From Flickr by audreyjm529

I hesitate at first, thinking carefully,
estimating the risk of embarrassment,
measuring the cost of commitment,
too daunted by the challenge before me.
But there is a courage born of passion
and it sweeps me off my feet,
carries me onward and emboldens my actions.
This transcendent bravery brushes aside
all the doubts and fears and excuses.
My heart is strengthened
and my mind is filled with certainty.
I have been caught up in the moment
of overwhelming desire for a cause greater than myself.
I will flow with this extrinsic confidence
beyond the perceptions that limited my life.

—Jean M. Olson

From Flickr by Robb Wynn

I make the effort
to maintain a ground of oceanic silence
out of which arises the multitude
of phenomena of daily life.

I make the effort
to see and to passionately open in love
to the spirit that infuses all things.

I make the effort
to see the Beloved in everyone
and to serve the Beloved through everyone
(including the earth).

I often fail in these aspirations
because I lose the balance
between separateness and unity,
get lost in my separateness,
and feel afraid.

But I make the effort.

—Ram Dass

Photo by Terri Burnor

I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on the water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What I fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

—Wendell Berry