Consider the lilies

I loved these words today, from The Dove in the Stone:

"I plucked at the grass and heaved a big sigh.  Why was it all so hard, so difficult?  Why the wars and killing, the drugs, pollution, and AIDS?  What could any one person do to help change things for the better?


It was hard to grasp what seemed to be the answer: 'You can only work on yourself.  Start there.  Your consciousness or that of anybody else's is like the widow's mite -- it is all you have to give.  Nothing is wasted!  But that little bit gets added to all the other little bits, and slowly and inexorably, the light increases and feeds the aura about the earth.  It is absolutely true that by working on your own shadow, you withdraw it from the collective pool of destructive and unconscious energy. So take heart!"

And this, too, I found encouraging:

"We might be mistaken in always thinking that we have to struggle and achieve our growth.  The secret of inner growth might be better seen as an allowing rather than a frantic fighting for perfection -- a cracking or perforating of our shell, allowing the light to begin streaming out through us... I picture being sort of a sieve for God.


This would mean a surrendering of arrogance and a submission of the conscious ego to the Divine Guest within us.  After all, Christ did not choose perfected people to be his disciples; quite the contrary.  And he was the one to remind us to 'consider the lilies -- neither do they toil nor spin, yet surely Solomon in all his glory is not clad like one of these.'  

In other words,, trust the process; don't put so many unnecessary obstacles in the way.  Look, even at yourself, with a humorous tolerance and a loving eye.  A loving eye then would extend to people and situations, to seeing beauty in the very fragility and even the ugliness in the world.

Take heart, allow the light to flow through your cracks, and have a good day...