"That through your own path of obstacle and surprise, you will be opened to your gifts and become somewhat freed of all you carry."
"Our dreams, goals, and ambitions are all kindling, fuel for the heart to exercise its aliveness, to bring our gift into the world, to discover what matters."
"It doesn’t matter if we’re skillful or clumsy, if we play our gift well or awkwardly, or if we make great strides or fail. Aliveness is not a judge in a talent show. Aliveness shows itself in response to wholeheartedness, when we can say yes to life, work with what we’re given, and stay in relationship—to everything."
"Life has taught me that, regardless of what we face, effort and faith will lead us into the larger stream of life that holds us. And being held by the larger stream of life is another way to describe grace."
"The challenge as we strive is not to attach our identity
to what we’re striving for, but to give our all with faith in how
such complete giving of who we are—through what we do—will
reveal our deeper nature."
"It’s a reminder that life is real, that we’re part of everything we go through and everything we watch. It’s all one dynamic, living world. We’re always in it and touched by it."
"We are part of nature too, and so, our quest for purpose begins with knowing our natural gifts. Then our life’s work becomes the inevitable journey of becoming what we already are."
"Each of us struggles to learn when to give our all and when to surrender and simply receive."
"By fully living the one life we’re given, we’re led to the wisdom that waits in our heart."
"Loving what we do may or may not bring us success, but it will reanimate our kinship with everything living, and this will restore us."
"We sorely need to listen to life and follow our heart,
to find the things that will complete us and to uncover the meaning
carried in our feelings. This lifelong conversation between
the heart and the rest of our gifts will bring us alive, though the path
may appear differently to everyone."
"Often our dreams don’t come true, but sometimes we do. And working toward our dreams and through them enables us to inhabit our truth, which is much more important and life-giving than whether we get what we want or not."
"It takes time to soften the habits of our heart and mind
and work them in our hands, a little each day, in order for the
heart and mind to be of use somewhere else."
"Despite the hardships that life throws at us, despite all the pain and loss we endure, life keeps growing us and shaping us. Life keeps living. Not always in the form we expect, and not always in a way that’s recognizable."
"With everything we do, we’re asked to enter what’s before us with immediate hands-on effort. By loving what we do, we invoke the effort to stay present, the effort to restore our trust in life when we lose it, the effort to open our heart especially when pain and fear close it, and the effort to do small things with love, as Mother Teresa would say. These offerings of heart through our hands keep our lamp lit."
"We learn along the way that the beauty of life also enters us through our cracks. If we can’t accept this fundamental law of how light and beauty enter us through the ways we’re opened, we will misread the initiations of experience as a cruel avalanche of unfairness."
Quotes of wisdom by Mark Nepo
The
One Life We're Given
