Encouragement while moving away

Found while sorting and tossing tonight -- this one's a keeper!

You can kiss family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.

                      -- Frederick Buechner  (by way of Aunt Carrie, many months ago.)

I'm holding onto this idea and encouragement of my friends here, because sometimes I think I might lose my nerve and not be able to do this move.  I know I'm going to miss everybody here so much!!

Found gems

I found the following quotations when I was excavating in my bedside table drawer, getting it emptied and ready for packing today.  Sorting and tossing over these many weeks has been both a chore and a blessing...

Desire is the flow of life we yearn to swim in, the urge to be one with Spirit, and the way to stay in touch with this flow is through knowing what we want without insisting that we get it.  It is staying with the feeling of desire, following it with curiosity, that leads us ever closer to what we most want.  --Jennifer Louden

and

The spiritual law at the core of our being requires that we reach out.  We are fulfilled to the extent that we are in relationship.  We cannot disobey or even resist this law without suffering.  So wondrously are we made that we are happiest when we are loving and miserable when we are not loving.  --Elizabeth O'Connor in "The New Community" (quoted in the Charlotte Observer, date unknown.)

Both of these quotes speak so much to where I am right now, that it was eerie to find them.   The first one makes me think about how long I didn't even know what desire was...  this feeling of desire is so important that is we lose it, we are like a ship sailing without a rudder, and there is no telling where we might end up.  The second one affirms the act of loving. Our culture might tell us that the most important thing is to be loved, but actually our own acts of loving and reaching out are crucial to our happiness and well-being.