Something Beautiful

Making decisions (inherently sacred)

Once again I am going through some very unhappy times with my family. In reaching out to art, philosophy and spirituality for some comfort, I came across a book called Decision Making and Spiritual Discernment, by Nancy Bieber.

Nancy Bieber is a Quaker and a very interesting lady. I've found comfort and nourishment in reading just the few pages at her website.

I've also ordered her book. Here are two sentences from its early pages:

Making decisions is inherently sacred work, even when we don't recognize it as such. Through our decisions, we shape our unique and sacred lives."

To me, those two sentences are truly beautiful.

Concentrate on the value, not the results

I hope that my friend and fellow blogger am will forgive me for a bit of shameless pilfering from her very fine blog, Talking 37th Dream with Rainbow.  Just a few days ago she quoted the following from Thomas Merton: 

Do not depend on the hope of results. … you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.

-- Thomas Merton in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton

Emerson on the stars

Tonight I came across this observation by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.

One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Worth listening to

I haven't been able to verify this yet, but earlier today I read the following quote, presumably attributable to e. e. cummings:

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.

Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Making the ground green

One of my favorite quotations, from Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) --

The work an unknown good [person] has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.

Loving our country (Cornel West)

In the words of Cornel West --

To understand your country, you must love it. To love it, you must, in a sense, accept it. To accept it as how it is, however is to betray it. To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that in it which shows what it might become. America - this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of the no into the yes, needs citizens who love it enough to reimagine and remake it.

(from Unger and West, The Future of American Progressivism, 93, 1998; via Ghost in the Machine)

Knowing our enemies

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Be yourself (really)

I'm going to put this here because it is something I need to remember --

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I also like this: "Run your own race."

The prize divides us

I wish I could learn to remember this, to make it really part of me (translated by Thomas Merton) --

When an archer is shooting for nothing 
  He has all his skill.
  If he shoots for a brass buckle
  He is already nervous.
  If he shoots for a prize of gold
  He goes blind
  Or sees two targets--
  He is out of his mind!

    His skill has not changed.  But the prize
  Divides him.  He cares.
  He thinks more of winning
  Than of shooting--
  And the need to win
  Drains him of power.

 

In a similar vein --

No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm
Our fluttering heart?

Non attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.

Empty your heart,
Sit quietly on a mat.

In meditation we become one with All;
Tao billows like the vapors
In a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.

-- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

Our errand

John F. Kennedy:

Every man can make a difference and everyone should try.

Woodrow Wilson:

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. Woodrow Wilson