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How happy to see lightning and not think, “Time is fleeting!” —BASHO

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought;

Even today many travellers leave home not just to see new places, but also to see the whole of the place they have left from the various kinds of distance – cultural, physical, linguistic – that travel opens for them. Indeed, a fascination with this perspective is something I associate with the most experienced travellers.

The big questions have to be answered by hours at the desk. So much of the worrying we do is a way of avoiding work, which only delays the (work-enabled) solution.

Shame about woundness keeps many people from seeking healing. They would rather deny or repress the reality of hurt.

we too can choose serenity in the midst of struggle: “In that calmness we begin to understand that peace is not the opposite of challenge and hardship. We understand that the presence of light is not a result of darkness ending. Peace is found not in the absence of challenge but in our own capacity to be with hardship without judgment, prejudice, a

Within less than two years of the Treaty of Nanking, predicted the free-trade Friend of China, ‘the Tartar of Central Asia will trim his beard with Sheffield scissors, and every spinster in Peking must have a Coventry ribbon’.35

It was no wonder, I thought, that already in that hundred years it had become a thing of legend. It was easy to believe that the old smith, Weland himself, who was old before the Romans came, might have made this last artefact before he faded with the other small gods of wood and stream and river, into the misty hills, leaving the crowded valleys t

Being positive, living in a permanent state of hopefulness, renews the spirit. Renewing our faith in love’s promise, hope is our covenant.

Bernald gave his preference to circles in which less finality of judgment prevailed, and it was consequently less embarrassing to be caught without an opinion.