John O’Donohue
There is something incomplete in purely individual presence. Belonging together with others completes something in us. It also suggests that behind all our differences and distances from each other, we are all participating in a larger drama of spirit.

Manitonquat
The Original Instructions tell us to live in harmony with this Creation of which we are all part. To stay in harmony we are instructed to respect all Creation, every being that exists, and to live as relatives to all. And so we have this very important instruction of hospitality, so that wherever we go we may be well received and well treated, and anyone coming to our door will be able to rely on the same. Hospitality is the policy which allows for our safe travel through the world.

But most of the world today is a world of separate, lonely individuals struggling to survive unaided, the great majority hungry every day of their lives, without adequate shelter or medical care, the rest storing up material goods and personal wealth. This is a world of escalating selfishness, greed, violence and fear. A world of locked doors, prisons, police, and attack dogs, television and computer surveillance, and weapons of mass destruction being sold for great profit.

So which will you choose? A world of locks and jails, of walls and cages, where rules are more important than people, laws more important than justice, protection more important than compassion, comfort more important than kindness, or a world where we are responsible for each other, where hands are for healing and soothing and caressing, not for killing. Where we all live inside each other’s eyes. 

John O’Donohue
With respect 
And reverence
That the unknown
Between us
Might flower
Into discovery
And lead us
Beyond
The familiar field
Blind with the weed
Of weariness
And the old walls
Of habit.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com