Solomon Ibn Gabirol: “Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” Continue reading
By Sue Monk Kidd
When I was six years old someone asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At that age, living in a small Georgia town in the 1950s, I could only think of four careers for women—they were the only stories I knew: teacher, nurse, secretary, and housewife. By some process of elimination, I picked nurse. From that moment on, I began to get little nurse kits for my birthdays. Continue reading
Baha’i Tradition of Service (Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha)
One amongst His Teachings is this, that love and good faith must so dominate the human heart that men will regard the stranger as a familiar friend, the malefactor as one of their own, the alien even as a loved one, the enemy as a companion dear and close.
Derived from Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (Pages 34-35)
Reflecting on the political cynicism of American society and the ironic detachment that characterizes many in his generation, twenty-four-year-old Jedediah Purdy writes: “We doubt the possibility of being at home in the world, yet we desire that home above all else.” Continue reading
Fr. Memo: “Spirituality is a place. It is a place of connection. It is a place of who we are and who we are to become. From a theological perspective, that ‘place’ is the where the spirit is.”
Ronald Rolheiser: “Whatever the expression, everyone is ultimately talking about the same thing – an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else. This dis-ease is universal. Desire gives no exemptions.” Continue reading
The corporal works of mercy (flowing from the Gospel, especially Matthew 25: 31-46) are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and bury the dead. The spiritual works of mercy, also rooted in the Christian scripture, are to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offenses, bear wrongs patiently, and pray for the living and dead. Continue reading
“For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to see me. . . . I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.” -Matthew 25:35-40 (Christian scripture)
“In this world, hate never dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.” -Dhammapada 1:5 (Collected sayings of the Buddha/Buddhist Scripture)
“Love the whole world as if it were yourself; then you will truly care for all things.” -Tao-te-ching 13:4 (Classical Chinese text)
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool for love,
for your dream,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon.
I want to know
if you have touched
the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become
shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it,
or fade it,
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy,
mine or your own;
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful,
to be realistic,
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true. I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure,
yours and mine,
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest
me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer is a Canadian writer and mystic. This prose poem offers an invitation to every single one of us to “show up” in the universe.