Blessing the Body (excerpt) — Jan Richardson
This blessing takes
one look at you
and all it can say is
holy.
Holy hands.
Holy face.
Holy feet.
Holy everything
in between.
Holy even in pain.
Holy even when weary.
In brokenness, holy.
In shame, holy still.
Holy in delight.
Holy in distress.
Holy when being born.
Holy when we lay it down
at the hour of our death …
Being a body is a spiritual discipline … living fully and gratefully as a body. — Rowan Williams
Know then that the body is merely a garment. Go seek the wearer, not the cloak. — Rumi
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. — Friedrich Nietzsche
There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person. — Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms
The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, “We grew a child in here,” and breasts that say, “We nourished life.” My hands, with bitten nails and a writer’s callus, say, “We create amazing things.” — Sarah, from I Am Beautiful
Skin is a covering for our immortality. — Terri Guillemets
Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos—the trees, the clouds, everything. — Thích Nhất Hạnh
To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. — Buddha
Why should a man’s mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body? — Thomas Hardy
The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in. — B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga: The Path To Holistic Health
Sweat your prayers, dance your pain, and move on. — Gabrielle Roth
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. — Henry David Thoreau
The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. — Anaïs Nin
Your body is a beautiful manifestation powered by spirit. — Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife
On Anger
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. — Booker T. WashingtonAnger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. — Zora Neale Hurston
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. — Buddha
Revenge and retaliation always perpetuate the cycle of anger, fear and violence. — Coretta Scott King
The upside to anger? Getting it out of your system. You got to express your anger. Then you have room for more positive things. If I hold something in a long time, and then I speak it, it’s amazing how the light shines so much brighter. — Reba McEntire
The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy. — Mehmet Oz
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. — Carl Jung
Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. — Eckhart Tolle
The problem that some modern churches face is not the activities they are doing but the activities they are neglecting. Every church should be centered on two activities: loving God and loving people. In short, there are many good things that churches can do. Jesus’ actions in the temple remind all of us that we should not do what’s good and neglect doing what’s best. — Tod Mundo
We may want a spirituality that rises above our broken physicality; but in Jesus we see that the physical life IS a spiritual life. Jesus had a real body, just as we have; he bore the scars of having lived, just as we do. God came and made his home with us in a human body. Perhaps this tells us that home is not merely heaven, it’s here in our human form, in our imperfect bodies. God has blessed Human flesh; not made it perfect but made GOOD. Our good bodies are made of God, we should know we are therefore beautiful to God. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
… Do we risk constraining God, keeping God boxed up in the very houses we construct to honor God’s glory, and in which we come to worship? Do we love our buildings and our liturgies more than we love God? — Kris, RevGalBlogPals
That Jesus understands himself to be both the ultimate sacrifice and the end of sacrifice–and thus the new temple, the meeting place of God and humanity–is at work here. … to remember that God’s anger is the flip side of God’s love, and that in Jesus – the new temple, the meeting place of God and humanity – we are given both permission and sufficient grace to deal with the anger that will inevitably arise in us and in our churches. — Debra Dean Murphy
Ten Commandments
The better life rests less on the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments and more on the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule. — David Josiah Brewer
“Love of God,” he said slowly, searching for words, “Is not always the same as love of good, I wish it were that simple. We know what is good, it is written in the Commandments. But God is not contained only in the Commandments, you know; they are only an infinitesimal part of Him. A man may abide by the Commandments and be far from God.” ― Hermann Hesse
The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. ― Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras
We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity. — Isadora Duncan
We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we build the world of tomorrow. — Lech Walesa