Lover of leaving
/Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving,
It doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Even if you have broken your vows
A thousand times it doesn’t matter
Come, yet again, come
– Rumi
Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving,
It doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Even if you have broken your vows
A thousand times it doesn’t matter
Come, yet again, come
– Rumi
I saw this on a bumpersticker a couple of days ago, except it had the line "You do the math" right underneath it. It's such a simple statement, yet so easy to forget. I liked this artist's rendition of it, JustGage.
Although, if I had my way with it, I'd change it to this: Love > Fear
I’ve been thinking a lot about tools. Every once in a while, I look back and notice how much my relationship to them has changed.
As a child, the only family outings I remember dreading were visits to the hardware store. To a seven- or eight-year-old girl, a warehouse full of tools didn’t just pale in comparison to the toy store or the candy store; for some odd reason, I found them painfully boring. (Never mind that practically everything around me—including toy and candy stores—existed in part because of tools!) The closest I ever came to enjoying these visits was the day I discovered an isle packed with rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Maybe it was the Pink Panther on the label, or layer upon layer of fluffy goodness inviting me to dive right in; whatever it was, my delight was but momentary: I learned the hard, itchy way that fiberglass insulation is not cotton candy.
Read MoreOh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
– Dinah Craik
We may never really know how this started, but it's caught on. It came to me via a dear friend with a most peculiar sense of humor. I bet you'll be hearing about him again, so I might as well introduce you: Sean, say "Hello Everybody!"
There’s a story I read several years ago; it comes and goes like a familiar ghost, but lately it’s more and more present. To me, it’s one of the simplest, most poignant allegories on the human condition—as long as you’re willing to look beyond theological constructs. Sometimes, when I bump up against labels and the like, I find approaching any information as one would a fable or a childhood story yields a refreshing flexibility of mind.
This excerpt is from How To Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali. If you’re unfamiliar with Eastern Philosophy, as I am, the only term that’s helpful to know beforehand, ahem, is “Atman.” Simply put: it means the real Self.
Read MoreTwo years ago a friend of mine gave me her copy of Irina Tweedie’s The Chasm of Fire: A Woman's Experience with the Teachings of a Sufi Master. The title is self-explanatory, and it’s a great read—it’s actually a portion of her larger work, Daughter of Fire, which I haven’t read. There are a couple lines in the first chapter that moved me; they were the first of many.
It is the task of the Teacher to set the heart aflame with an unquenchable fire of longing; it is his duty to keep it burning until it is reduced to ashes. For only a heart which has burned itself empty is capable of love.
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
– Abraham Lincoln