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vulnerability

Letting your light shine: vulnerability and willingness to share your gifts as themes from Matthew 5

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

We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light. —Hildegard of Bingen

Zen Verse — Dogen
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.  – Marianne Williamson

SONGS about LIGHT:

When I consider how my light is spent,
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
‘Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?’
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.’
— John Milton

Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.


The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,
and gladness without measure.
The heaven’s river has drowned its banks
and the flood of joy is abroad.

— Rabindranath Tagore

MATTHEW 5: 14-16

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

COMMENTARY on LETTING LIGHT SHINE vs HIDING IT

Each of us is the light of the world—we are each an expression of the divine Light we call God, the Source of all life and all love. Our limited human natures are like the bushel basket—coverings that allow us to hide the Light within so completely that we ourselves forget it’s there. We’re not here in human form to ignore the Light, or to hide it so that no one else can see it. We’re here to be the Light—to let it shine everywhere, affirming the spiritual Presence and Power that is the energy of everything. It’s only by letting our own light shine that we can encourage others to uncover their own inner Light and join us in the spiritual work of creating a new consciousness. — UNity website (full article)

The juxtaposition of contrasting images was central to Jesus’ communication.  He would often show up the absurdity of our lives by placing two incongruous states side by side. …  Imagine the scene: Hello?  LanternMagic?  I’d like to register a complaint.  I just bought your LampLight 3000 with high hopes.  It says on the box “It giveth light unto all in the house.”  But I have to say it’s as gloomy as ever in here… What’s that?  Yes I filled it with oil… and I trimmed the wick… and I lit it just like the instructions say…  Yes well, truth be told, it started out brilliantly.  It was everything I’d hoped for.  Until I put it under my bushel…  My bushel…  No it’s Old English, it means bucket.  Yes bucket… Well I couldn’t find a lampstand so I thought I’d improvise…  What’s that?  On top of the bucket?  My goodness, no.  How reckless!  Dear me, I wouldn’t dream of placing it so precariously.  No, no I’m keeping it safe underneath…  Yes underneath the bucket…  What do you mean it’s not the lamp that’s dim?  Listen here, you need to take this a lot more seriously…  I don’t know why you keep harping on about my bushel, I’m talking about your lantern.  I want to know what you’re going to do about your faulty lamp. … As the complaints department from LanternMagic would have said: The problem is not with the lamp, the problem is where you’re putting it. — KIngsEnglish posting (full post)

BE the LIGHT

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. – Edith Wharton

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. – Albert Schweitzer

As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way. – Mary Anne Radmacher

Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light. – Yogi Bhajan

Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one the other disappears. – Marianne Williamson

Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light. – Sogyal Rinpoche

Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. – Brene Brown

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. – Kahlil Gibran

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. – Og Mandino

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha

Meditations: Locked rooms, open doors

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

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.
― Robley Wilson

Be an opener of doors. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. — Virginia Woolf

A very little key will open a very heavy door. ― Charles Dickens, Hunted Down

If you feel you have to open a particular door, open it, otherwise all your life that door will haunt your mind! … All the doors you ignored or refused to enter represents your uncreated fates!  ― Mehmet Murat ildan

That door had a lot to say, people entered and people left but never the same! ― Jasleen Kaur Gumber

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meaness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi

The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family story. Each one of us has our past locked inside. — Laura Esquivel

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend …  ― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

For the Yupik, all life was continuous, animal with human with ‘spirit’ and recognizing that continuum allowed them to undergo transformations that we, locked into our disappointingly Cartesian skins, find impossible even to imagine. — John Burnside

… a face is studied like a key
for the mystery of what it once opened …
— C.D. Wright (excerpt) from Floating Trees

It’s human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn’t make sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you’re doing something extremely small—a locked room-style story. — N.K. Jemisin

I have to live within my memories, within my private universe, and continually return to China, the land where my thoughts are locked. This is a very painful kind of existence, this feeling of nowhereness. — Ma Jian

We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jails over and over again. And then you holler, ‘Be patient.’ How long can we be patient? — John Lewis

Abrir una puerta nueva sin cerrar la anterior no lleva a ninguna parte. ― Flavia Company, Haru: Un día es una vida

There’s a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody’s family. We all pretend to outsiders that it’s not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running. — Salman Rushdie

People —running from unhappiness, hiding in power — are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs. — Richard Avedon

I was in a form of prison; not necessarily with bars, but I was locked to that machine three days a week, and I couldn’t plan work, I couldn’t plan vacations, I couldn’t plan dinner, I couldn’t plan homework, I couldn’t plan nothing because at the end of the day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I had to be at dialysis. — Grizz Chapman

Custom is a prison, locked and a barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Pass It On, III — Rachel Hades
… Death makes life shine:
a tiredness, a flickering between
ages, which is each age;
a piling up to tottering
and falling back to sand.
So much for cycle. The front door lock
sticks each fall when we’re first back.
We are advised to oil it.
Olive oil in the keyhole:
again the old key turns.
Once again to meander
… Ideas of the eternal,
once molten, harden; cool.
Oil, oil in the lock.
The old key turns.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason. — Hal Borland

The living cell almost always contains, locked in its interior, the visible or invisible products of its physiological activity or its nourishment. — Albrecht Kossel

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe. — Peter De Vries

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