Stand Still Renderings
I said to my soul, be still,
and wait without hope
For hope would be for the wrong thing;
wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope
are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
For the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Elliot
Willing to die,
You give up
your will. Keep still
until, moved
by what moves
all else, you move.
Wendell Berry
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner
With the drawing of this Love
and the voice of this Calling
we shall not cease from exploration;
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
T.S.Elliot
The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the way.
Daigu Ryokan
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T.S.Elliot
If the angel deigns to come
it will be because you have convinced
her, not by tears but by your humble
resolve to be always beginning;
to be a beginner.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The birds have disappeared
into the sky,
and now the last cloud
is melting away.
We sit together,
the mountain and I
until,
only the mountain
remains.
Li Po