It’s important to remember that you mustn’t expect everyone to respond to your efforts. If you set your highest intention to compassion and courage and truth, it doesn’t really matter if you see an immediate effect or not. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton wrote to a young activist, “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.” Your intention and your good heart will guide the way.   ~Jack Kornfield

these uncertain times are a microcosm of all the uncertain times….

inquiry for today~   when the relentlessness of compassion reveals itself again, how will you respond?

high intention

Our hearts could be described as huge muscles that open and close, shrivel and expand, soften and harden, love and hate. We have to work diligently to keep our hearts open, just as we have to work to keep other muscles in the body strong. Purifying our hearts is an ongoing process, like physical exercise. It is, as the poet Galway Kinnell writes, necessary to “reteach a thing its loveliness.”   Valerie Mason-John