Anger

“Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.”

~ David Whyte

anger

Priorities

“So many things to do, I’m always rushing ’round
I wish that I had time to just sit still
I’ll get done all the things I need to do today
I promise then I’ll stop a while, I will

And so I start to tackle the list of chores I made
I’ll make this house look really spick and span
I’ll tidy up and wash the floor and vac and dust as well
Clean the bathrooms, clean the house – I know I can

A friend rings up. She’s feeling down. She wants to come around
She asks if I have time to talk a while
I stop to make a coffee and lend a listening ear
I have nothing to give except my smile

Then, when she’s feeling better and she knows that she’s been heard
She thanks me and then she goes on her way
I look around my house and continue with my chores
For I am going to get somewhere today

The telephone then rings. My son’s teacher’s on the phone
She wants me to come down and get him now
I go down to the school and I bring my sick child home
I’ll clean this house up later on somehow

And later when the kids are home; ‘Mum, I need to talk’
And so I stop to listen for a while
My daughter tells me how she feels, she opens up her heart
Then, when she knows I’ve heard her, she can smile

When the night has come, I wonder, ‘what did I achieve?’
And, then I look back on all I have done
The house is still not tidy and there’s still so much to do
Just like it was when I had first begun

But, then I stop and realize my priorities are right
For when someone’s in need then, I am there
I give to them the time they need and help them where I can
I let them know how much I really care

For when the years have passed and my kids have all moved out
They will feel the love and warmth I had to give
And I know that they’ll remember the lessons that they learned
In self-worth and in how they choose to live”

~ Michelle Tetley

Family

The path

“Some might ask whether the path is before us or within us. The answer is: Yes. We are both driven from within by our resident spirit and something outside calls forth the genius within us. The genius is what we aim to know and it is the force that drives us to awaken. What truly calls to us speaks to the personal myth and the innate purpose seeded in our soul from the beginning.”

~ Michael Meade, “The Genius Myth

PathInTheWoods

Not knowing

“Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking.”
~ David Whyte

lostinthewilderness

Silence has a sound

“When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light.”
~ Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

Silence has a sound

 

Silence

“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.”
~ Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

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