Writings that bring you strength or peace

[Anonymous]

Do you have a poem, essay or even just a sentence that helps bring peace to you? Thought I would share one of my own, and would love to hear others’.

Here is one I always come back to, from Letters to a young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke:

LIVE THE QUESTIONS NOW
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or
books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would
not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

https://sactoinsight.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Live-the-Questions-Now.pdf

[Anonymous]

I've always found comfort in Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

[Anonymous]

And Pablo Neruda's Poems of Love

[Anonymous]

A comforting sentence that I find myself repeating often is: “This, too, shall pass.”

[Anonymous]

“This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning”

John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

[Anonymous]

I met my 2nd husband when we were both freshly divorced after our ex spouses massively betrayed us in similar ways. He recited this and then ended it by telling me he loved me for the first time. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Mouthful of forevers by Clementine von Radics

I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we'd given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle.

This is how we heal. I will kiss you like forgiveness. You will hold me like I'm hope. Our arms will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book. I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat on your skin. I will write novels to the scar of your nose. I will write a dictionary of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally found you.

And I will not be afraid of your scars. I know sometimes it's still hard to let me see you in all your cracked perfection, but please know: whether it's the days you burn more brilliant than the sun or the nights you collapse into my lap your body broken into a thousand questions, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I will love you when you are a still day. I will love you when you are a hurricane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my 2nd husband when we were both freshly divorced after our ex spouses massively betrayed us in similar ways. He recited this and then ended it by telling me he loved me for the first time. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Mouthful of forevers by Clementine von Radics

I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we'd given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle.

This is how we heal. I will kiss you like forgiveness. You will hold me like I'm hope. Our arms will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book. I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat on your skin. I will write novels to the scar of your nose. I will write a dictionary of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally found you.

And I will not be afraid of your scars. I know sometimes it's still hard to let me see you in all your cracked perfection, but please know: whether it's the days you burn more brilliant than the sun or the nights you collapse into my lap your body broken into a thousand questions, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I will love you when you are a still day. I will love you when you are a hurricane.

Beautiful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A comforting sentence that I find myself repeating often is: “This, too, shall pass.”

Yes.

Lately also I'm often saying:

You are enough.

And also just simply:
Loving-Kindness.

[Anonymous]

Those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Makes you think of others from a point of privilege.

[Anonymous]

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. (Psalms 100:1,3)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I met my 2nd husband when we were both freshly divorced after our ex spouses massively betrayed us in similar ways. He recited this and then ended it by telling me he loved me for the first time. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Mouthful of forevers by Clementine von Radics

I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we'd given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle.

This is how we heal. I will kiss you like forgiveness. You will hold me like I'm hope. Our arms will bandage and we will press promises between us like flowers in a book. I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat on your skin. I will write novels to the scar of your nose. I will write a dictionary of all the words I have used trying to describe the way it feels to have finally, finally found you.

And I will not be afraid of your scars. I know sometimes it's still hard to let me see you in all your cracked perfection, but please know: whether it's the days you burn more brilliant than the sun or the nights you collapse into my lap your body broken into a thousand questions, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I will love you when you are a still day. I will love you when you are a hurricane.

Wow. I absolutely love it. What a romantic.

[Anonymous]

Robert Frost and Mary Oliver are my usual

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A comforting sentence that I find myself repeating often is: “This, too, shall pass.”

+1. At (happy) times it is the saddest thought, but at the same time this brings me comfort when I am going through rough patches.

[Anonymous]

The Bhagvad Gita:

You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but not to the fruits of your actions.

It means that all we can control our own efforts. We can’t control outcomes.

[Anonymous]