"Life work" means that to which one will devote one's energies. It is the world of the soul, as well as the material work done in the visible world. These categories of tasks are not separate: they are not inimical to one another any more than sweeping the temple, washing the vestments, or cleaning and arranging the altar are inimical to the act of prayer. On the contrary, these tasks are prayer. They are the work of the soul in that they provide a suitable atmosphere for the cultivation of a contemplative and receptive attitude.
~ from SEEING THROUGH THE VISIBLE WORLD by June Singer
We have to say "Thank you” whenever possible even if we are not able to reconcile the human creatures’ free will with the Maker’s working out of a pattern. Thanks and Praise are, I believe, some of the threads with which the pattern is woven.
Enter into the Silence,
into the Heart of Truth;
For herein lies the Great Mystery
where life is ever unfolding...
Listen for the Music of the
Spheres in the resounding
Silence of
the universe.
May balance and harmony be your aim as you are
drawn into the
Heart of Love.
~ Nan Merrill from her interpretation of "Psalm 132" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING
Let us turn to the West:
the place of oncoming darkness,
the place of the departed spirits and of letting go; the
home of Bear and night-time dreams
and the season of Autumn.
We thank you for your gifts of Mystery and Transformation.
~ from the Seven Directions Prayer* (This prayer has many versions, source unknown)
We have not been raised to cultivate a sense of Mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a
personal failing. Seen this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But Mystery does not require action;
Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in
this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.
~ Rachel Naomi Remen in MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSINGS
What if we reframed "living with uncertainty" to "navigating mystery"? There's more energy in that phrase. The hum of imaginative voltage. And is our life not a mystery school, a seat of earthy instruction?
~ Martin Shaw from the essay "Navigating the Mysteries" on EMERGENCE MAGAZINE
You can relish a rainbow and a cup of tea, sunrise and a flock of birds, a cemetery walk and a friend's newborn, the first
blush of wildflowers in a patch of dirt and the looping rapture of an old favorite song. ... You can't mend a world, but you
can mend the hole in the polka- dot pocket of your favorite coat. They are not the same thing, but they are part of the same
thing, which is all there is — life living itself through us, moment by moment, one broken beautiful thing at a time.
~ Maria Popova in THE MARGINALIAN e-newsletter, May 15, 2022
The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes,
to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees,
that each of them is.
~ Marcel Proust from "La Prisonniere" in REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
