Plucked
You give me wings, just to pluck each feather
from my back and watch me crash
back to earth.
- Topher Kirby
Prayer belong less to time that to eternity.
How long we wait, with minds quiet as time, like sentries on a tower.
How long we watch, by night, like the astronomers.
Heaven, when will we hear you sing, arising from our grassy hill
And say: “The dark is done
A Day laughs like a Bridegroom in his tent
In his tent, the lovely sun
His tent the sun
His tent the smiling sky!”
How long will we wait with minds as dim as ponds
While stars swim slowly homeward in the water of our west!
Heaven, when will we hear you sing?
How long we listened to the silence of our vineyards
And heard no bird stir in the rising barley
The stars go home behind the shaggy trees.
Our minds are as grey as rivers.
O earth, when will you wake in the green wheat
And all our cedars sing:
“Bright land, lift up your leafy gates!
You abbey steeple, sing with bells!
For look, our Sun rejoices like a dancer on the rim of our hills.”
In the blue west the moon is uttered like the word: “Farewell.”
- Thomas Merton
“I think, therefore I am.”
- Descartes
If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking.
You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming.
- Eckart Tolle
Go into the streets and alleys and bring back the destitute, the crippled, the blind, and the lame to our banquet. There will be no merchants in my father’s palace.
- Jesus
The little sun gowing in the grass is looking up toward the great sun in the sky;
the great is reflected in the small, and the small holds within itself the reflection of the great.
A million suns lie scattered at our feet and we trample them heedlessly until we start to see.
- Esther deWaal
Now You See It
What you don’t see helps you see what you do see:
The keyhole sharpens the thrill in your brain
Even if there is no one in the room
Shadows wafting across the white sheets
As song drifts in the window
Her voice so pure you can see the face it rises from
For what you see helps you see what you don’t see.
- Ron Padgett
If we can satisfy people at a heart level, peace will ensue.
- Dalai Lama
“If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature.
If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God.”
- Sri Ramakrishna
If you do your work with joy, you can bring many souls to God.
Joy is a prayer, a sign of our generosity, evident in our eyes, our faces, our actions.
- Mother Teresa
Birdwings
Your grief for what you have lost lifts a mirror up to where you are bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here is the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding
The two as beautifully balanced as birdwings.
- Rumi
The Maternal Tenderness of God
With Mary, the God-Child learned to listen to the yearning, the anguish, the joys and hopes of the people of the promise.
- Pope Francis
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Poor in spirit” means to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will and to have renounced all preconceived notions in the wholehearted search for God. It means to be willing to jettison anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding God.
- Emmet Fox