My Own Bible

I stole this idea from my friend EJ, who borrowed it from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love the notion of organizing in one place those words that speak truth to me, that I turn to again and again. This is just a beginning for me, and I will be adding to it as I find new words that inspire. 

Heart

"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence." 
Leon Bloy

"Engrave this upon your heart: there isn't anyone you couldn't love once you heard their story." 
Mary Lou Kownacki

"If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, that will be enough." 
Meister Eckhart 

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things." Mary Oliver

"What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"The wound is the place where the light enters you."
Rumi

Mind

"Little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently,
For I am a river I am trying to cross." 
W.S. Merwin

"What you seek is seeking you." 
Rumi

"The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other's welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life." 
Derek Walcott


Hands

"Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Luke 6:31

"Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking." 
Spanish poem

"Write like a motherfucker." 
Cheryl Strayed

"Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing."
Amy Poehler

What words would be in your own bible? Share the quotes that are like the blast of a trumpet to you in the comments. 


p.s. I know that Mary Oliver poem by heart because I see it every day.