The lesson that life constantly enforces is 'Look underfoot.' You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world. Naturalist John Burroughs

We want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving. But God is fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in a storm of grief and planted itself again.
Deena Metzger, *Prayers for a Thousand Years,* edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.
W. Beran Wolfe

"I always wanted to be an activist because I knew that if I wasn't an activist I would have to close my eyes -- and I wanted to see the world.
So I became an activist for very selfish reasons."
- Amiko Mayeno (Activist and Buddhist Practitioner)

"Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment."
- Shunryu Suzuki

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."
- Frank Herbert

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.
Gerald Brenan

"Having your way is a lot easier when you have more than one way."
Jennifer James as quoted in Chocolate for a Woman's Soul


"You don't have to be tall to see the moon." African Proverb

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.
~Sloan Wilson


The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.
~Frank Pittman, Man Enough

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in this universe. He must remain capable of saying: "There's no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we'll correct that when we come to it." The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: "Now what is this thing doing?The Mentat Handbook - Dune

Many things we do naturally become difficult only when we try to make them intellectual subjects. It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become ignorant.
Mentat Text Two (decto) - Dune

Truth suffers from too much analysis.
Ancient Fremen Saying - Dune

"Do not accept anything simply because it has been said by your teacher, or because it has been written in your sacred book, or because it has been believed by many, or because it has been handed down by your ancestors. Accept and live only according to what will enable you to see truth face to face."
- Buddha, as quoted in *Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life* by Thich Nhat Hanh

Prayer
by Alice Oswald

Here I work in the hollow of God's hand
with Time bent round into my reach. I touch
the circle of the earth, I throw and catch
the sun and moon by turns into my mind.
I sense the length of it from end to end,
I sway me gently in my flesh and each
point of the process changes as I watch;
the flowers come, the rain follows the wind.

And all I ask is this - and you can see
how far the soul, when it goes under flesh,
is not a soul, is small and creaturish -
that every day the sun comes silently
to set my hands to work and that the moon
turns and returns to meet me when it's done.

· From The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile by Alice Oswald, published by Faber

Joy Browne:
Just trying to do something — just being there, showing up — is how we get braver. Self-esteem is about doing.

Joy Browne:
How do you take something and make it special? The answer is a lot of hard work and a great deal of imagination.

Joy Browne:
If we give up the notion that everybody's life but ours is perfect, we would be a lot happier. Nobody's life is perfect.

Joy Browne:
She's an idiot. She's looking at life through a selfish, lusty haze.

Joy Browne:
Take your hurt feelings and channel them into political activism.

Pearl Buck:
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

Pearl Buck:
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Pearl Buck:
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Eileen Caddy:
Dwell not on the past. Use it to illustrate a point, then leave it behind. Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant of time. From this moment onwards you can be an entirely different person, filled with love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed.

Peggy Cahn:
I believe the sign of maturity is accepting deferred gratification.

Marie Chapian:
Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.



Collette:
What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

Tammy Cravit:
When you stop worrying, you free up energy that can be used more productively.

Tammy Cravit:
Worrying is all about the illusion of control. When you worry, you are expending energy, and it it feels like you are doing something.

Dorothea Dix:
In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do.

Dorothy Dix:
Happiness is largely a matter of self-hypnotism. You can think yourself happy or you can think yourself miserable.

Dorothy Dix:
It is a queer thing, but imaginary troubles are harder to bear than actual ones.

Dorothy Dix:
There isn't a single human being who hasn't plenty to cry over, and the trick is to make the laughs outweigh the tears.

Dorothy Dix:
We are never happy until we learn to laugh at ourselves.

Dorothy Dix:
You never saw a very busy person who was unhappy.

Isadora Duncan:
People don't live nowadays — they get about ten percent out of life.

Samantha Dunn:
Sometimes sweat is the best form of therapy.

Shannon Earls:
Our lives are changed by what we do, not by what others do to us.

Nanette Emry:
Nanette's Law: High Emotions + High Expectations = Drama.


Nanette Emry:
It is important to ponder life beyond your own personal needs.

Anne Frank:
Don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains. In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

Anne Frank:
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God.

Anna Freud:
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

Dory Grade:
Art is the tangible evidence of the human spirit.

Helen Keller:
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller:
Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings.

Lauré Kendrick:
An argument for optimism: When you look for good things in life, you are much more likely to find them.

Lauré Kendrick:
Anticipation is 90 percent of life's pleasure or pain. This means that, if you are optimistic, you will be happy 90 percent of the time.

Lauré Kendrick:
Happiness is a state of mind in which you are glad you are alive.

Lauré Kendrick:
Hormones don't cause feelings, they just exaggerate them.

Linda Knight:
I feel better when I eat right.



Linda Knight:
It's important to watch what you put in your mind.

Linda Knight:
Knowledge is a good thing.

Linda Knight:
Nice guys will wait.

Judith M. Knowlton:
I discovered I always have choices, and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude.

Cythina Nelms:
Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.

Johanna Newell:
When you made a face and your mother said, "Be careful, your face might freeze that way," she was right. It just takes longer than you think.

Anais Nin:
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

Anais Nin:
We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.

Ellen Parr:
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Susan Pierce:
Over the course of your life, there will be several times when you feel that nothing you are doing makes any sense, and you have to start all over again.

Susan Pierce:
The purpose of your life is to find interesting work. Once you realize this, everything becomes much better.

Elinko Pragnell:
All we have is have is this very moment. If we have a burning desire to change, there is always a way.


Elinko Pragnell:
Don't look at the problem. The more you look at problems, the more problems will come. Look for the solution.

Elinko Pragnell:
If you change your thinking, your life changes. But it's work.

Gilda Radner:
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
Friendship with one's self is all important because, without it, one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiousity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

Eleanor Roosevelt:
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Meryl Streep:
You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.

Amy Tan:
If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

Jane Wagner:
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?

Alice Walker:
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on Earth is it for.

Alice Walker:
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Meredith West:
If you want to stand out, don't be different, be outstanding.

Harriet Woods:
You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.

* With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse colonies perform a dance to the sun.


* Diamonds rain from the sky on Uranus and Neptune.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on the earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle, which we don’t even realize. :: Thich Nhat Hanh

"Stories move in circles... they don't go in straight lines... So ithelps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you're lost, you start to look and listen."

(From Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life: Discovering The Story of Your Life's Journey. Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 1992)

I do not believe that evil angels seize human institutions and pervert them. Rather, I see the demonic as arising within the institution itself, as it abandons its divine vocation for a selfish, lesser goal. Therefore I would not attempt to cast out the spirit of a city, for example, but rather, to call on God to transform it, to recall it to its divine vocation. My spiritual conversation is with God, not the demonic.- Walter Wink, The Powers That Be; Theology for a New Millennium, p. 197.

….a fanatic in a train who had given her a tract: Love God Or Go To Hell. It was only after a number of years that she had come to the conclusion that the title was aright, except perhaps for “go to” – since the truth would have been more accurately rendered by “be in Hell”. She was doubtful also about “God”; “Love” would have been sufficient by itself but it was necessary at first to concentrate on something which could be distinguished from all its mortal vessels, and the more one lived with that the more one found that it possessed in fact all the attributes of Deity. She had tried to enjoy, and she remembered vividly the moment when walking down Kingsway, it had struck her that there was no need for her to try or to enjoy; she had only to be still, and let that recognized Deity itself enjoy, as its omnipotent nature was. She still forgot occasionally; her mortality still leaped rarely into action, and confused her and clouded the sublime operation of – of It. But rarely and more rarely those moments came; more and more securely the working of that Fate which was Love possess her. For it was fatal in its nature; rich and austere at once, giving death and life in the same moment, restoring beyond belief all the things it took away – except the individual will.

The Greater Trumps
Charles Williams

History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive;
it knows the names of kings' bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.

This is the way of human folly.

~Henry Fabre

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
~By Maya Angelou


A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
one old love she can imagine going back to...
and one who reminds her how far she has come...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own
even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to
see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it in her
old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her
family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal
that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves, the width of her hips,
or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but its over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...

"I dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes -- all the better.

"Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I'd like a criticism of scintillating leaps of imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms."

-Michel Foucault, "The Masked Philosopher," interview in *Le Monde,* 1980

WHERE IS IT WRITTEN?

Music: Michel LegrandLyrics: Alan and Marilyn Bergman

PRAYER

God, our merciful father,

I’m wrapped in a robe of light,

Clothed in your glory

That spreads its wings over my soul.

May I be worthy

Amen.

~

There’s not a morning I begin without

A thousand questions running through my mind,

That I don’t try to find the reason and the logic

In the world that God designed.

The reason why a bird was given wings,

If not to fly and praise the sky

With every song it sings.

What’s right or wrong,

Where I belong

Within the scheme of things...

And why have eyes that see

And arms that reach

Unless you’re meant to know

There’s something more?

If not to hunger for the meaning of it all,

Then tell me what a soul is for?

Why have the wings

Unless you’re meant to fly?

And tell me please, why have a mind

If not to question why?

And tell me where-

Where is it written what it is I’m meant to be,

That I can’t dare

To have the chance to pick the fruit of every tree,

Or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility?

Just tell me where, tell me where?

If I were only meant to tend the nest,

Then why does my imagination sail

Across the mountains and the seas,

Beyond the make-believe of any fairy tale?

Why have the thirst if not to drink the wine?

And what a waste to have a taste

Of things that can't be mine?

And tell me where, where is it written what it is

I'm meant to be, that I can't dare-

To find the meanings in the mornings that I see,

Or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility?

Just tell me where- where is it written?

Tell me where-

Or if it's written anywhere?

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensations which tells you this is something you've always known.
(Conclusion of the Commentaries in "Appendix II: The Religion of Dune" )

LITANY AGAINST FEAR
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear - From Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series)

The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
~ George Bernard Shaw

A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.
~ Carlos Castaneda ~

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
~Soren Kierkegaard


Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
~ Milan Kundera ~

All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country.
~ Louis Claude de St. Martin ~

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
~ Elie Wiesel ~

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.

An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

A loss of interest in judging other people.

A loss of interest in judging self.

A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.

A loss of interest in conflict.

A loss of ability to worry (this is a very serious symptom).

Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

Frequent attacks of smiling.

An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.

An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

God places us at the crossroads of the worlds greatest need and our own greatest need for development.
Frederick Buechner

If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child. Frederick Buechner

In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.
Frederick Buechner

Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
Frederick Buechner

Plenary Powers

Pablo Neruda
(from: ‘Plenos Poderes’)


For the sun’s pure power, I write, for the full sea,
for the full and open road, wherever I can I sing,
only the vagrant night detains me
but I gain space in that interruption,
I gain shadow for lengths of time.

Night’s black wheat grows
while my eyes measure the field.
I forge keys from dawn to dusk:
I search for locks in the darkness
and I go throwing open ruined gates to the sea
until the wardrobes are full of foam.

I never tire of going and returning,
death does not stop me with its stone,
I never tire of presence and absence.

Sometimes I ask myself if it was from
my father or my mother or the mountains
I inherited these mineral tasks,

veins of a burning ocean,
and I know I go on, and go on to go on,
and I sing to sing on, and to sing.

Nothing explains what happens
when I close my eyes and circle
as if between two undersea channels,
one lifts me up to die in its branches
and the other sings so I might sing.

So then, I am composed of absence
and akin to the sea that assaults the reef
with its briny globules of whiteness

and takes back the stone into the wave.
So that whatever of death surrounds me
opens in me the window on life
and in the full paroxysm I am sleeping.
To the full light I go on through the shadow.

Everybody Says Don't
by Stephen Sondheim


Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't it isn't right
Don't it isn't nice

Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't walk on the grass
Don't disturb the peace
Don't skate on the ice

Well I say Do. I say,
Walk on the grass it was meant to feel
I say sail
tilt at the windmill
And if you fail you fail!

Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't
Everybody says don't get out of line
When they say that, then, lady that's a sign
Nine times out of ten
Lady you are doing just fine.

Make just a ripple come on be brave
This time a ripple next time a wave
Sometimes you have to start small,
Climbing the tiniest wall
Maybe you're going to fall
But it is better than not starting at all.

Everybody says No. Stop.
Musn't rock the boat
Musn't touch a thing

Everybody says don't
Everybody says wait
Everybody says can't fight city-hall
Can't upset the court
Can't laugh at the king!

Well I say try. I say,
Laugh at the King or he'll make you cry
Lose your poise
Fall if you have to, but lady, make a noise... Yes!

Everybody says don't
Everybody says can't
Everybody says wait around for miracles
That's the way the world is made
I insist on miracles, if you do then,
Miracles might come true,

Then I say don't... Don't be afraid!

"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."
Max Depree

"If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." -- Zen proverb

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice." -- Meister Eckhart

"If you bring forth what is within you, it will heal you. And if you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you." (from the Gospel of St. Thomas)

"Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know." -- William Shakespeare

"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." -- Talmud

Our Deepest Fear
by Marianne Williamson

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.

A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles,
Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3 (Pg. 190-191).

Thich Nhat Hanh

When we look at a chair,
we see the wood,
but we fail to observe the tree,
the forest, the carpenter, or our own mind.

When we meditate on it,
we can see the entire universe
in all its interwoven and interdependent relations in the chair.

The presence of the wood reveals the presence of the tree.
The presence of the leaf reveals the presence of the sun.
The presence of the apple blossoms reveals the presence of the apple.

Meditators can see the one in the many
and the many in the one.

The chair is not separate.
It exists only in its interdependent relations
with everything in the universe.

It is because all other things are.

(The Sun My Heart)

[As once the winged energy of delight]
by Rainer Maria Rilke

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

And he said unto them,
Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.
They cast therefore,
and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.
(St. John 21:6)

"The Guest House"
by Jelaluddin Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks in his book *Essential Rumi*

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.