Seeing blessings in the dark

We have a busy day planned today; my husband is already up and bustling about and it is hard to concentrate. But I have two things I wanted to share with you today. The first is something I read in Anam Cara yesterday, about coping with difficulties:

"How you see, and what you see, determines how you will be. Your perception, or your view of reality, is the lens through which you see things. Your perception determines the way things will behave for you and toward you. We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity.

I love the lines from Paul Valery: "Une difficulte est une lumiere/Une difficulte insurmontable est un soleil" -- that is, "A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun." This is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven, and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive toward perfection. We want everything flattened into the one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes [Kim: is this written for quilters or what!]. One of the essential aspects of beginning to re-imagine the workplace is to awaken the ability to welcome that which is difficult and awkward. Frequently the actual work itself is fine, rather it is our image of it that makes it appear difficult and awkward."

I read this yesterday and loved it; I'm sure it contributed to the positive mood shift I've been feeling. And then, last night, I finally got around to reading the two most recent Rumi poems from Spirituality and Practice, and found this one to be yet another wonderful way to view the stress points in our lives...

When a feeling of spiritual contraction comes over you,
O traveler, it's for your own good.
Don't burn with grief,
for in the state of expansion and delight you are spending.
That enthusiasm requires an income of pain to balance it.
If it were always summer,
the sun's blazing heat would burn the garden
to the roots and depths of the soil.
The withered plants never again would become fresh.
If December is sour-faced, yet it is kind.
Summer is laughing, but yet it destroys.
When spiritual contraction comes,
behold expansion within it;
be cheerful and let your face relax.

[Rumi, Mathnawi III, 3734-3739]

So with that I will leave you and run off and take my shower: Have a great day, and be cheerful!

As always, the John O'Donohue quotation is from Anam Cara (© John O’Donohue. All rights reserved). To learn more about John O'Donohue, be sure to visit his website: www.johnodonohue.com