In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
– Rabia
“The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.” – Thales
If I don’t like a meal, I’ll ask the waiter to bring it back. If I don’t like the way a new shirt fits, I’ll return it. When grieving struck and suffering rolled over me like a tidal wave, they carried a no-return policy. M told me there were gifts in my suffering if I was willing to look for them. Here is an excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again:
“I heard M chuckle as she said, “Suffering … gives everyone gifts if we have the courage to recognize the gifts, and even greater courage to put the gifts into action. Our gifts come at a great price. No one seeks them. We pass by their window many times and never pay attention to them. Now it’s your turn to enter its store and take hold of your gifts.”
I understood what M was saying. It was a difficult truth to accept. She was pointing the way to a healthy choice and leaving the final decision up to me.
I said, “Thank you, M. I hear the shopkeeper inviting me in to accept my gifts.”
“I know of no other way to look at the grieving experience, Ray. Consider journaling about the gifts suffering offers you. Before I go, let me read a quote from The Diary of Anne Frank: ‘I don’t think about all the misery, but about all the beauty that remains.”
Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again. Available in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo.
Excerpt From Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again. This material is copyright protected
I think I never passed so sad an hour,
Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night.
The edifice from basement to the tower
Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light.
Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging,
Each richly robed like some king’s bidden guest.
“Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing,”
I said, “and here find rest.”
I heard the heavenly organ’s voice of thunder,
It seemed to give me infinite relief.
I wept. Strange eyes looked on in well-bred wonder.
I dried my tears: their gaze profaned my grief.
Wrapt in the costly furs, and silks, and laces,
Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me.
I could not read, in all those proud cold faces,
One thought of sympathy.
I watched them bowing and devoutly kneeling,
Heard their responses like sweet waters roll
But only the glorious organ’s sacred pealing
Seemed gushing from a full and fervent soul.
I listened to the man of holy calling,
He spoke of creeds, and hailed his own as best;
Of man’s corruption and of Adam’s-falling,
But naught that gave me rest:
Nothing that helped me bear the daily grinding
Of soul with body, heart with heated brain;
Nothing to show the purpose of this blinding
And sometimes overwhelming sense of pain.
And then, dear friend, I thought of thee, so lowly,
So unassuming, and so gently kind,
And lo! a peace, a calm serene and holy,
Settled upon my mind.
Ah, friend, my friend! one true heart, fond and tender,
That understands our troubles and our needs,
Brings us more near to God than all the splendour
And pomp of seeming worship and vain creeds.
One glance of thy dear eyes so full of feeling,
Doth bring me closer to the Infinite
Than all that throng of worldly people kneeling
In blaze of gorgeous light.
Ideas lie everywhere, like apples fallen and melting in the grass for lack of wayfaring strangers with an eye and a tongue for beauty, whether absurd, horrific, or genteel. ~ Ray Bradbury
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ William Faulkner
Here is my formula: What do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate? Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. ~ Ray Bradbury
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~ Lao Tzu
And an astronomer said, “Master, what of Time?”
And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
The first thing every writer should be is excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. ~ Ray Bradbury
