Reflections on going your way, my way, and finding ‘the way’ (themes from Luke)
Question: When do you follow the lead of others, and explore their way, and when do you invite others to join you and try your path, your way?
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. — Rumi
Music Video:Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts
The Way In — Linda Hogan
Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body. Sometimes the way in is a song. But there are three ways in the world:
dangerous, wounding, and beauty. To enter stone, be water. To rise through hard earth, be plant desiring sunlight, believing in water. To enter fire, be dry. To enter life, be food.
The Road― J.R.R. Tolkien
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
My Way, Your Way
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential. ― Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun. — Don Miguel Ruiz
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. ― Alexander Graham Bell
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. ― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Unfortunately, when you insist on doing everything your way, what usually happens is that you repeat someone else’s mistakes. ― Augustine Wetta, Humility Rules: St Benedict’s Twelve-Step Guide to Genuine Self-Esteem
We do not draw people … by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it. — Madeleine L’Engle
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. — Mahatma Gandhi
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. — Walt Disney
Finding the Way
You don’t choose a life … You live one. — The Way (movie) script
In a gentle way, you can shake the world. — Mahatma Gandhi
… we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love
the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. — Soren Kierkegaard
… the greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or
living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their
own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix
The easiest way to be reborn is to live and feel life everyday. ― Munia Khan
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. — Thomas Edison
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. — John Muir
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring
peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a
man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all
wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. — Buddha
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. — Og Mandino
Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey. — Lord Byron
There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Reflections on mountain, wind, fire, quake and silence: themes from 1 Kings.
Holiness, not in the fire, wind or quake, but in the silence that comes after: It is about sweeping in when we are too comfortable and moving us out of those places we cling to when we fear the unknowns and try to avoid the pain and injustice around us. It is about empowering us to do the things that so many others – and even sometimes our own systems – have told us we cannot do because of our gender, age, or economic situation, our education status, color of skin, or sexual orientation. It is about equipping ALL of us to be prophets by speaking truth, spreading love, and fighting for justice and equality for all of God’s children. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
Song: The Climb performed by Miley Cyrus (video link)
Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain
— Li Po, Translated by Sam Hamill
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
To me a mountain is a buddha. think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin. ― Jack Kerouac
Continue reading “Reflections on mountain, wind, fire, quake and silence: themes from 1 Kings.”
God on the Mountain: Reflections for this week
Acts of God … where God is and where God is not — reflections on natural disasters and the aftermath — mountain, wind, fire, quake and silence: themes from 1 Kings. Where do you find ‘acts of God’ in your life? What evokes the presence of the sacred for you?
Holiness, not in the fire, wind or quake, but in the silence that comes after: It is about sweeping in when we are too comfortable and moving us out of those places we cling to when we fear the unknowns and try to avoid the pain and injustice around us. It is about empowering us to do the things that so many others – and even sometimes our own systems – have told us we cannot do because of our gender, age, or economic situation, our education status, color of skin, or sexual orientation. It is about equipping ALL of us to be prophets by speaking truth, spreading love, and fighting for justice and equality for all of God’s children. — Nadia Bolz-Weber Continue reading “God on the Mountain: Reflections for this week”
Reflections on rainbows and promises; holy love that keeps its covenant no matter what
Themes from Genesis, and the rainbow as sign of the promise between God & Noah’s family (humankind): a covenant that suggests complexity and diversity within its symbol. A holy love that recognizes the unique potential within you. Where do you live in the complexity of God’s fierce and stubborn love, that refuses to give up on you, that returns despite broken relationships, and offers new chances over and over again? When have you turned away from connection with sacred love and justice; when have you claimed that renewed chance?
… The mind is faithful in its memory—connecting signs,
it makes a memory to connect to what it needs.
… I keep this story close whenever I grieve
or fear, growing cold.
A father and his child wait through a storm.
Great rain with Thunder. Fear has
drenched the child. … The child cries,
I’m scared, to which the father
whispers, holding on, Don’t worry,
little one. I’ll stay with you until
it’s over. … Rainbow in the evening.
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. — Dolly Parton
And I asked my mother about it; I said, ‘Is there something wrong?’ She said, ‘God… God makes people. You understand that, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah!’ She said, ‘Who makes a rainbow?” I said, ‘God.’ She said, ‘I never presumed to tell anyone who could make a rainbow what color to make children.’ — Richard Dawson
Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. — Lord Byron
The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think. — Maya Angelou
Sunset is still my favorite color, and rainbow is second. — Mattie Stepanek
When you look at the world, the world isn’t just one palette. It’s a beautiful rainbow, and why not have someone to represent that rainbow? — Joan Smalls
South Africa is labouring to find its revolutionary path; the colours of the Rainbow Nation have difficulty blending together; the wealthy elites (white, black or Indian) profit from de facto segregation. — Tariq Ramadan
We have a memory cut in pieces. And I write trying to recover our real memory, the memory of humankind, what I call the human rainbow … — Eduardo Galeano
The Lord survives the rainbow of His will. — Robert Lowell
— Songwriter: Paul WilliamsWhy are there so many songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side
Rainbows are visions
But only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we’ve been told
And some choose to believe it
I know they’re wrong, wait and see
Some day we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me
Who said that every wish
Would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that
And someone believed it
And look what it’s done so far
What’s so amazing
That keeps us stargazing
And what do we think we might see
Someday we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me
All of us under its spell, we know that it’s probably magic
Have you been half asleep?
And have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name
Is this the sweet sound
That called the young sailors?
The voice might be one in the same
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it
It’s something that I’m supposed to be
Someday we’ll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
“When I was 15, I sat in despair one day in a creaky old bus that was winding its way through central Mexico (that’s another story), trying to decide if I truly believed in God. Not necessarily God with a big white beard looking down from a Biblical heaven, but some kind of sacred spirit above, beneath, and within all things. I’d always had a deep, instinctive faith (even as a small child) in a sacred dimension to life, a Mystery I didn’t need to fully define in order to know it, feel it, experience it. But recent grueling events had shaken my faith and closed that connection.
Now, I realize that sitting and railing at God is practically a cliche of teenage angst; that doesn’t make the experience any less urgent at age 15, and I was in a dark place. “Okay,” I said, throwing the gauntlet down to whatever out there might be listening, “if there is something more than this, then prove it. Just prove it. Or I quit.” The bus turned a corner on the narrow, dusty road, and a gasp went up from the people around me. Above us, a rainbow arched through a bright blue, cloudless, rainless desert sky.
Rainbows have been special to me ever since. I know the scientific explanation, of course, water and air and angles of sunlight and all that. But to me, they are always a message. They say: “The universe is a Mystery and you’re part of it.” A nd sometimes that’s all I need to hear; that’s all the answer I need, no matter what the prayer.” ― Terri Windling