leaves of faith (Earth, paradise, hell, genesis, churches)

[lilithu]

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

--St Francis of Assisi

[michel]

Lilithu, Namaste.

That is lovely.

[lilithu]

Yes, I have been reading a lot of Hafiz lately.


If someone sits with me
And we talk about the Beloved,
If I cannot give his heart comfort,
If I cannot make him feel better
About himself and this world,
Then, Hafiz,
Quickly run to the mosque and pray--
For you have just committed
The only sin I know.

--Hafiz

[lilithu]

If you meet the Buddha on the side of the road, kill him.

--Zen koan


Jesus said, "Whoever has come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world."

--The Gospel of Thomas 42: 30-33

[lilithu]

If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.

- Albert Camus

[lilithu]

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard-surfaced and straight-forward.

Having died to self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.
Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.

Religion seeks grace and favor,
but those who gamble these away are God’s favorites,
for they neither put God to the test
nor knock at the door of gain and loss.

--Jalaluddin Rumi

[lilithu]

The color of a wall
depends on the wall.

In the same manner
the isness of creatures
depends on the love of God.

Take the color from the wall and the color would cease to be.
So too,
all creatures would cease to exist
if they were separated from
the love that God is.

-Meister Eckhart

[lilithu]

You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.

To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival!

-Ranier Maria Rilke
(transl. by Stephen Mitchell)