Paradox
We join spokes
together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being
but non-being is what we use. ~Lao-Tzu


Without contraries is no progression.
Attraction and repulsion,
reason and energy,
love and hate,
are necessary to human existence. ~William Blake


We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. ~T. S. Eliot


We have to be careful not to lock ourselves into one side of a situation or another not recognizing that underlying it all there is only one essential thing and that in that unity all opposites support each other. ~Swami Chetanananda


The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest


When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~Henri Nouwen


Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton


If you are faced with an unpleasant person or situation that you can do nothing about, bless the situation. Bless the person and know and believe some good will come from it ... All of us have seen good come out of disaster, the "blessing in disguise." When you expect good to come from negativity, it will. What you think about, you bring about. ~Joyce Duco


Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. ~Paul Eldridget


There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. ~Euripides


Everything is dual;
everything has poles;
everything has its pair of opposites;
like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature,
but different in degree;
extremes meet;
all truths are but half-truths;
all paradoxes may be reconciled. ~Kybalion


You can go home again ... as long as you understand that home is a place where you never have been. ~Ursula Le Guin


If you have a weakness,
make it work for you as a strength,
and if you have a strength,
don't abuse it into a weakness. ~Dore Schary


To take a step into the future we need to shift our weight to the opposite foot; to think about the future we also need to shift the emphasis to the opposite hemisphere of the brain. The way for a technological society to take a step into the future is to shift the weight of its emphasis from machines to myth. ~William Irwin Thompson


TIME

Fifty years and four have
flown past my door.
I no longer have time
to not have time.

I do not have time
to zoom past a field of flowers
glowing orange in the morning sun.

I do not have time
to travel the world seeking
the wonders to be found
in my own backyard.

I do not have time
to come back later
or do it tomorrow
for tomorrow may never be.

I do not have time
to not slow down,
to put off a poem,
delay a hug
or walk past a prayer.

I no longer have time,
for now, time has me. ~Joyce Wycoff


The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. ~Antoine de Saint Exupery


The individual witness disappears, but the collective intelligence persists. ~James Michener


The relinquishing of the lesser
is the gaining of the greater.
Give up all and you gain all. ~Sri Nisargatta Maharaj


He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality. ~Friedrich Durrenmat


At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
At the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance. ~Thomas Stearns Eliot


I would not give a fig for the
simplicity this side of complexity,
but I would give my life for the
simplicity on the other side of complexity. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us. ~Edwin Markham


It is not outer awareness,
It is not inner awareness,
Nor is it suspension of awareness.
It is not knowing,
It is not unknowing,
Nor is it knowingness itself.
It can neither be seen nor understood,
It cannot be given boundaries.
It is ineffable and beyond thought.
It is indefinable.
It is known only through becoming it. ~from the Mundaka Upanishad