“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”
Albert Einstein
Quiet
Unselfish work
Unselfish work leads to silence, for when you work selflessly, you don’t need to ask for help. Indifferent to results, you are willing to work with the most inadequate means. You do not care to be much gifted and well equipped. Nor do you ask for recognition and assistance. You just do what needs to be done, leaving success and failure to the unknown. For everything is caused by innumerable factors, of which your personal endeavor is but one. Yet such is the magic of man’s mind and heart that the most improbable happens when human will and love pull together.
– I Am That By Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
A verse for our time by Rudolf Steiner
A Verse for Our Time
We must eradicate from the soul
All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future.
We must acquire serenity
In all feelings and sensations about the future.
We must look forward with absolute equanimity
To everything that may come.
And we must think only that whatever comes
Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.
It is part of what we must learn in this age,
namely, to live out of pure trust,
Without any security in existence.
Trust in the ever present help
Of the spiritual world.
Truly, nothing else will do
If our courage is not to fail us.
And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves
Every morning and every evening.
– Rudolf Steiner
a ship
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.—J. A. Shedd
Free to delight
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?
– Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
May I sit in you
Dear God,
Be the foundation of my being. May I sit in you in true rest, stand in you in sure thought, and be rooted in you in endless love. Reveal yourself to me so that I may know my true nature better and act as I truly am.
– Julian of Norwich
Here I am. Enflesh me.
To paint a picture, to write a story or compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth giver.
[…]
I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small comes to the artist and says: “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” And the artist says “My soul doth magnifies the Lord” and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.
[..]
We lose the ability to see angels as we grow older and that is a tragic loss.”
Walking on water by Madeleine L’Engle
Walk
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
Søren Kierkegaard
The right road
“Sometimes by erring one finds the right road”
– Vincent Van Gogh
Intimate friends – Betty Smith
“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
From A Tree Grows in Brooklyn By Betty Smith
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