Mother Teresa's "Anyway" Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Listen to your life...

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~FREDERICH BUECHNER

Martin Luther King "I have a dream"

Zen Meditation Chimes

There is a Brokenness

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness out
of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief that leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside which is unbreakable
and whole,
while learning to sing.

Rashani

God Speaking - Hafiz

Everyone
Is God speaking.
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?

Throwing Away - Breaking Free - Susannah

I'm going through old stuff while the kids are in Florida visiting their dad. It's some stuff I've been dragging around with me for years: journals, college notebooks, old letters. I'm filtering through pretty quickly - tossing a lot...I just don't feel the need to lug it around anymore, yet it feels a little painful and "a lot scary" to let go of it. I consider what this letting go means to me right now...and I notice that it depends on what I'm putting in the throw away box.

Many of the journals make me cringe from the cotton candy, overly emotional writing .... and I am gladly getting rid of them. I am not a great writer of journal entries. I know this about myself: I write much better when there's a real person on the other end who will be receiving my words. (In fact, as I write this entry, I occasionally have to pretend that I'm writing to Bob or Devon or Mari or Aaron or Ann or Tammy....) In my box of papers, I found a letter from David Rossburg...this guy I had a huge crush on when I was a camp counselor in NJ the summer of 1987... Even David wrote, "You are an awesome letter writer!" .... Still, I may keep a few of these embarrassingly dull journals - like the one I took with me to Europe in 1990 after I graduated from University of Cincinnati. Despite its cringe factor, that journal is priceless for what it represents to me - something along the lines of the bliss of breaking free.

When I toss the old college papers, I'm tossing out validation from professors who wrote nice things about me and my writing, and throwing them away is a little unnerving. It still feels really good to read those comments from 22 years ago! But with each paper I pick up, it gets easier to put it in the cardboard trash box. (My friend Tammy is my personal bonfire coordinator. In fact, she just wrote me an email which ended, "Start piling the fodder for the bonfire!")

I did find a paper I'm saving, though. It's one I wrote for Professor McEvoy's Ed Psych 300 course in 1991 when I was a grad student at WVU. It's called "Reflections on Ballet and Jung." Here's a quote: "I am still in the process of "coming to selfhood," and this process deals with bringing what is in the unconscious to the conscious level of the mind" [Dr. McEvoy added "and expressing it in some form of identity.] God! Even then I was introspective and interested in living the symbolic life, curious about the subconscious and unconscious patterns that might be playing out in my life. In the paper I consider my relationship with myself about ballet and wonder "why I had to break away from something I loved." I share that "quitting ballet was a trauma in my life, but it stirred me up enough that I began confronting not just the 'dance issues' within myself, but many other issues within my psyche which I had yet to realize existed." I could have written that...like....um....a minute ago....replacing the words "ballet" and "dance" with words like "divorce" and "bankruptcy."

I cried when I read Dr. McEvoy's comment to me: "I find this paper remarkable - you have taken great jumps and are well on the way to fullness and individuation - there are many expressions of the self and dance still may remain one for you (but it should be this - an expression of the self), but if not you will realize others - as Campbell would advise - follow your bliss!" Of course, the comment, itself, is so kind and personal....so "unprofessorlike," but more than that, I noticed that I simultaneously felt awe and sadness for the young woman I was...awe at what I knew and felt intuitively even then, and sadness that I was the last person on Earth who thought this was "remarkable."

So...I'm 43 and at another breaking free moment in my life, and I've been feeling some very familiar feelings... feelings that result from the universe pretty much prying the death grip off some of the things I have held on to so tightly...and really they're not things as much as they are what those things represent to me -- it usually comes back to some sort of limiting belief I have about myself ... usually along the lines of "Who I am is not enough."

So this breaking free and throwing away...yeah...it is freaky...

and it is freeing...

and it is absolutely remarkable ...

Watch a Panda Grow

Love - Buddha

2010 Predictions from ... Beyond.

Andrew Solomon: The Refugees

One Love!

Inner Gold - Join the Conversation

Jung Documentary

Fear vs. Intuition - Rob Brezsny

Click here to listen to a short audio of Rob Brezsny sharing how to tell the difference between fearful fantasies and true intuition...

Footsteps - Thoreau

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deeper physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

~ Henry David Thoreau