Sometimes just a few words together compose such a vision of life and universe that I experience them as literally life-saving. I do not mean that they save my physical life, though I don’t know, maybe they do. I mean that when life loses meaning, or luster or power – which can feel like a fate worse than death – these little pieces of something have the ability to give all of that back in an instant. I find it miraculous. I have needed such miracles lately.

This one came into my inbox last night. I was not unfamiliar with it, but its quiet potency felt like a much-needed blood transfusion.

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.
~ Rumi ~

I copied it and opened my word document file where I keep such jewels. There that quote was, the first one in that long document that I have been adding to for years. This made me smile. Then I read down the page a little and a few more hit me like jolts, restoring energy and power. I could only handle a few such jolts, so I quit reading after about a half a page. Here are some more. (You can tell that Rilke is a favorite muse.)

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any minute.
~ Marcus Aurelius ~

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

The only journey is the one within.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Then this morning I turned the page on my Page-a-Day Zen calendar, and this one gave me life again. I hope that sharing these passes along some of the power and blessing I experience from them. I pray that you find such magic when you need it as well.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we must come at last to regard the world.
~ Marcel Proust ~