Truth

RIC_7937-2 , a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Truth lifts the heart,
Like water refreshes thirst.

Rumi

The Journey

RIC_7885-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.

Don Williams, Jr.

Deep Listening

RIC_8014-2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things… [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

James Carroll

Life

RIC_7891-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     If there is one thing in life we can be sure of,

     it is that there will always be a next. Until there isn’t.

        Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Say Goodbye

Attitude

RIC_7517-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they

     always see the past better than it was, the present worse

     than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.

       Marcel Pagnol

Love me

RIC_6571-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr

Love me when I least deserve it,
because that's when I really need it. 

Swedish Proverb 

Landscape

RIC_5801-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     Tell me the landscape in which you live,
     and I will tell you who you are.
       
       José Ortega y Gassett

A frame

RIC_1358-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

A frame is a unit of space-time; i.e., a moment is not an abstraction, but is filled with what is seen by the eye.

Czeslaw Milosz,

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry

Life Story

RIC_1455-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

     How often do we tell our own life story? How often do

     we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life

     goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our

     account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely

     the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but

     - mainly - to ourselves.

       Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Life we planned

RIC_1141-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

         We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned so
    as to have the life that is waiting for us.

      Joseph Campbell

Living

RIC_9999-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Most people are not afraid of dying;

they are afraid of not having lived. 

Harold S. Kushner, Living a Life That Matters

Transformation

RIC_8943-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Victor E. Frankl

Civilized Society

RIC_8412-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Kindness and compassion toward all 

living things is the mark of a civilized 

society.

Cesar Chavez

Art

RIC_8523-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.

Jerzy Kosiński

Grace

RIC_8359_edited-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

May God give us thankful hearts

and keep us in friendship

to our lives' end.

Amen.

Merchant Taylors' Company Grace, William S. Kervin, A Year of Grace

.

Nature

RIC_5317-2, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Nature is not on the surface, it is inside. 

Colours, on the surface, show that inside. 

They show the roots of the world. 

Paul Cézanne in Cézanne by Joachim Gasquet

Maturity

RIC_2971-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Maturity:

Loving without losing identity.

Marion Woodman

Into visibility

RIC_2831, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

Nature cannot be forced,

but only loved into visibility.

Irene Manton

The big art

RIC_4977-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship.

The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

Integration

RIC_3465-1, a photo by rchoephoto on Flickr.

What is not integrated is repeated.

Angeles Arrien


Whether pain and suffering will have a proper place in our lives or whether we will be trapped in the canyon of pain and suffering depends on our efforts to integrate our experience into a wholeness that then releases its wisdom.

Mark Nepo, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives