inspiration

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distance.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

— RUMI

“If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.

If you don’t bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”

— GOSPEL OF THOMAS

And what is wisdom?

Wisdom is seeing the whole in the parts,

And in the whole, seeing the Holy.

— SUFI TEACHING

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about

dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses;

perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are

only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being

something helpless that wants love from us.

— RAINER MARIA RILKE

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.“

I Am The Decisive Element

—GOETHE

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every

small contracting and expanding.

The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

Bird Wings

—RUMI

“Sometimes when our life falls apart it is because it is not held together with consciousness, it is held together by illusion, and so it crumbles, and what is left is actually a clearer vision of what is real and of value.

So many have found their life path only after what they had formerly perceived as their life crumbles to dust.

In other words, it is the illusion of our life which crumbles, leaving reality in its place”

— MAX STORM

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

To Know The Dark

—WENDELL BERRY

Sometimes a woman stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And her children say blessings on her as if she were dead.

And another woman, who remains inside her own house, dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that her children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which she forgot.

Sometimes a Woman Stands Up

During Supper

—RANIER MARIA RILKE

INSPIRATION