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Reflections on feeding the hungry: including our spiritual, emotional and psychological needs and desires

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

If it is bread that you seek, you will have bread.  If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul. If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek. ― Rumi 

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. — Ursula Le Guin

water water water wind water … across the land shape of a torn heart … inside the divine spiral there is a voice, inside the voice there is light …  — Juan Felipe Herrera

Songs about Food, Fishing & Hunger:

From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward    signs painted Peaches.   From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.   O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into    the round jubilance of peach.   There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

MEDITATIONS on BREAD

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. — Viktor E. Frankl

The piece of bread is an ambassador of the cosmos offering nourishment and support. — Thich Nhat Hahn

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. — Nikolai Berdyaev

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread. — Richard Wright

 In the Lord’s Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach. — Woodrow Wilson

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. — Mahatma Gandhi

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. — Nelson Mandela

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. — M. F. K. Fisher

Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm. — Jack Kornfield
 
It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread – the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature. — Ivan Pavlov

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. — Viktor E. Frankl

We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it … If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.  — Jose Marti

Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. ‘That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I’m set up.’ And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions. — Francis Chan

You can’t just leave out one part; the bread won’t rise if the yeast isn’t there.  — Holly Near

I like reality. It tastes like bread. — Jean Anouilh

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. — John Irving

We believe that salvation is to be found in wholesome work in a beloved land. Work will provide our people with the bread of tomorrow, and moreover, with the honor of the tomorrow, the freedom of the tomorrow.  — Theodor Herzl

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. — Conrad Aiken

For one country is different from another; its earth is different, as are its stones, wines, bread, meat, and everything that grows and thrives in a specific region.  — Paracelsus

When you fight to give your family bread, that’s not passion anymore: that’s conviction. — Yoel Romero

When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor’s gift. — Maya Angelou 

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. – Nikoli Berdyaev

When the children of Israel were suffering from hunger and thirst, Moses prayed to God and God answered his prayers with food from heaven. The Qur’an says: “And We caused the clouds to comfort you with their shade, and sent down unto you manna and quails. [saying,]’Partake of the good things which We have provided for you as sustenance’” (2:57). — Muhammad Shafiq
 

WATER MEDITATIONS
 
Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. — Lao Tzu
 
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
 
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. — Toni Morrison

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. — Thich Nhat Hahn

When you do things  from your soul,  you feel a river  moving in you, a joy. — Rumi
 
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. — W. H. Auden

In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree. — Saint Teresa of Avila
 
The atmosphere, the earth, the water and the water cycle – those things are good gifts. The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn’t make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn’t live without them. — Wendell Berry
 
I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. — Emily Bronte
 
Being on a boat that’s moving through the water, it’s so clear. Everything falls into place in terms of what’s important and what’s not. — James Taylor

I think love is the greatest force in the universe. It’s shapeless like water. It only takes the shape of things it becomes. — Guillermo del Toro
 
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. ― Margaret Atwood
 
In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence. ― Kahlil Gibran
 
The ocean was the best place, of course … It was a feeling of freedom like no other, and yet a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched. ― Ann Brashares
 
Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future. ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
 
No water, no life. No blue, no green. — Sylvia Earle

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. — Isak Dinesen
 
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. — Loren Eiseley
 
Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams – they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do – they all contain truths. — Muhammad Ali
 
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all. — Ban Ki-moon

Water is the driving force of all nature. — Leonardo da Vinci

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