If you see someone going up to heaven by his own will, grab his leg and pull him down again.
– John Kolobos, one of the desert fathers
pull him down
faith
A gentle person
Once in a while we meet a gentle person. Gentleness is a virtue hard to find in a society that admires toughness and roughness. We are encouraged to get things done and to get them done fast, even when people get hurt in the process. Success, accomplishment, and productivity count. But the cost is high. There is no place for gentleness in such a milieu.
Gentle is the one who does “not break the crushed reed, or snuff the faltering wick” (Matthew 12:20). Gentle is the one who is attentive to the strengths and weaknesses of the other and enjoys being together more than accomplishing something. A gentle person treads lightly, listens carefully, looks tenderly, and touches with reverence. A gentle person knows that true growth requires nurture, not force. Let’s dress ourselves with gentleness. In our tough and often unbending world our gentleness can be a vivid reminder of the presence of God among us.
– Henri Nouwen
sometimes a man – Rilke
Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.
square water
As another sacred hadith has Allah say, “I am as my loving servant imagines me to be.” The water takes on the quality of the cup. Blue cup, blue water. Square cup, square water.
– physicians of the heart, p. 193
be careful
Until yesterday you were distracted, so although so much of the bardo state has appeared you have not recognised, and you have so much fear. If you are distracted now, the rope of compassion will be cut off and you will go to a place where there is no liberation, so be careful.
– Tibetan Book of The Dead
Hu
“Hu,” the aspirant, breathy sound made at the end of the word Allah, is a sound that is hidden as a divine Name within each recitation of Allah. The relationship that Allah and Hu have with each other describes the nature of ecstasy. It does so by conveying that there is a secret within the secret. The subtle way the sound “Hu” arises at the end of the invocation “Allah” also suggests an infinite process of essence of essence of essence…
– physicians of the heart, p. 190
Rumi
To say that the world…
“To say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?
Thus the better we are able to conceive of the fullness of joy, the purer and more intense will be our suffering in affliction and our compassion for others. What does suffering take from him who is without joy?
And if we conceive the fullness of joy, suffering is still to joy what hunger is to food.
It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy in order to find reality through suffering. Otherwise life is nothing but a more or less evil dream,” – Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace.
Let them know
Wisdom 13:2-5
…but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.
If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them.
And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them.
For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.
Rumi
Pale sunlight, pale the wall.
Love moves away. The light changes.
I need more grace than I thought.
Edge of Atlantic 