Relationship Garden Blog

In memory of my dear friend Rebecca Tobias, artist, social worker, friend.

When you begin your wanderings toward Ithaca,

wish the journey to be long,

full of adventures, full of things to learn.

don’t fear the Lestrygons and the Cyclops,

the angry Poseidon, don’t fear him;

these you will never meet on your way.

not if your thoughts are high, if pure

emotion touches your spirit and your body.

You will never meet the Lestrygons and the Cyclops, the angry Poseidon,

unless you carry them in your soul,

unless your soul shall put them up before you.

Wish the journey to be long,

Wish the summer mornings to be many

that in them you will enter ports, unseen before,

with oh what joy and pleasure;

anchor in the emporiums of Phoenixia

and take the good merchandise,

pearls and corals, amber and ebony,

and sensuous perfumes of all kinds;

take as many as you can of these perfumes:

go to cities in Egypt, to many of them,

to learn and learn from the wise.

Always have Ithaca in mind.

To reach there is your destiny.

Yet never speed your journy.

It is better that it last for many years;

and as an old man anchor at the island at last,

rich with what you have earned on your way,

not expecting Ithaca to give you riches.

Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey.

Without the island you would never have started.

She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find the island poor,

Ithaca has not decieved you.

So wise have you become, with such experience,

that now you know what Ithacas mean.

by C.P. Cavafy

Finding What You Didn’t Lose

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you,
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

~ John Fox ~

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness

some mementary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if the’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture.

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

                                  Rumi

So often we are afraid to let ourselves fully be all that we can be.  I saw this quote by Marianne Williamson (evidently often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela) while watching Akaela and the Bee the other night and felt inspired to look it up and share it.  Enjoy!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us;  It’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”  Marianne Williamson in “Return to Love.”

                                                      by John O’Donahue

When the gentleness between you hardens

And You fall out of your belonging with each other,

May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,

And you mirror each other in the script of hurt

when even the silence has become raw and torn,

May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel

And anger begins to sear the ground between you,

Before this weather of grief invites

The black seed of bitterness to find root,

May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,

To allow a kindness beyound thought and hurt,

Reach out with sure hands

To take the chalice of your love,

And carry it carefully through this echoless waste

Until the winter pilgrimage leads you

Toward the gateway of spring.

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality by Henri Nowen

“To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations.  True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known.  They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept. Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond.  Listening is paying full attewntion to others and welcoming them into our very beings.  The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves.  Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”

Thank you to my sister, Lucinda, for the beautiful quote below on what it means to embrace life with all our hearts.:

“So.  That’s how I resolved the question about what I wished to become notorious for at fifty.  Let it be for nothing more than harboring a wild amazement at life.  Let it be for choking up at poetry and the sight of human faces.  For falling into easy rapture over lilies and all the other run-of-the-mill marvels that make up life.  Let me become notorious for going around with my bridal veil tossed back and my mouth saying I do.  Renewing my vows with life.  Every day.  A hundred times a day.”
From “Firstlight” by Sue Monk Kidd

Thank you to my colleague Joe Kort for this beautiful poem that reflects the complexity and depth of mature love.

Sonnet 17

by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or tapaz,

or the arrow of carnations the first shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved.in secret,

between the shadow and the soul.  I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how,

 or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

So I love you because I know no other way.  but this,

where I do not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

In honor of all who died on September 11th, and in honor of all who have died since in acts of hatetred and senseless violence whether on the streets of Baghdad, or the mountains of Afghanistan, or on the campus of Virginia Tech, with my heart full of sorrow and compassion and hope, I share the following thought by author Howard Zinn (as shared by my colleague Jim Wells) :

 To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.
It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty,but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
If we remember those times and places – and there are so many -
where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act,
and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world
in a different direction.  

And if we do act, in however small a way,
we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now
as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us,is itself a marvelous victory.
–Howard Zinn

(You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208)

With wishes of comfort and peace to all who read this.  Laura Marshall, Director

As my husband and I struggle to find the right parenting approach to help our sons navigate the rather rocky road from teenage life to adulthood we often remind each other to take things “one day at a time,” and to remember that todays reality will frequently morph into something totally different by tomorrow.  It’s particularly important to me to try to find a way to appreciate what is happening here and now – not to always be living in the “well someday we’ll be able to mode…” even when the here and now is not so easy.  This morning I rediscovered a wonderful quote by the poet Rainer Marie Rilke that inspired me when I first read it and which touched my heart once again today:

“I beg you…to 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…”

I think this wisdom also applies to couples as we struggle to build healthy relationships – sometimes we need to sit with the questions and the differences and even the disagreements and see what’s really under the surface rather than rushing to find quick compromises that maybe miss the essence of the issue…and through patience and sitting and asking questions we can reach a deeper, more profound connection.