A Suspended Blue Ocean.......Hafiz  [rendering by Daniel Ladinsky]

                                The sky
      Is a suspended blue ocean.
           The stars are the fish
                    That swim.

The planets are the white whales
     I sometimes hitch a ride on,

      And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

       Into my heart and upon
                     My skin.

      There is only one rule
    On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
             Reads the same.

           They all say,

"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
          In the Beloved's Divine
                      Game,

      O, in the Beloved's
          Wonderful
              Game."

These lines, written by the poet Kabir, were given by Meher Baba to Mehera to memorize when she first entered the ashram at the age of 17 in 1924. Mehera later taught them to Baba's sister Mani.
                     
        Once and for all make the resolve
        That everything is God's and nothing is mine
        Let that be your resolve
        In me there is nothing of mine
        Whatever there is, is Yours
        Having made over to You what is Yours
        What concern have I with any of it

 "Hello babies. Welcome to earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies......'God damn it, you've got to be kind."
                 Kurt Vonnegut [speaking through one of his characters, Eliot Rosewater]

  "The part of the mind that is dark to us in this culture, that is sleeping in us, that we name 'unconscious', is the knowledge that we are inseparable from all other beings in the universe."------Susan Griffin

  160 of the world's leading thinkers and scientists answer the question "What Are You Optimistic About"?
         http://edge.org/q2007/q07_1.html

 There is an adaptation of a talk given by Bill Moyers last December called "For America's Sake" at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070122/moyers    I have to agree with Mr.Moyers---America definitely needs a new story.

  "If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is 'thank you", that would suffice.
                                                                                                    Meister Eckhart

        "Even if we can't honestly long for love, we can long to long for love.That much is always open to us. If our prayers for love are insincere and mechanical, we can at least pray to become more sincere when we pray. If we cannot run towards the Lord, at least we can walk, and if we cannot walk, we can crawl. And even if we cannot crawl, we can pray for the ability, some day, to be able to crawl. And we may be surprised to find that even crawling is not necessary, because the Lord Himself has come to us and is carrying us on his back."
                                                                             Eruch Jessawala

"Such beauty lies in Thy forgiveness, that it seems to me that it would have been a sin in me if I had not sinned, for then I should not have known Thy loving kindness, and the wonder and beauty of Thy true nature and being."
                                                                                                Amir

 "We must be willing to let go of the life we've planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us..........Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth life. If the seed does not die, there is no plant."
                                                                                                       Joseph Campbell