Facing the day with intention

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Every morning, before the day has had its say, we make a quiet decision, for our work and for the world.

It is a heroic act to continue to choose goodness in the face of the ugliness being presented as normal, and even as right, and not let the destructive forces of fear win

The realm of heroism doesn’t lie in outward action; it is within us, where we form our attitude towards things, that the hero is born, not in the deeds that he or she does to save the world.

Every human being who gets up in the morning and forms a positive attitude to overcome their obstacles and live in the face of the destructive forces around them is a hero.

And they will always be a hero, whether they succeed or fail, because the hero is already there in the attitude, regardless of whether they live or die in the context of all the forces that would drag us down.

The hero starts here, and starts now, by saying, yes – I can Be. I can have a wish for the good.

Lee van Laer, Parabola Magazine

we are never alone

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In parts of Italy Easter Monday is called Il Giorno degli Angeli” — the Day of the Angels.

The word “angel” in Hebrew simply means “messenger.”

That definition implies anything awakening us to reality is an “angel.” Even if there are specific supernatural beings whose job is to flit between heaven and earth, they would be no less an expression of cosmic creativity than a butterfly. Such beings could teach us no more than the everyday miracles we sleepwalk past every day.

Every bird, every flower, every person who passes by us today embodies a deep and holy wisdom that might illumine our world, if we are listening.

We are never really alone. “Angels” are everywhere.

Jim Rigby, Presbyterian minister and writer

Sunday Quote: all time is eternally present

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Practice resurrection.

Part of who you are is who you will be.

Wendell Barry, Manifesto

Until you go down

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I know that any kind of defeat or humiliation is not the American way, but it is surely the biblical way. There the pattern is rather clear, and there is no going up until you go down. Only our strong cultural bias, or a culpable blindness, would allow us to miss this central biblical theme that is everywhere in plain sight.

In the early part of the lovely Joseph saga, where in classic sibling rivalry and jealousy, Joseph’s brothers throw him into the cistern, and then sell him into slavery to assuage any guilt over actually killing him. As always, some “manufactured difference” is used to justify the crime, so they write him off as a “master of dreams”! Oppositional energy never knows what it is for, it just knows what it is against. It is sort of a sad substitute for vision, yet negative people feed on it.

Richard Rohr, Lenten meditations

no exit

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We live in a world that is not perfectible, a world that always presents you with a sense of something undone, something missing, something hurting, something irritating.

From that minor sense of discomfort to torture and poverty and murder, we live in that kind of universe. The wound that does not heal – this human predicament is a predicament that does not perfect itself. But there is the consolation of no exit, the consolation that this is what you’re stuck with.

Rather than the consolation of healing the wound, of finding the right kind of medical attention or the right kind of religion, there is a certain wisdom of no exit: this is our human predicament and the only consolation is embracing it. It is our situation, and the only consolation is the full embrace of that reality.

Leonard Cohen

Service

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The greatest tragedy of our lives is not that freedom is not possible, but that we pass our years trapped in the same patterns…

We are caught in a trance of unworthiness, of not being enough, and because of that trance we turn against ourselves and others.

When we begin to trust the goodness in ourselves, we begin to relax. We begin to open.

From that openness, a natural kindness begins to emerge – an expression of our true nature

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance