Holding Tension

Important it seems
in the holding
is the how..
The recognition 
that the mind and world
their apparent separation
is primary perspective..
Such is the root
of all suffering..
Enter awareness
the witness of light..
The mind becomes
along with the world
the witnessed
and our tension
dissolves in 
burning light...

Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.

~~Henri Nouwen, Catholic Priest and writer

Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.

~~Sharon Salzberg, Teacher of Buddhist meditation in the West

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

~~Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and writer

"Most people never note that God actually closed them in! God puts all the natural animosities, all the opposites together, and holds them together in one place. I used to think it was about balancing all the opposites within me, but slowly I have learned that it is actually 'holding' things unreconciled that teaches us — leaving them partly unresolved and without perfect closure or explanation. How to live in hope has not been taught well to Christians. The ego always wants to settle the dust quickly and have answers now. But Paul rightly says, 'In hope we are saved, yet hope is not hope if its object is seen' (Romans 8:24).

~~Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest and founder, Center for Action and Contemplation

It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

~~Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and teacher

Tension is an interesting quality - and architecture must have it. There should be elements of the inexplicable, the mysterious, and the poetic in something that is perfectly rational.

~~Annabelle Selldorf, American architect

We who are engaged in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

~~Martin Luther King, Jr.

 It seems there aren’t answers to any of our burning questions. . We wander in neighborhoods of broken houses full of random (and often useless) belongings. An egg beater. A wheel. 
One lonely shoe.

We cannot solve the problems we face with the same sort of thinking that created them. 

 We must all become beginners. 

~~Shavawn M. Berry, American writer and poet

No one has ever become poor by giving.

~Anne Frank, diarist, Jewish victim of the Holocaust 

One way to break up any kind of tension is good deep breathing.

~~Byron Nelson, golfer