Monthly Archives: July 2014

FAITH IS THE BIRD

Orange bird looking at the camera

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
-Tagore Rabindranath

In our deepest despair, when conflict and sadness and anger and confusion overwhelm us, hope for the future can be hard to access.  Remember that this is just one moment in time. Have faith that there is something ahead that will help things progress, bring about change, and lighten the day.  It is fine to merely sit with that faith and not worry so much about how it might occur. It will occur. Big changes often happen in baby steps, so they are hard to recognize.

I have found it useful, in dark moments, to literally put a tiny smile on my face. I am not feeling it; it is just a physical change. It is interesting that this slight change of turning up the corners of my mouth affects my attitude. It allows me to feel a little hope and slightly change my attitude, which is about all I can control. Baby steps – even towards faith.

LETTING GO

DSC_2195

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.

–Rumi

Sometimes after people spend a good amount of time truly listening to each other, they find that they calm down and they are able to look around at the world around them.  They discover that who was right and who was wrong are much less important than how they were treated and how they felt.  Letting go of right and wrong becomes easier when we practice listening to each other.  Deep listening is a skill that can be developed over time.  We learn to speak as children, but as adults it is the listening that changes and improves the quality of our conversations.