Heart Full Moments – November

Good things to warm your heart

A monthly feature of “Listening with Heart”, sharing wise words, meaningful things read or good things found, to help warm your heart.

At the end of this month of giving thanks, I offer gentle wisdoms and warm words I have read and been touched by. I have much gratitude for the lovely ideas presented and shared. May they touch your heart as well…

• “We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.“ – Marcel Proust
• “ May we all live with ease of well being.“ – Mindfulness reminder
• “And when they knew he was listening they formed a bond with him faster. Life almost immediately felt richer and more meaningful”. As professor Graham Bodie has empirically noted, “listening is the quintessential positive interpersonal communication behavior.”
• ”Ask not for a lighter load, but for broader shoulders to carry it.” – Jewish saying
• “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” -Chinese Proverb
• A Pledge for grateful living
  “It is within my own heart that I must recognize fear, agitation, coldness, alienation, blind anger and the impulse to retaliation. Here in my heart I can turn fear into courageous trust, agitation into stillness, confusion into clarity, isolation into a sense of belonging, alienation into love, and irrational reaction into Common Sense. The creative intelligence of gratefulness will suggest to each one of us how to go about this task.” – Br. David

• Clouds In Each Paper – by Thich Nhat Hanh (Mar 25, 2002)
  If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.”Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be”, we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

• “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
  I was a bride married to amazement.
  I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” – Mary Oliver
• “The fear of failure can actually be helpful. It can motivate us to do planning. But it can also be really unhelpful if it causes us to procrastinate and put things off, because we get consumed by fear.” – Mark Aoyagi, director of sport and performance psychology at the University of Denver
• “Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.” – Dr. Albert Schweitzer
• “…Having each person in the room come forth to lay hands on my head, with no hurry. I bowed my head to each person who came forward, receiving their power and blessing. Spirit was afoot in that room, weaving us together, supporting us in our endeavors, blessing us in our friendship and our journey. This night altered us all individually and as a group. And as I lay on the gurney awaiting my surgery, all of this came back, each person’s touch and intention for me, and the music singing me forward. I am generally terrified of anesthesia, but not this day. This day, I remembered the singing, the touch, our eyes and hearts meeting in a space so completely unexpectedly.
  Wisdom received had something to do with allowing my vulnerability, accepting the care and blessing of others, allowing a moment to shine unexpectedly, and a reminder that while I may have the name of teacher or minister, I am as well ever the student and recipient of grace.” – Pilgrim
• “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
• “As I walked down the avenue, the late afternoon sun was turning the lovely and dying sycamore leaves into fragments of brilliant stained glass, and I said to myself, ‘This alone is worth the price of admission to our broken and glorious world.’” – Linda Larsson
• Blessing for the Fullness of This Day
  “I bless this day in the fullness of good it already contains, in the many occasions it offers to listen deeply, to be of service to others, to express gratitude moment by moment and to keep my mind so filled with love, beauty and joy that no negativity can find even the tiniest crack in which to set foot. I bless this day in the infinite opportunities it gives me to love: to love and bless every human I meet, every beast or bird I pass by, every plant I behold, for all are but the manifold expressions of the infinite Life that undergirds all. Truly, I bless this day for the wonderful adventure it can become as I walk through it with the eyes of wonder rather than boredom, use every opportunity to express peace rather than irritation, and chose love over fear. Thank you, Life, for this day.” – Pierre Pradervand
• “Occasionally we will be overwhelmed, but mostly we will be enchanted.” – Jean Houston
• “Let our lives be full of both: thanks  and giving “ – in Concert
• Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.”- Jack Kornfield
• “To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower…To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour…”- William Blake
• The ABCs of Grateful Living: A Practice – by Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB
  The following practice is from Br. David’s introduction to Stop-Look-Go: A Grateful Practice Workbook and Gratitude Journal (June, 2016).
  “One practice that I use sometimes – say, in my dentist’s waiting-room – I call The ABCs of Grateful Living: I go through the alphabet and note for each letter the first word that comes to my mind. Then, I try to make a connection between that word and my practice of grateful living. It’s a kind of game I play with myself…
  **Watch for next week’s blog post, where I share my own ABC’s of gratefulness…

I hope during this month of November that you enjoy this list of Heart Full moments, and have had many more of your own full heart moments, to add to.

If you or someone you love is struggling with finding meaning, relief, or peace for your troubled heart, please contact me for a therapy appointment.

For more ideas on how to bring more calm and less worry into your life, click here for a free email course on Mindfulness.

Listening with Heart
Cindi Rivera, MFT
Marriage, Family Therapist
www.cindiriveratherapy.com
[email protected]
(510) 482-4445