Weekly Reading

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
― Padlo Neruda
 

Weekly Reading

Every goal, every action, every thought, every feeling one experiences, whether it be consciously or unconsciously known, is an attempt to increase one's level of peace of mind.
~Sydney Madwed

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no trouble, noise, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
~Unknown

Weekly Reading

May all who are mean return to good;
May all who are good obtain true peace.
May all who are peaceful be freed from bonds;
May all who are free set others free.
Blessings upon all the earth;
May all of the world’s rulers uphold righteousness.
May only good fortune reach everyone;
May all the world’s creatures be happy.
May rain fall when the earth is thirsty;
May all the storehouses be filled.
May everyone here be free from injury;
May all who are good be free from fear.
May everyone know a life of joy;
May everyone live a life of health.
May everyone see only good in the world;
May everyone soon be released from pain.
May everyone overcome all their woes;
May everyone see only good in the world.
May everyone realize all their desires;
May everyone everywhere be glad.
May our mother and father be blessed;
Blessings upon every creature on earth.
May our works flourish and aid everyone,
And long may our eyes see the sun.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti (peace).

Weekly Reading

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, 
to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving."

~Saint Francis De Sales

Weekly Reading

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes.
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary,
because it means you've made the effort.

It's easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who
are also thankful for the setbacks.

Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles,
and they can become your blessings.
~Author Unknown

Weekly Reading

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
~Marianne Williamson

Weekly Reading

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save. 

~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

When miracles occur, they come from inside--via one's own divine process! Those who claim their own divinity inside therefore co-create their own reality and actually control what they do not understand-and is seemingly hiding or even impossible.
~Kryon

Weekly reading

Nobody else knows your reason for being, you do.Your bliss guides you to it. When you follow your bliss, when you follow your path to joy, your conversation is of joy, your feelings are of joy--you're right on the path of that which you intended when you came forth into this physical being.
~Abraham-Hicks

Weekly Reading

“Happiness is not an individual matter. When you are able to bring relief, or bring back the smile to one person, not only that person profits, but you also profit. The deepest happiness you can have comes from that capacity to help relieve the suffering of others. So if we have the habit of being peace, then there is a natural tendency for us to go in the direction of service. Nothing compels us, except the joy of sharing peace, the joy of sharing freedom from afflictions, freedom from worries, freedom from craving, which are the true foundations for happiness."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Weekly Reading

What is the greatest gift?

Could it be the world itself-the oceans, the meadowlark,
the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else-something else entirely holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life-courteous and intelligent-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.

That you have a soul-your own, no one else's-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Everything you take for granted is a blessing.
Everything you fear is a friend in disguise.
Everything you want is a part of you.
Everything you hate you hate about yourself.
Everything you own does not define you.
Everything you feel is the only Truth there is to know.
Everything you wish for is already on its way to you.
Everything you think creates your life.
Everything you seek for you will find.
Everything you resist will stick around.
Everything you let go of stays if it’s supposed to.
Everything you need is right where you are.

Every time you bless another your bless yourself.
Every time you blame another you lose your power.
Every time you think you can, you can.
Every time you fall you must get up and try again.
Every time you cry you’re one tear closer to joy.
Every time you ask for forgiveness, all you have to do is forgive yourself.

Everyone you see is your reflection.
Everyone you know mirrors you.
Everyone wants to be happy.
Everyone wants to live in joy.
Everyone seeks a higher purpose.
Everyone breathes the same breath.
Everyone needs love to survive.
Everyone has a purpose to fulfill.

Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
We just get caught up in labels, names, skin color and religion.
Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
No one wants to feel the pain.
Everyone’s the same as everyone else.
Everyone is dying for love to remain.”
- Jackson Kiddard

Weekly Reading

"It isn't life's events, but how one reacts to them, that determines
wether such events have a positive or a negative effect on one's life,
wether they are experienced as oppertunity or experienced as stress."
~David R. Hawkins

Weekly Reading

"So the wisdom I share with you today is not to just let your birthdays come and go. Don't let the days pass you by. Don't just talk about the things you could do, or what you want to do. Value your every living moment and make things happen."
~Skip

Weekly Reading

“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel-and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”


- Esther Hicks

Last Week's Reading

I pray to the birds.

I pray to the birds because I believe

they will carry messages of my heart upward.

I pray to them because I believe in their existence,

the way their songs begin and end each day

- the invocations and benedictions of earth.

I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love

rather than what I fear.

And at the end of my prayers,

they teach me how to listen.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Weekly Reading

                The Moment

It was a day in June, all lawn and sky,
the kind that gives you no choice
but to unbutton your shirt
and sit outside in a rough wooden chair.

And if a glass of ice tea and an anthology
of seventeenth-century devotional poetry
with a dark blue cover are available,
then the picture can hardly be improved.

I remember a fly kept landing on my wrist,
and two black butterflies
with white and red wing-dots
bobbed around my head in the bright air.

I could feel the day offering itself to me,
and I wanted nothing more
than to be in the moment–but which moment?
Not that one, or that one, or that one,

or any of those that were scuttling by
seemed perfectly right for me.
Plus, I was too knotted up with questions
about the past and his tall, evasive sister, the future.

What churchyard held the bones of George Herbert?
Why did John Donne's wife die so young?
And more pressingly,
what could we serve the vegetarian twins

we had invited for dinner that evening
not knowing then that they travel with their own grapes?
And who was the driver of that pickup
flying down the road toward the single railroad track?

And so the priceless moments of the day
were squandered one by one–
or more likely several thousand at a time–
with quandary and pointless interrogation.

All I wanted was to be a pea of being
at rest inside the pod of time,
but that was not going to happen today,
I had to admit to myself

as I closed the blue book on the face
of Thomas Traherne and returned to the house
where I lit a flame under a pot
full of water where some eggs were afloat,

and, while they were cooking,
stared into a little oval mirror by the sink
just to see if that crazy glass
had anything particular to say to me today.
~Billy Collins

Weekly Reading

May all who are mean return to good;
May all who are good obtain true peace.
May all who are peaceful be freed from bonds;
May all who are free set others free.

Blessings upon all the earth;
May all of the world’s rulers uphold righteousness.
May only good fortune reach everyone;
May all the world’s creatures be happy.

May rain fall when the earth is thirsty;
May all the storehouses be filled.
May everyone here be free from injury;
May all who are good be free from fear.

May everyone know a life of joy;
May everyone live a life of health.
May everyone see only good in the world;
May everyone soon be released from pain.

May everyone overcome all their woes;
May everyone see only good in the world.
May everyone realize all their desires;
May everyone everywhere be glad.

May our mother and father be blessed;
Blessings upon every creature on earth.
May our works flourish and aid everyone,
And long may our eyes see the sun.

Weekly Reading

Love Poem With Toast

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend
~Miller Williams

Weekly Reading

Choice

I do not respond
in predictable ways,
a rat in a maze.

I am not controlled
by people or events.

I make conscious choices
that put me
in control of my life.

I think, then act,
and watch my life transform.

Spirit turns the darkness before me
into light.

When blind to solutions at hand,
when the way seems blocked,
I trust the divine intelligence
to reveal answers
and show the way
to paths I have not known.

~Gabriel Halpern

Our Deepest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

 It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. 

We ask ourselves, 

Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? 

Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God. 

Your playing small does not serve the world. 

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. 

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. 

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. 

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. 

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

~Marianne Williamson

Weekly Reading

Peace.
It does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.
It means to be in the midst of those things
and still be calm in your heart.
~Unknown

Weekly Reading

Mornings at Blackwater

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.
What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

 

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves -
then I saw him clutching the limb

 

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

 

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness -
and that's when it happened,

 

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree -
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

 

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

 

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

 

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky - all, all of them

 

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

 

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

 

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

 

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then - open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

 

~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

How Would You Live Then?

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
blew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerful sang
from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver
of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
and every day -- who knows how, but they do it -- were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do. 

~Naomi Shihab Nye 

Weekly Reading

Of Love
“I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some—now carry my revelation with you—
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself—I imagine
this is how it began.”
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Can You Imagine?

 

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking.  Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

Weekly Reading

Feeling Good

I attune to feeling good.

I allow the well being
that is natural to flow.

That which feels good
I look at most often.

That which does not feel good
I look at least often.

I identify what is important to me.
I align with the energy
that is really me.

I take the path
of least resistance
to that which most benefits me.

I appreciate rather than criticize.

I hold positive expectation
rather than negative anticipation.

I am life giving,
not life draining.

I observe what I make
my dominant vibration.

I make what I want
the essence of
my point of attraction.

Because things go better
when I am happier,
the law of attraction
helps me discover that more.

~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

When Death Comes

When death comes
 like the hungry bear in autumn;
 when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
 when death comes
 like the measle-pox:

 when death comes
 like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
 what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 And therefore I look upon everything
 as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
 and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
 and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 and I think of each life as a flower, as common
 as a field daisy, and as singular,

 and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
 tending, as all music does, toward silence,

 and each body a lion of courage, and something
 precious to the earth.

 When it's over, I want to say: all my life
 I was a bride married to amazement.
 I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 When it's over, I don't want to wonder
 if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
 I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
 or full of argument.

 I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.”

"Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."

"I have decided to stick with love.
Hate is too great a burden to bear."
~Martin Luther King, Jr

Weekly Reading

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry