"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness....
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields...
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves...
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value...
~ Mary Oliver, excerpts from "The Buddha's Last Instruction" in HOUSE OF LIGHT
There is a spiritual hearth at the heart of every person, congregation, and diocese. The fire is ignitable precisely where we have a passion to begin again in the face of immense community and cultural brokenness. Perhaps there has never been a time in history where the need for rekindling has matched so strongly with the individual and communal desire to "begin again."
~ from AWAKENING GRASSROOTS SPIRITUALITY: A CELTIC GUIDE FOR NURTURING THE SOUL by Edwin M. Leidel
