WALK DON’T RUN by Rob Bell

Walk, don’t run.
That’s it.

Walk, don’t run.Slow down, breathe deeply,
and open your eyes because there’s
a whole world right here within this one. 

The bush doesn’t suddenly catch on fire, it’s been burning the whole time.

Moses is simply moving
slowly enough to see it. And when he does,
he takes off his sandals.

Not because
the ground has suddenly become holy,
but because he’s just now becoming aware that
the ground has been holy the whole time.

Efficiency is not God’s highest goal for your life,
neither is busyness,
or how many things you can get done in one day,
or speed, or even success.

But walking,
which leads to seeing,
now that’s something.
That’s the invitation for every one of us today,
and everyday, in every conversation, interaction,
event, and moment: to walk, not run. And in doing so,
to see a whole world right here within this one.

THIS MORNING by David Budbill

Oh, this life,
the now,
this morning,

which I
can turn
into forever

by simply
loving
what is here,

is gone
by noon.

LONGING By Julie Cadwallader Staub

Consider the blackpoll warbler.She tips the scales
at one ounce
before she migrates, taking off
from the seacoast to our east
flying higher and higher
ascending two or three miles
during her eighty hours of flight
until she lands,
in Tobago,
north of Venezuela
three days older,
and weighing half as much.

She flies over open ocean almost the whole way.

Oh she is not so different from us.
The arc of our lives is a mystery too.
We do not understand,
we cannot see
what guides us on our way:
that longing that pulls us toward light.

Not knowing, we fly onward
hearing the dull roar of the waves below.

Wholeheartedness

“Wholeheartedness  is a precious gift, but no one  can  actually  give it to you. You have to find  the  path that has heart and then walk it impeccably. In  doing that, you again and again encounter your own  headaches, your  own falling flat on your  face.  But  in wholeheartedly following  that path,  this inconvenience is  not an obstacle. It's  simply  a  certain texture  of life, a certain energy of life. Not  only that,  sometimes  when you just get flying and  it  all feels so good, and you think, "This is it,  this  is the  path that has heart," you suddenly fall flat  on your  face.  Everybody's looking at you. You  say  to yourself, "What happened to that path that had heart? This  feels like the path of mud in the face?"  Since you  are whole-heartedly committed to the journey,  it pricks you, it pokes you. It's like someone  laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when  you don't know what to do. It humbles  you.  It opens your heart.”

Pema Chodron, from The Wisdom of No Escape