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they're all running around like chickens with heads cut off. I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, it's why I'll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.
~ Jack Kerouac from his "The Golden Eternity" letter
We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.
~ Wendell Berry, "Sabbaths 1999 VI" in GIVEN
True giving is a thoroughly joyous thing to do. We experience happiness when we form the intention to give, in the actual act of giving, and in the recollection of the fact that we have given. Generosity is a celebration. When we give something to someone we feel connected to them, and our commitment to the path of peace and awareness deepens.
~ Sharon Salzberg in A HEART AS WIDE AS THE WORLD
It costs so much to be fully human... One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms... One has to accept pain as a condition of existence... One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
~ Morris West in THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN
Go to the place called barren. Stand in the place called empty. And you will find God there.
~ Joan Sauro in WHOLE EARTH MEDITATION
We are naturally reverent beings, but much of our natural reverence has been torn away from us because we have been born into a world that hurries. There is no time to be reverent with the earth or with each other. We are all hurrying into progress. And for all our hurrying we lose sight of our true nature a little more each day.
~ Macrina Wiederkehr from the "Radical Grace" newsletter by The Center for Action and Contemplation