The Challenge of Living
"To allow the sorrow and weight of life
and yet to dance with an easy and open heart.
To ache in your darkest depths
and yet to laugh from your light-filled center.
To know the reality of humanity
and yet to believe in the magic of the stars.
To act with love in the middle of the fear
and to hold each moment as the gift that it is.
This is the challenge of living."
Terri St. Cloud
"Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life."
~Rumi
Excerpts From Joanna Macy
THE MOHAWK THANKS GIVING PRAYER
The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It’s like a setting or channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what’s going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It’s a stance of the soul. In systems theory, each part contains the whole. Gratitude is the kernel that can flower into everything we need to know.
Elders of the six-nation confederacy of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois, have passed down through the ages the teachings of the Great Peacemaker. A thousand years ago, they had been warring tribes, caught in brutal cycles of attack, revenge, and retaliation, when he came across Lake Ontario in a stone canoe. Gradually his words and actions won them over, and they accepted the Great Law of Peace. They buried their weapons under the Peace Tree by Lake Onondaga and formed councils for making wise choices together, and for self-governance. In the Haudenosaunee, historians recognize the oldest known participatory democracy and point to the inspiration it provided to Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and others in crafting the Constitution of the United States. That did not impede American settlers and soldiers from taking by force most of the Haudenosaunees’ land and decimating their populations.
The Mohawks have written what is known as the Mohawk Thanksgiving Prayer, it begins:
THE PEOPLE
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
Now our minds are one.
THE EARTH MOTHER
We are all thankful to our mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.
THE ENLIGHTENED TEACHERS
We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. We send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers.
Now our minds are one.
THE CREATOR
Now we turn our thoughts to the creator, or great spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Moth- er Earth. for all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the creator.
Now our minds are one.
CLOSING WORDS
We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
Now our minds are one.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.---Derek Walcott
School Prayer
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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.---Mary Oliver
The Guest House
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
If I Had My Life to Live Over by Nadine Stair
Spread light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.”
-Frederick Buechner
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human
disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you
will not find another.”
―
Carl Sagan,
Cosmos
“You have to care about yourself; you have to believe your life is precious. What you’ve done, you’ve done. We evade it by moving forward, with a code to never do it again — to make up for it. To still accept what we were. To accept everyone. To protect everyone, and in doing that, to protect yourself. To create peace.”---Eastman
