As the eagle soars in the endless blue,
Its shadow races after it, far below.
Yet space does not divide: bird and shadow are linked.
So too each act—each choice and consequence.
Source: Jigme Lingpa – Tibet, 18th Century
Category Archives: Food for Thought
Ideas, stories, quotes, and short essays or selections from books that stimulate thoughtful consideration of a topic or spiritual principle.
Wounded
How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others… But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.
Source: M. Scott Peck, “A Different Drum”
God’s Work
God does not work by only one method, paint in only one color, play in only one key, nor does He make only one star shine onto the earth. God’s mystery is the rich spectrum of color that is gathered together in the purity of the sun’s white light. The symphonic harmony of all the stars is built up on precisely their manifold variety.
Source: Eberhard Arnold: A Testimony from His Writings
A Child’s Life
A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every passerby leaves a mark.
Chinese proverb
Children Are Like Kites
You spend years trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you are both breathless. They crash … they hit the roof … you patch, comfort and assure them that someday they will fly.
Finally, they are airborne. They need more string, and you keep letting it out. They tug, and with each twist of the twine, there is sadness that goes with joy.
The kite becomes more distant, and you know it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that binds you together and will soar as meant to soar … free and alone.
Only then do you know that you have done your job.
Author Unknown, Source Unknown
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The True Front
On the true front each must fight against himself, and only through the decisions of this battle is he given full power for other decisions. He is the man of whom it is said that he has weakened the strength of the battle; but in fact he keeps alive the truth of the battle.
Author: Martin Buber
Source: “Recollection of a Death” (1929)
Where is the Dwelling of God
“Where is the dwelling of God?” This was the question with which the Rabbi of Kotzk surprised a number of learned men who happened to be visiting him. They laughed at him: “What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of his glory?” Then he answered his own question: “God dwells wherever people let him in.”
Source: Martin Buber
Scaffolding
Our true life is not this external, material life that passes before our eyes here on earth, but the inner life of our spirit, for which the visible life serves only as a scaffolding—a necessary aid to our spiritual growth.
Seeing before him an enormously high and elaborately constructed scaffolding, while the building itself only just shows above its foundations, man is apt to make the mistake of attaching more importance to the scaffolding than to the building for whose sake the former has been temporarily put up.
We must remind ourselves and one another that the scaffolding has no meaning and importance except to render possible the erection of the building itself.
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Fruitfulness
We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
The Road You Must Take
Discipleship is not limited to what you can understand – it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own understanding, and I will help you to comprehend.
Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. In this way Abraham went forth from his father, not knowing where he was going. That is the way of the cross. You cannot find it in yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man.
Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire – that is the road you must take. It is to this path that I call you, and in this sense that you must be my disciple.
Source: Martin Luther (1483-1546), quoted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Cost of Discipleship.”