So much depends on whether we see everything we meet as alive or inert. When we meet things, looking for the life they hold, we tend to listen and receive. We tend to engage and join. When we meet things as inert, we tend to observe and manipulate. How we move through the world depends on whether we view everything we meet as self-contained or as containing all of life. With no sense of how things are connected, I may move things along without ever being touched by life. One of the purposes of listening is to break our self-reference. Listening beyond our own silhouette, each thing we encounter is alive- be it a stone, a dragonfly, a symphony, or a peach. When we can listen, each particle of being, no matter how small, invites our presence and attention, so we might hear and feel the Universe through it. When relating to what we encounter, we become more possible ourselves; able to grow from what other things see and feel. I invite you to immerse yourself- through words and beneath words- in the deeper, fresher, eternal ways of listening that keep us alive….Mark Nepo

affirm the experience of paradox, of not knowing, of total surrender…..pull the ineffable through dark shadows, sweeping generalizations, and blistering confusion…..remember how to connect to the whistling wind….be whole…..

With an increasing capacity for subtle distinctions, we begin to acquire a discerning heart, a heart that can better distinguish shades of difference between reality and illusion, truth and falsity, good and evil, love and disunity. As we become more and more aware of subtle distinctions, we also become more aware of fundamental likenesses. We see how things are alike and different, and we appreciate their likenesses and differences more. We realize the value of diversity within unity. We see that all things are one in being, one not in uniformity but in unity, a unity that contains differences in harmony. More and more we see and value the richness of texture in all of life. The openness to distinctions also helps us have hope in the midst of despair. Hope enables us to trust that appearances shall not be decisive. One of the greatest needs of our time is hope……Christian Koontz

the struggle for re-birth

I am the bird that flutters against your window

in the morning,

and your closest friend, whom you can never know,

blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the wood, so pale,

and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.

The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle

of the day and makes you

feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.

I walk beside you all day and look intently at you

and put my mouth against your heart

though you’re not aware of it.

I am your third arm, and your second

shadow, the white one,

whom you cannot accept,

and who can never forget you.

….Rolf Jacobsen