When my teacher was seventy, he said, “When I was young I was like a tiger, but now I am like a cat!” He was very pleased to be like a cat. – Shunryu Suzuki
like a cat
still small voice
Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.
That’s what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us “my Beloved. – Henri Nouwen
Ascension
relief in desert places
If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness,…and God will guide you always, and give you relief in desert places.
Isaiah 58:9–11
what you believe
If I really believed what you believe, I wouldn’t get up from my knees.
Mahatma Gandhi
A time is coming
Abba Anthony said, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.'”
wealth
There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.
– John Ruskin
a forgiving heart
Each day we must seek a forgiving heart, for without the cultivation of an attitude of forgiveness we will never be at peace. We will live in forgiveness only to the extent we can truly become forgiving persons ourselves.
Always We Begin Again, The Benedictine Way of Living, John McQuiston II
Home by Mosab Abu Toha
What is home:
it is the shade of trees on my way to school
before they were uprooted.
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding
photo before the walls crumbled.
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants
slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and
put in a museum.
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and
roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house
to ashes.
It is the café where I watched football matches
and played—
My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold
all of these?
joy & misery
All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
Śāntideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva
Edge of Atlantic 