Tag Archives: life

Golden Moments

“Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.” are the profound last lines of the poem, Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day, by Delmore Schwartz. It’s a beautiful philosophical contemplation of the passage of time, with a particularly great wrap-up last stanza.

The seconds, minutes, hours tick away relentlessly. Our lives are busy, and inundated with many distractions and responsibilities. Lately I’m looking at my age and thinking, “Wow! It’s going faster than I ever imagined at age 18.”

Realistically, we don’t have time to sit around and endlessly ponder about the value of time and our lives. But, it’s useful to carve out a little time (from time to time) for such introspection. Because your life IS precious, and the clock IS ticking. Ask yourself in this moment, are you spending it the way you would really like to?

The new year 2021 will soon be upon us. In retrospect, too many precious moments fell through the cracks in the turmoil of 2020, never to be lived. It is a good time now to think about how we will spend 2021. Because indeed, these are our lives, and it is OUR time.

It is crucially important (now more than ever) to have vision and intention for our lives. Otherwise, we will just end up with someone else’s idea of how life should be.

Photo courtesy Amit Pal and John, Pexels

Peace on Earth

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As 2020 draws to a close, perhaps Peace is the thing for which we most pray right now. 2020 has been a year of turmoil, confusion, and fear. It’s not just that the world is a mess. Our inner peace has been turned on its ear by a virus called COVID-19.

As Siddhārtha Gautama said, “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” Yes, peace begins with each of us. If we do not somehow find our own inner peace in this turbulence, then we are contributing to the collective angst.

We are the power that will create change. There is no one coming to save us; we must save ourselves. That is the whole point to this extreme growth period in which humanity finds itself.

Rather than praying for “deliverance”, ask for strength, knowledge, wisdom, courage, and most of all a way to find your own inner peace to deal with the outer chaos. Then you will walk in the world feeling balanced and with intention to be a spark of light that helps to create change and peace for humanity.

Align peacefully with your own wisdom and light, and trust that you will know the right things to do.

For those readers who celebrate it tomorrow, wishing for you a Christmas Day of great joy, abundance, love, and sharing with your family and friends. May we all partake of these gifts in the coming days ahead.

Inspirational Quotes:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ~ Rumi

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” ~ Albert Einstein

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there would be peace.” ~ John Lennon

Joy! (and more)

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Christmas close approaches, and with it a myriad of memories, feelings, and images. 2020 has magnified the importance of the people in our lives, and also our connection to our greater humanity. I started thinking yesterday of words that are most evocative of Christmas for me. The word that tops my list is: JOY

There is definitely a heightened feeling of love and goodwill around me at this time of year. This feeling gives me great joy as people take a little rest from the regular routines, worries, and burdens of every day life. I love to see joy expressed on the faces of people around me.

I think of joy is a life keyword, an evaluator of the world around me. I’m feeling that if our world was better balanced and society fairer, we’d be seeing a lot more joy on an every day basis. This is something for all of us to contemplate for the new year 2021 just ahead. How will we claim and live our joy? And not just our joy, but all of the positive aspects of life that we deserve. These are, after all, our lives. They are precious and they come around only once.

I realize that many people reading this do not celebrate Christmas. But in your own culture, you have celebrations that are sacred, important, beautiful. My partner and I lived in Thailand for some years, and I loved getting to know and taking part in the important traditions there. Loy Krathong (Festival of Light) was my favorite.

So, take a moment to think of your own culture’s sacred traditions and celebrations. What one word is evocative of how you feel as you share those celebrations with family and friends? If you would like to share in the comments, I would love to hear from you.

I send you best wishes for all the joy and blessing your hearts can hold (and more) in 2021.

Be the Light

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The battle between the dark and the light: It’s classic. Some of the greatest stories and movies are based on it. There has always been darkness and light in our world, and in fact both sides exist within ourselves. If it didn’t, our souls would have moved on to “bigger and better” things.

Is it my imagination though, that things are feeling just a tad weighted to the dark side at the moment? When I feel discouraged about it, I take solace in this: In every cycle of this classic battle throughout the ages, when a crisis of the dark occurs, humanity digs down deep to find the best parts of itself. Dark collapses and light emerges.

So, let’s keep on keeping on. Every candle makes a difference. That would be you and I, and every other person on the side of the light.

Be the light.

Inspirational Quotes:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” ~ St. Francis Of Assisi

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato

“Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.” ~ Roy T. Bennett

“There’s always going to be bad stuff out there. But here’s the amazing thing — light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light.” ~ Jodi Picoult

Susan L Hart / Author