“If Light Is In Your Heart
You Will Find Your Way Home.” – Rumi
Laugh a Little Bit
Here’s a motto, just your fit— Laugh a little bit.
When you think you’re trouble hit, Laugh a little bit.
Look misfortune in the face. Brave the beldam’s rude grimace; Ten to one ’twill yield its place, If you have the wit and grit
Just to laugh a little bit.
Keep your face with sunshine lit, Laugh a little bit.
All the shadows off will flit,
If you have the grit and wit
Just to laugh a little bit.
Cherish this as sacred writ— Laugh a little bit.
Keep it with you, sample it, Laugh a little bit.
Little ills will sure betide you, Fortune may not sit beside you,
Men may mock and fame deride you, But you’ll mind them not a whit
If you laugh a little bit.Edmund Vance Cooke.
Rules for the Road
Stand straight:
Step firmly, throw your weight:
The heaven is high above your head,
The good gray road is faithful to your tread.
Be strong:
Sing to your heart a battle song:
Though hidden foemen lie in wait, Something is in you that can smile at Fate.
Press through:
Nothing can harm if you are true.
And when the night comes, rest:
The earth is friendly as a mother’s breast.
Edwin Markham.
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination, full of hope.”
—Maya Angelou
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat… The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.
My Star
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartless the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it– Robert Browning
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activity neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
