What a gift is the recognition of our multiple streams of time! Most of us have had some experience of breaking out of the monochronic monotony of one-thing-afteranother. Time flies; time crawls or stands still. We regularly experience the spectrum of party time, hanging out time, condensed time, wasting time, scheduled time, falling in love time, anxiety time, creative time, borning time, dying time, meditation time, timeless time. Ecstasy and terror have their own temporal cadences, and in high creative moments as well as in mystical experience, the categories of time are strained by the tension of eternity.
When we hear the sounds of the Earth crying within us, we're unblocking the channels of felt connectedness that join us to the world. These channels act like a system, opening us up to a source of strength and resilience.
Active hope is a practice...It is something we do rather than have. Since active hope
doesn't require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless.
The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or
express.
Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art….It is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world.
Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing -- resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.
~ by Joanna Macy, quoted in OPEN MIND by Diane Mariechild
