I understand what is truly important: Love.

Nancy Dufresne

Learning to live with the death of a person or persons I love is teaching me more about myself and about living.

I am in the process of learning that weakness is a strength, not a flaw. It is a bittersweet gift given to those of us who have earned it. Through my weakness, I build my path, yellow brick by yellow brick, living in a world that has changed forever, and one that will continue to be filled with unknowns.

Through sorrow, I have grown to understand what is truly important. I have forgiven things I may not have prior to my loss, and I have come to truly know that in the end, love is all that we take home.

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time,
I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.

It's Your Life

Ralph Marston

There's no sense in fighting over the scraps that others might or might not throw under the table. Instead, get busy and create your own magnificent feast. Stop going from door to door begging for someone else to solve all your problems for you. Instead, pick a formidable challenge, work your way through it, and you'll build plenty of strength and experience to handle whatever situations come your way.

What possible use is there in developing elaborate arguments that place the blame for your difficulties on someone else? Put your energy into creating a brilliant future, not into fighting over what has already been left behind.

This is your life. The only person who can successfully live it is you.

Do you really think you can ever find fulfillment by signing over your control and responsibility to someone else? You're here to live and to do, not to merely observe and complain.

Nothing that could ever be done for you or handed to you can come close to the experience of making a positive difference in your own unique way. This is your life, so jump right in and live the exquisite richness as you make your own way through.

My spiritual goal is to wake up!

Alan Cohen

One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"

"No," answered Buddha.

"Then are you a healer?"

"No," Buddha replied.

"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.

"No, I am not a teacher."

"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.

"I am awake," Buddha replied.

The goal of Buddhism, like any self-respecting spiritual path, is not to have titles or to make distinctions between degrees of holiness; it is to wake up.

A Better Prayer

Steve Goodier

One man, too inebriated to drive, was walking home along railroad tracks when his foot suddenly became stuck. He pulled and tugged, but could not free it from the tracks.

Then he heard a noise and turned around to see an oncoming train. In a panic, he prayed. "Dear God, please get my foot out of these tracks and I'll stop drinking."

Nothing happened.

With the speeding train closer, he tried again. "Oh, Lord, get my foot out of these tracks and I'll stop drinking AND I'll quit cheating on my wife!"

Still nothing, and now the train was just seconds away.

He tried one last time. "Lord, if you get my foot out of the tracks, I'll quit drinking, cheating, AND...I'll become a minister!"

Suddenly his foot shot out of the tracks and he dove out of the way of the passing train. Dusting himself off, he looked toward Heaven and said, "Never mind, Lord, I got it out myself."

Does that kind of prayer sound familiar? How often are prayers, even when one is not in a state of emergency, concerned only about physical needs—health and safety?

Mahatma Gandhi claimed to have never made even a minor decision without prayer. Gandhi was known best as an Indian nationalist and spiritual leader, but he was also a man of rare courage. He developed the practice of nonviolent disobedience that eventually forced Great Britain to grant India's independence.

He spoke often about spirituality and prayer. He told about traveling to South Africa to oppose a law there directed expressly against Indians. His ship was met by a hostile mob and he was advised to stay on board. They had come, he was told, with the express intention of lynching him. Gandhi said of the incident: "I went ashore nevertheless. I was stoned and kicked and beaten a good deal; but I had not prayed for safety, but for the courage to face the mob, and that courage came and did not fail me."

Gandhi preferred courage over safety. If accomplishing his goals put him in the way of danger, then he wanted to face that danger bravely. His prayer was to receive enough courage to do what needed to be done, not to live his life free from harm.

Rabbi Harold Kushner speaks about such prayer. He reminds us that, "people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not available to them before."

The courage you need will come, and will not fail you.

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