The Genius & Wisdom of Rumi

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

“What you seek is seeking you.”   

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you." ― Rumi

Pema Chödrön on Buddhism | BillMoyers.com

Pema Chödrön on Buddhism | BillMoyers.com
Pema Chodron is one of my favorite Buddhist authors. Her book, "When Things Fall Apart" is a great one. The link above will take you to an enlightening interview between Bill Moyers and Ani Pema; it is worth every minute of your time to watch (if you prefer to read, the transcript is also available on the website).

A few of my favorite quotes from the piece:
PEMA CHÖDRÖN: "The thing is, what we find if we're not used to sitting quietly with ourselves, not used to meditation, not used to having any inner solitude in our lives, we find that we're very threatened by nothing happening."
"...someone once said to me, 'The best in that spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and you say, "I wonder what's going to happen today?" ' And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life."
"...one of the principle teachings of the Buddha was that he said, 'I teach only two things. Suffering and the end of suffering.' So this conviction that sentient beings could be free of suffering, they could end their suffering. That doesn't mean physical pain. It doesn't mean outer circumstances being unpleasant. It means what you do with the things that happen."
BILL MOYERS: "What do you think he meant by suffering? And what do you Buddhists mean by suffering?"
PEMA CHÖDRÖN: "Suffering?...Well, that's a complex question, but it doesn't mean that we could be free of that, if fire burns you, it won't hurt. If you get cut, it won't hurt. It also doesn't mean that if someone you love very dear, deeply, dies you won't feel sadness. And it doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to you anymore, you know? It doesn't mean that you won't have your personal tragedies and catastrophes and crisis. And it also certainly doesn't mean that you could avoid planes flying into the towers...the end of suffering has to do with how you relate with pain. Let's distinguish just for semantics, the difference between, let's call pain the unavoidable and let's call suffering what could what could lessen and dissolve in our lives."

SHANTIDEVA: "We shrink from suffering, but we love its causes."

DALAI LAMA: "Religion is not outside. Religion is here. I think essential, essential in a religion is good heart. Something I call love and compassion is the universal religion. That's my religion."

Simple, brilliant, ancient wisdom...not easy to practice, but something tells me it is worth the effort.

You Are the Beloved

Sunrise over Port Madison, Bainbridge Island, by P.J. Boren

"You can deal with an enormous amount of success as well as an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the beloved. Long before your father & mother, your brothers & sisters, your teachers, your church, or any people touched you in a loving as well as in a wounding way - long before you were rejected by some person or praised by somebody else - that voice has been there always. 'I have loved you with an everlasting love.' That love is there before you were born & will be there after you die." - Henri J. M. Nouwen

Prayer from Robin's Metanoia (Blog)

Thanks to my friend, Robin, of the blog Metanoia, I was introduced to this prayer recently. It is so filled with wisdom that it deserves to be shared (the emphasis on certain passages is mine):

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted,

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen."

Note: though the words of this prayer are often attributed to Oscar Romero, it was apparently composed by Ken Untener.

Inspiration

"Trouble creates a capacity to handle it....meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it."    -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Did you see Oprah's interview with Stephanie (NieNie) and Christian Nielson on Wednesday? If you missed it, I recommend that you go to http://www.oprah.com/ and look it up. It's deeply inspiring, and quite beautiful. NieNie's blog is one of my favorites.

A few days ago, I was led to these quotes by Gannet Girl's posting about them. She found them on http://www.glowinthewoods.com/ (I believe that they are part of a Jewish worship service).  I am re-printing them here, because they speak my heart.

"This is the vision of a great and noble life:

To endure ambiguity and to make light shine through it;

To stand fast in uncertainty;

To prove capable of unlimited love and hope."

"May the pains of past bereavements grow more gentle;

Indeed, let them be transformed into gratitude to our dear ones who have died

And tenderness to those who are still with us."

This prayer reflects my desire for meaning in my life. Part of the meaning that I'm always seeking has to do with integrating the painful reality of what we lived through, what we witnessed, and what is lost to us, due to Katie's cancer and her passing, into the rest of what remains for me in my life. I cannot return to my old life. I can't live on the surface. Life has taken me deeper, and I do not know what my life is supposed to look like, except that I'm alive, and I'm to do what is in front of me...and to do it with love and kindness.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting with one of the coordinators of the new Adolescent and Young Adults Cancer Program at Seattle Children's Hospital. We spent an hour discussing the program, the issues facing adolescents and young adults who have cancer, and the book that I am working on now. I hope that this book will be a resource for just this group of people. The discussion we enjoyed gave me new insights into what are some of the difficulties facing adolescents who endure cancer treatment. I hadn't thought about some of them before, because Katie was 11 and 12 years old during her treatment. It was eye-opening and inspiring. It made me want to get involved, but I usually feel that way when I visit Seattle Children's Hospital.

Last evening, my mom and I attended a New Members meeting with the Guild Association. We learned about other new guilds, met some of their members, and heard about why they started their guilds. We learned what they are planning in the way of fund-raising for the hospital. I didn't know that when Seattle Children's was founded, 102 years ago, there was NO major pediatric hospital in existence, west of the Mississippi River. The founder (Anna Clise) had a young son who died, and decided to DO SOMETHING about the situation. She founded what is now Seattle Children's Hospital, and started the first guild to support it.

I know a lot of bereaved mothers who feel the same way. On certain days, grief lights a fire under me; I can't stand to see another family endure what we have suffered. I want to alleviate - and at best, prevent - that kind of suffering. I want to FIGHT BACK...but I intend to do it with love. I want to bring into the world some of the kind of light that left it when Katie passed away.
I can't bring Katie back, but I believe that I can bring light...which leads me back to those prayers which I quoted above.

endurance

light

steadfastness

love

hope

gentleness

transformation
gratitude
tenderness
Amen.