A slice of humble pie (Denny)...

Remember, you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

Frankilin Delano Roosevelt

This reminds me of another little saying, whose author I either do not know or have forgotten: "Remember that when you die, not everyone at the funeral will be sad."

Although humility is not the same thing as humiliation, it is the one virtue most human beings, by definition, lack.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

Eugene O'Neill

That's a pretty dark view of life, but, at least for some, it has a ring of truth about it...

"Being-Time" (Denny)

The traces of the ebb and flow of time are so evident that we do not doubt them; yet, though we do not doubt them, we ought not to conclude that we understand them. Human beings are changeable, at one time questioning what they do not understand and at another time no longer questioning the same thing, so their former questionings do not always coincide with their present ones. The questioning alone, for its duration, is time.

Roshi Philip Kapleau
The Three Pillars of Zen

I first read The Three Pillars in around 1980. It is nice to pick up a book one had read previously and to discover that the underlined bits still have that same force of appeal. I re-discovered this little gem a few days ago while rummaging through the book shelf.

soul-care (Trisha)

"It is important to pray for those who are given into our care in the world. Each person walks a unique pathway through the world. You have your own work, gifts, difficulties and commitments. In order to take your place and contribute to the light of the world, you need to honor all these different dimensions of your life. Adjacent to all your activity in the world, there is also present in your life a small group of people who are directly in your care. They are usually family and some intimate friends who come to dwell at the center of your life. These people are sent to you with gifts and challenges. in turn, you have a duty to look out for them. These people are in your soul-care. When someone is really close to you, you are in each others soul-care. Because of the calling of your own life, you cannot be continually there. Yet in the affection of prayer, you can carry the icons of their presence on the altar of your heart. Often unknown to the world, you secretly carry these friends and family members in your heart and from heart to heart you bless, mind and care for each other.

John O'Donohue
Eternal Echoes

Merton (Trisha)

"If you want to identify me, ask not where I live, or what i like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."

Thomas Merton
My Argument with the Gestapo

Elizabeth Gilbert (Trisha)

"We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauman, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safe-keeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you're craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a poet. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love