You are the glory of the city,
you are the joy of the nation,
you are the honor of the people.

You are all-beautiful, mother,
you are unstained and lovely,
you alone were born without fault.

You are the happiest of all mothers
and the most worthy of praise,
virgin, mother, queen, O Mary.

--Traditional prayer to the Virgin Mary

We can partake in ( Read more... )

Mother of fields, mother of waters ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Love courses through everything.
--Fakhruddin Iraqi

The work of love is to shape the stuff of relationship into a tool that fits our hands. With each hardship faced, with each illusion confronted, with each trespass looked at and owned, another piece of ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

The best and most beautiful things in the
world cannot be seen or touched...but are
felt in the heart.
--Helen Keller

It involves painting thin layers of pigment, one at a time, on the porcelain, letting each dry and soak into the porcelain itself.Tuesday ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Older now, you find holiness
in anything that continues.
--Naomi Shihab Nye

...I am standing in a gentle rain, each drop a whisper of simple things...Thursday 24th ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

In how you have come
is the secret
to how you must go.
This is how after years of feeling mistreated, I can find myself mistreating others and, suddenly, I feel humbled. This is how in giving myself away to be loved, I finally, after years, arrive at the ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

We carry within us
the wonders we seek
without us.
--Thomas Brown

So too, we; for don't our bubbles of pain get trapped in our feathers, turning to jewls the closer we get to the current under everything…? …In truth, the more we accept our limitations and ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

My mom said she learned how to swim.
Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That's how she leaned how to swim. I said, "Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim."
--Paula Poundstone

Reframing what happens to us can be a ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Ubuntu-I am because you are,
you are because I am...
-A deep African way of being

It is something I have always believed in, that in the ignited space of our deepest suffering, in the release of our deepest fears, in the familiar peace of our deepest ( Read more... )

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Who knows
that in the depth of the ravine
of the mountain of my hidden heart
a firefly of my love is aflame.
-Abutsu-Ni

So what are we to do with our tiny little firefly?It's rather fitting irony, I think, that the first time I saw a firefly was when I ( Read more... )