Monday, November 21, 2011

Every prison has a chapel

"Despair comes from trying to control matters over which you have no power.  Hope comes from taking responsibility for yourself.

If you cannot find security by your grasping, then you look around for others to blame for your discomfort.  All these actions build walls within you, and the wind of the Spirit cannot move through you.

You add more walls until you have built a solid prison for yourself... But remember: every prison has a chapel.  Travel through the corridors of your own dark stillness until you come to a little room.  Inside that room is a tiny spark that never goes out.  If you blow on the spark with your full attention, you will be able to make a flame.  

Then light a torch.  Examine the walls.  See how fragile they are.  Look at the face of the jailer.  You are the jailer.... If there is within you a nostalgia for freedom, you will hold your torch high.  You will not allow yourself to be dominated by desires to have and to control.  You will not let yourself be possessed by things and thoughts.  Then you will stand and watch the walls of your prison melt away like clay in the rain."

  -- Tolbert McCarroll, Notes from the Song of Life

2 comments:

Maureen said...

This is a keeper.

Mystic Meandering said...

You find the loveliest and wonderfully meaningful quotes! And your poem is wonderful today too.
Blessings - C