Listen to Your Life

Listen to your life.  See it for the fathomless mystery that 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.

-- Frederick Buechner  

True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: "You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise."  And everything is turned to one's advantage when he greets a situation like this: "You are everything I was looking for."  Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you.  This, in a word, is art.  Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?

-- Marcus Aurelius 


Wisdom

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word...

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

-- T. S. Eliot