“. . . I have many friends in New York who are not religious people. Most, I would say. Either they fell away from the spiritual teachings of their youth or they never grew up with any God to begin with . . . What I’m seeing in some of my friends, though, as they are aging, is a longing to have something to believe in. But this longing chafes against any number of obstacles, including their intellect and common sense. Despite all their intellect, though, these people live in a world that careens about in a series of wild and devastating and completely nonsensical lurches. Great and horrible experiences of either suffering or joy occur in the lives of all these people, just as with the rest of us, and these mega-experiences tend to make us long for a spiritual context in which to express either lament or gratitude, or to seek understanding. The problem is—what to worship, whom to pray to? . . . . “
—-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
desire
Morning Trip (306)
“On with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there’s any dance to dance, or any joy to unconfine.”
–Mark Twain
Morning Trip (305)
“Faith and prayer are important elements of my belief in God. Faith is my rock, but it is also the way I align my thoughts, my heart, and my actions to realize my goals. Prayer is the way I connect with the energy of God, it is also the way I clarify to myself what i am asking for. Thus, when I enter a challenging and uncertain situation I say, ‘I’m putting my trust in my faith, Dear Lord, and I am stepping out on Your Word.'”
–Maya Angelou
Morning Trip (239)
“Advice to those about to acquire a Vermeer: Always look at it as it might appear in its average moments–not as it might glow in the light-dance of the fireplace, or burn from within on a fall Sunday morning when the amalgamation of the sun’s rays blasts red upon those fat dutch cheeks, or as you would make it glow when you return home flushed with the one victory or another, or with wine. None of that.
Rather think: What will this masterpiece look like at 2:45 on a February afternoon when you have run out of toilet paper and the roof leaks and a horse has just kicked in your kitchen door for the fun of it. And a dead badger is wedged high in the chimney, stinking up the house. Consider such moments as these, when you are about to acquire your Vermeer. But yes. She is as lovely as a Vermeer.”
–Roger Rosenblatt, The Book of Love
Morning Trip (229)
“Poverty is not the absence of goods, but rather the overabundance of desire.”
–Plato
Morning Trip (221)
“Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability.”
–J. Krishnamurti
Morning Trip (208)
“The Heart Remembers Everything It Loved
Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.
The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.
The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.
The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.
And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.
The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.”
– Joyce Sutphen
Morning Trip (203)
“Don’t go into the inextricable jungle looking for the elephant who is already quietly at home.
Nothing to do
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
–and everything happens by itself.”
–Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche
Elisa's Spot 