“On the deepest level, problems such as war and starvation are not solved by economics and politics alone. Their source is prejudice and fear in the human heart; and their solution also lies in the human heart.”
Jack Kornfield
In the human heart
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A lush green field on a morning walk -
Sojourners
Morning shadows in my bedroom “We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious; we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos.”
John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes -
Longing
Clouds in eastern Colorado “Longing is the voice of your soul, it constantly calls you to be fully present in your life: to live to full the one life given to you.”
John O’Donohue -
Diverse Inner Landscape
Distant clouds and moon looking upon an open prairie “The self is not an object or a fixed point of reference. It is a diverse inner landscape too rich to be grasped in any one concept.”
John O’Donohue -
Nothing except what he is
Grove of aspen trees somewhere in northern Utah For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
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My Soul Expands
The moon among the clouds “When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.” Mahatma Gandhi
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Longing to Wander
Nature trail at Arapaho Bend Nature Area “The wanderer is one who gives priority to the duties of longing over belonging. No abode is fixed. No one place is allowed finally to corner or claim the wanderer. A new horizon always calls. The wanderer is committed to the adventure of seeing new places and discovering new things.”
John O’DonohueI just read the above quote from O’Donohue’s book Eternal Echoes two days ago. It so rings true for me. Yes, call me a romantic but as I approach my 70th birthday in a couple months, I still have those inner urges, the desires of the wanderer. I’ve been in my condo for 20 years now, it is my abode, it is a sanctuary for quiet, a place to meditate, read and write, a place to rest my head and keeps me warm and dry, and it is a physical place. The wanderer does not have that abode but journeys toward those new undiscovered horizons. I believe those new horizons are a sanctuary, a place of quiet for us to discover. We can just be, wherever we are, even wandering. So, today I’m dreaming or longing of wandering.
