Sacred gift

Reuzenberenklauw, Amerongen 

"May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder."

~John O'Donohue


―  vader 75 jaar  ―

Little things comfort us

"Little things comfort us because little things distress us."

~Blaise Pascal

Let your memory be your travel bag

"Own only what you can always carry with you: 

know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag."

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our life is no dream

"Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.

Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable."

~George MacDonald

God only

"He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only."

~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The storks

"There the birds build their nests; the storks nest in the fir trees
[sometimes on the chimney of a castle]."

~Psalm 104:17

Until it finds its rest

"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless

until it finds its rest in thee."

~Augustine of Hippo

Save me

"You, Lord, are my protector;

you are all I want in this life.

Listen to my cry for help,

for I am sunk in despair.

Save me from my enemies;

they are too strong for me.

Set me free from my distress."

~Psalm 142:5-7b

Truly see

"We have to be in trouble,

before we remember for what is essential.

Those who truly see you, are the ones you need."

~John O'Donohue

Freedom of dawn

Now is the time of dark invitation
beyond a frontier that you did not expect.
Abruptly your old life seems distant.
You barely noticed how each day opened
a path through fields never questioned
yet expected deep down to hold treasure.

Now your time on earth becomes full of threat.
Before your eyes your future shrinks.
You lived absorbed in the day to day so continuous
with everything around you that you could forget you were separate.

Now this dark companion has come between you.
Distances have opened in your eyes.
You feel that against your will
A stranger has married your heart. 
Nothing before has made you feel so isolated and lost.

When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
may grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
to embrace this illness as a teacher
who has come to open your life to new worlds.
May you find in yourself a courageous hospitality
towards what is difficult, painful and unknown.

May you use this illness as a lantern
to illuminate the new qualities that will emerge in you.
May your fragile harvesting of this slow light help you
release whatever has become false in you.
May you trust this light to clear a path
through all the fog of old unease and anxiety
until you feel a rising within you,
a tranquility profound enough to call the storm to stillness.

May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness, 
ask it why it came,
why it chose your friendship,
where it wants to take you,
what it wants you to know,
what quality of space it wants to create in you,
what you need to learn to become more fully yourself,
that your presence may shine in the world.

May you keep faith with your body,
learning to see it as a holy sanctuary
which can bring this night wound
gradually towards the healing and freedom of dawn.

~John O'Donohue
For a Friend on the Arrival of Illness

Like a river flows

"I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

~John O'Donohue

Big enough

Probably the largest cornflower field of Holland. City woods of Rhenen

"If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped."

~Timothy Keller

Narrow and crooked

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked,

in which you can walk with love and reverence."

~Henry David Thoreau