Daily Signet
The I Ching teaches us that great receptivity attracts exceptional results. The interesting thing about the exceptional force of the receptive is it can be subverted by planning. When Spring comes, the grass does not plan to grow. I’m reminded of a poem, “What to Remember When Waking,” by David Whyte, talking about receiving the day compared to planning the day. Here is a snippet of it:
“In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake…
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans….
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep….” From What to Remember When Waking, David Whyte
Our beloved first Dean, Bill understood the auspicious nature of receptivity and lived it. He spent his dawns, morning, afternoons—in the receptive. He did not measure his success by what he got done in a day. In fact, he would hit you over the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) with an Ipad if you measured the success of your day by the number of tasks completed….Bill was a man for freedom. He dedicated his life to helping us to become free of our goals and best-laid plans, free to receive the dawn, the day and the night as they came. Free from our titles, task lists,…free from what we have always done, free to change and explore new ground. And isn’t that the ultimate freedom…the freedom to change and explore new ground? And isn’t it also true that the only way that this can happen is for us to be receptive?
Jamie Ziegler
On This Day…
Oliver Wendell Holmes born in Cambridge, Mass., 1808, died 1894: physician, poet, polymath
Works: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Elsie Venner
Quotes: “Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” “The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”