The practice of paying attention is the rarest of gifts because it depends upon the harshest of disciplines. So uncommon is it for us to grasp the beauty and mystery of ordinary things that, when we finally do so, it often brings us to the verge of tears. Appalled by our own poverty, we awake in wonder to a splendor of which we had never dreamed.
~ from THE SOLACE OF FIERCE LANDSCAPES by Belden C. Lane, as reprinted in AN ALMANAC FOR THE SOUL by Marv and Nancy Hiles
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage,
which had a serious purpose at that end,
and the thing was to get to that thing at that end.
Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.
But we missed the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to
dance while the music was being played.
