When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isn't love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstasy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the Camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still.

The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:

1. Everything is part of it.
2. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

~Tom Robbins

It occurred to her that despite the failure of her marriage, the failure of her career, despite her hangover and chronic horniness, she suddenly was feeling rather light and giddy. She couldn't understand it. Was she simply too shallow to suffer indefinitely, or was she too wise to become attached to her suffering, too feisty to permit it to rule her life? She voted for wise and feisty, and walked on, kicking leaves.
~Tom Robbins

There are lovers
content with longing.
I'm not one of them.
~Rumi

( Also )

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
~Erma Bombeck

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell

To escape criticism--do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
~Elbert Hubbard

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
~William Morris

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
~Lao Tzu

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
~Elise Boulding

Kahlil Gibran was one of the first "mystic" authors that I ever read. I read The Prophet when I was in my teens, and it spoke to me in a way that no other spiritual text had at that point in my life. Today, a smattering of his wisdom:

If it were not for guests, all houses would be graves.


Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.


March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.


Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'


Work is love made visible.



~Kahlil Gibran

Everything about the mystery of life is contained in breathing, and although we can do it without prompting, we usually stagger about, strangled by entangling thoughts, rarely breathing fully and sometimes forgetting to breathe at all. Deliver yourself to a doctor and she will listen to your chest and instruct you to breathe. Deliver yourself to an exercise guru and he will command you through paces while reminding you to breathe. Deliver yourself to a meditation teacher and she will show you how to sit still and breathe. Deliver a baby from your body and give a teensy nudge for the thrilling vibrato to commence. Do you want to have a deeper and fuller encounter with life? Have a deeper and fuller encounter with oxygen.
~Karen Maezen Miller

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
~Christian Morgenstern

Patience is also a form of action.
~Auguste Rodin

For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve.
~T. Guillemets

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
~Henry David Thoreau

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The only real security is not insurance or money or a job, not a house and furniture paid for, or a retirement fund, and never is it another person. It is the skill and humor and courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace.
~Audrey Sutherland


With many thanks to _stillsong_

Ingredients
1 large cabbage, cored and shredded
1 cup carrots, grated
2 medium onions, quartered lengthwise and very finely sliced
1 tbsp. dried oregano (I have used double with fresh herbs)
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tbsp. sea salt
4 tbsp. whey (let me know if you don't know how to make whey--it's easy)


Method

1. In a large bowl, mix cabbage with carrots, onions, oregano, redi chile flakes, sea salt, and whey.


2. Pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer for about 10 minutes (I didn't have either of these last year, and used a real hammer with a cloth on top of the cabbage. I wouldn't recommend it) to release juices.


3. Place in two quart-sized wide-mouth mason jars and press down firmly until juices come to the top of the cabbage. The top of the cabbage mixture should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jars.


4. Cover tightly, and keep at room temperature for about three days before transferring to cold storage.

This stuff starts to taste OK about 3 months after you make it, and r e a l l y starts to get delicious after 6-12 months.

The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are.
~Joseph Campbell

The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you're seeing God clearly.
~Caroline Myss

With thanks to Rob Brezsny

Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made
of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
~Rumi

With thanks to dailyrumi

Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.
~Starhawk