Wednesday 24 October 2012

New Day



Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday 15 October 2012

Things Take Time


I believe one of the temptation in one’s spiritual journey is to do too much too soon. One can think of a great act of charity as something that arises naturally without one’s act of will; or that great act of charity was formed over the years in little bits and pieces.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Paris
February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,
     
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

Wednesday 3 October 2012

To laugh often and much

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of the intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
to know that one life has breathed easier
because you lived here.
This is to have succeeded.

Power of Celebration

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.

Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.

To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle....

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”