“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
Charles Dickens, born on this day in 1812

From Honoring the Body by Christine Valters-Paintner,

“Chronic illness asks you to navigate between worlds, the vertical land of the well, or “temporarily able-bodied” as those in the disability community say, and the horizontal world where most hours are spent in bed. This forced convalescence offers a new perspective on the world of rushing and doing. Each flare of my illness [rheumatoid arthritis] became another initiation into the resistance of capitalist expectations of relentless productivity, which demanded I value my life in terms of output.

It has been 30 years since that initial diagnosis. The medications to treat my illness have greatly improved and I count it as a profound grace that I have not been ravaged by it the way my mother was.

The true grace over time has been deepened intimacy with my body, the long hours spent listening to her call me like a lover, asking me to live as a witness to another way of being, one that values slowness, spaciousness, humility, vulnerability. One that knows Sabbath as a stance of opposition to the forces that train us to deplete ourselves. My body’s vulnerability has informed everything I teach and write about contemplative practice. I believe that a slow, intentional life is a radical act of witness to another way of being. I have learned to honor limits and find beauty in that space of surrender and yielding to another way.

My story is not a one-way hero’s journey. I have not overcome or done battle; I don’t want to be anybody’s inspiration. Stories that give the impression that one can achieve victory over the body’s vulnerabilities do a great disservice to the collective imagination by pushing away the discomfort of grief. I want my story to reveal that tenderness and surrender instead of fortitude and domination are signs of strength. I want my story to say that yielding to my body’s needs rather than forcing myself onward is a sign of wisdom.

In the monastic tradition, memento mori – remembering that you will one day die – is considered an essential daily practice to help us to remember to cherish life. I am reminded moment by moment by my body that everything is gift, nothing is to be taken for granted. This window of feeling well will not last forever. Similarly, this physical pain will also subside eventually. And we will all one day cross over the threshold and leave this world. Joy and sorrow are sisters; each carves out room in us to experience the other more deeply.

On my good days, I still sometimes do a lot, sometimes beyond my body’s capacity, and I feel the impact. Productivity is seductive. I still have a lot of bad days where most of my hours are spent horizontal despite how well I try to take care of myself. The truth involves very little linear achievement and a lot more mess.

All these years after that first diagnosis, I keep discovering new layers of how my primary vocation is to relish this vessel of flesh, blood, and bone, and to make time for the always erupting griefs. I’m called to serve from a place of rest and abundance rather than exhaustion and scarcity, and to treasure myself apart from all the things I can do.”

“To me, Imbolc is such a powerful mystery of time because it is like the space between thoughts. If there’s nothing I need to think about right now, then I just stop thinking. Start listening. Listen to the music of awakening seeds, the whisper of creation bubbling out of silence all around me. The wordless breath of the Creator is a subtle thunder, more healing than any thought I could possibly think in this moment.”
Fred LaMotte

“To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try.”

Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, born on this day in 1913

“How ought we to live in the world?
Do all your duties, but keep your mind on God.
Live with all – with spouse and children, father and mother – and serve them.
Treat them as if they were very dear to you, but know in your heart of hearts that they do not belong to you.”

Sri Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886)

“An Irish triad tells us that of the three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature and knowledge. Nature is our guide to the common law; knowledge is our guide to the reservoir of received law; but truth must be the discriminating force by which everyone illumines dark places.”
Caitlin Matthews

“Winter had settled over me,

The frost sealing my eyes, my mouth;
My bones as ice,
Stilled
Beneath frozen water.

You came
And planted your sun like a seed in me,
Warm,
Precious,
Pearl of light,
And my being became the song of snow-melt,
A river-burst of birdsong
Rising.

At your touch my body is a garden
Of snowdrops;
This tender blooming
The greening of my soul.”

Maria Ede-Weaving

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, interfaith writer and mystic, born on this day in 1915

“It is the action, not the fruit of the action, that is important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be fruit, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated on this day in 1948

“The ultimate objective of spirituality is not to remove the existence of evil or humanity’s negative traits. Instead, we must confront and transform these dark forces, for it is only through the struggle of transformation that we ignite the spark of divinity within us.”

The Zohar (Jewish mystical text published in 13th century Spain)