Sister Regina

“If there were no way into God, I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.”
― Rumi

“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.”
― St. Francis of Assisi

“It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.”
― Francine Rivers, The Last Sin Eater

“ON THE DAY I DIE

On the day I die, when I'm being carried
toward the grave, don't weep. Don't say,

He's gone! He's gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and

the moon sets, but they're not gone.
Death is a coming together. The tomb

looks like a prison, but it's really
release into union. The human seed goes

down in the ground like a bucket into
the well where Joseph is. It grows and

comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here, and immediately

opens with a shout of joy there.

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One who does what the Friend wants done
will never need a friend.

There's a bankruptcy that's pure gain.
The moon stays bright when it
doesn't avoid the night.

A rose's rarest essence
lives in the thorn.

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Childhood, youth, and maturity,
and now old age.

Every guest agrees to stay
three days, no more.

Master, you told me to
remind you. Time to go.

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The angel of death arrives,
and I spring joyfully up.

No one knows what comes over me
when I and that messenger speak!

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When you come back inside my chest no matter how far I've wandered off,
I look around and see the way.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come then, I'll sit up and sing.

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Last night things flowed between us
that cannot now be said or written.

Only as I'm being carried out
and down the road, as the folds of my shroud open in the wind,

will anyone be able to read, as on
the petal-pages of a turning bud,
what passed through us last night.

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I placed one foot on the wide plain
of death, and some grand
immensity sounded on the emptiness.

I have felt nothing ever
like the wild wonder of that moment.

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.”
― Rumi, The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems – Coleman Barks's Sublime Renderings of the 13th-Century Sufi Mystic's Insights into Divine Love and the Human Heart