Quotes from Wayne Muller

Adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them - just beneath the wound - lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true. Since their early experiences were so dark and painful, they have spent much of their lives in search of the gentleness, love, and peace they have only imagined in the privacy of their own hearts.

Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us.

Your life is not a problem to be solved but a gift to be opened.

All life requires a rhythm of rest. . . There is a rhythm in the way day dissolves into night, and night into morning. There is a rhythm as the active growth of spring and summer is quieted by the necessary dormancy of fall and winter. There is a tidal rhythm, a deep, eternal conversation between the land and the great sea.

Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop, because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility... Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center." — Wayne Muller (Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives)

If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us.

Just because we are working hard does not mean we are making anything happen.

If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath - our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.

Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center.

All life has emptiness at it's core it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.

If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life.

Sabbath is more than the absence of work; it is not just a day off, when we catch up on television or errands. It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us.

Emptiness is the pregnant void out of which all creation springs. But many of us fear emptiness. We prefer to remain...surrounded by things...we imagine are subject to our control.

Mark Nepo calls "experience greed"—namely, an insidious grasping not so much for material possessions but rather for a seemingly benign cacophony of socially active networks, service opportunities, ecological adventures, community activities, helpful organizations, sacred gatherings, and spiritual experiences.

Our culture confuses the pain of isolation with some impossible ideal of "self-sufficiency," and then celebrates it.

Life is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be opened.

The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.

There is more to life," said Gandhi, "than increasing its speed.

We equate choice with freedom, but they are not the same.

Mother Teresa who said, "We can do no great things, only small things, with great love.

We are called to be strong companions and clear mirrors to one another...

When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.

The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.