Miracle

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Pain Transformed

“When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope”
-Henri Nouwen

Quotable Sunday

"They shall all sit under their own vines and their own fig trees, and they shall live in peace and unafraid." (Micah 4:4)

Quotable Sunday

"Rites and symbols use the ordinary and earthy elements of our existence and, by encircling them, ratify, sanctify, complete. The ordinary becomes the container for the divine and safely holds what is uncontainable. The transcendent is disclosed in what is wonderfully familiar: bread, wine, fire, ash, earth, water, oil, tears, seeds, songs, feastings and fastings, pains ad joys, bodies and thoughts, regressions and transformations." --Gertrud Mueller Nelson in To Dance With God

Bonus points if anyone who was at this ritual can identify when it took place, and who owns the boot in the corner.

Quotable Sunday

He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.
-Lao tzu

Quotable Sunday

There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits."
-- Robert Southey

Quotable Sunday

"Hands to work, hearts to God." -Shaker Axiom