from Earth Bound: Daily Meditations for All Seasons by Brian Nelson,
“”I’d rather be a forest than a street,” writes Paul Simon in his song “El Condor Pasa.” But perhaps the biggest choice offered in the lyrics is not between two types of existence – sparrow or snail, hammer or nail. Perhaps the biggest question is raised by the next lyric: “Yes I would … if I could.”
Are you so sure you can’t decide to be a forest rather than a street? If Whitman can tell us, “I am large … I contain multitudes,” then maybe it’s up to you whether you are a forest or a street. Maybe it’s a false dichotomy, and you can be a forest when you feel like it, a street when it suits you. You have both forest and street within you – travel them whenever the urge strikes you.”
“Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breath in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup. Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side. Wage peace. Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious. Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived. Don’t wait another minute.”
“All sunshine makes a desert. And nothing flows or grows in the harsh glare of the Sahara sun. The desert needs dark things and places and times for any kind of blossoming to happen. The same with us. We would never know light if we never experienced darkness. We could never know love if we never experienced fear. Nor would we ever forgive if we had never been hurt. The challenge is not to get rid of the shadows and flaws and hurting bits; the challenge is to somehow recognise them, accept them, befriend them, recognise their usefulness, and then, integrate them into the rest of our lives.
That is the supreme task. That is the journey of our souls. That is what the greatest among us are always trying to do. Even Jesus swung and swayed, in intense torment, between giving in to and resisting his temptations, between refusing and accepting the chalice of his destiny. There is no other way to travel the inner journey, to pursue the grace of self-awareness, to achieve personal authenticity, to find our soul. We are only called to be ourselves, to be nobody else, to be grateful for the bagful of eccentric and often scary bits and pieces that make up our personalities. Only then can our beautiful and alluring qualities be seen to good effect.
When we struggle too hard to be perfect, we only lose heart quickly. When we attack the faults and foibles that crowd around the kitchen of our souls, we only make them stronger, more damaging and more subtle. Strangely enough, the best advice is to welcome them all into your heart. I like to believe that even the most fearful and threatening mini-monsters that prowl around the perimeters of our inside spaces are all bringing us some kind of gift. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said ‘Love your enemies’. Or what the Eastern gurus mean by ‘embracing your shadow’.
It may not be a very wise thing to do, then, to strive to cut out of ourselves those parts that cause us trouble. We don’t cut out or cut off those members of our bodies that are unhealthy; we work towards their healing. It is that way too, with the things of the spirit. There is no point in accusing ourselves, in denying what is essential to us, in ripping out all that isn’t ‘good’. They all only grow again, return again, suddenly appear again, more threatening and aggressive than before. So, beware of the compulsion to perfection. It is not what wisdom is about. It brings no peace. In fact, it often works the other way round!
What I, myself, endeavour to do is to welcome the dark bits of myself and make friends with them. They are all a part of me. We need our demons as well as our angels to form the amazing and unique person that we are. Without the contrary energies and impulses within us, there would be little movement or dance. Jesus himself, and all our greatest role-models, had to live with and deal with the most frightening of counter-forces, temptations, doubts and devils. We, who may not be quite in their league, are no exception.
That is why self-awareness, to be present to ourselves and to each moment of our lives, is about as far as we can go. Whatever way we are, that is the way we are. When we get it right, we get it right. When we get it wrong, we get it wrong. Such are the shapes and colours of authenticity and honesty about our true feelings, motivations and the hidden workings of our mysterious minds. This kind of acceptance does not mean that we settle for less. It means that we settle for nothing less than reality and the truth. And, when we sit down for our daily few minutes of silent prayer, it is a very good place from which to begin.”
From Are You Trying Too Hard To Be Good? by Father Daniel O’Leary
“God is hiding in the world. Our task is to let the divine emerge in our deeds… Life passes on in proximity to the sacred, and it is this proximity that endows existence with ultimate significance. In our relation to the immediate we touch upon the most distant. Even the satisfaction of physical needs can be a sacred act… in doing the finite we may perceive the infinite.”
“O humanity! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know each other (and so build mutuality and co-operative relationships, not so that you may take pride in your differences of race or social rank, and breed enmities). Surely the most honoured of you in the sight of God is the one who has the most integrity and reverence for God. Surely God has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things.”
From Earth Bound: Daily Meditations for All Seasons by Brian Nelson,
“You can hear them morning, noon, and night, calling to each other, getting the work of this new year underway. The birds are returning, scavenging your neighborhood to make their homes, building cradles for their young, ceaselessly flying onward to the next task.
Terry Tempest Williams writes, “I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.” Robins, jays, and wrens are the priests of springtime, confidently going about their rituals, selflessly offering inspiration, never resting upon their laurels (or elms or maples). Enter their green cathedral and sing a song of praise to the new season along with them.”
“In a sacred place of honor in the temple that is my home stands a gleaming, powerful image of The Venus of Willendorf, proud and naked, her unbound breasts resting on her fully rotund belly, blissful and heavy with the ripeness of all life and the sweet milk that sustains it, having no apologies to make for the fat fullness of her thighs, grown strong and proud from the carrying of this wide expanse of hips, and a rump the roundness of which has enchanted poets and priests since before time. The Wise Goddess-Child who is my daughter calls this image The Mommy Doll, and she has no interest in the notion that maybe this lush feminine form was not fashioned to look like me. How, then, can I face this child and not stand tall and BE A GODDESS and in whatever size I am be content? I do not need minimizing panels in my panties and wires in my bra to be divine and full of beauty. Full of beauty. Not starving. Not starving for affection, approval, appreciation, confirmation, conformity, or anonymity. But fully at home in the body of this woman who takes up her share of space without saying I’m sorry, and still leaves room enough in the world for you. So, to you, and to me, and to the Wise Goddess-Child who is my daughter, I say, fearlessly and wondrously are we made in the image of She Who is Most Holy, and the blasphemy of body hatred has no place in this temple.”
King Edward Street Chapel 