work in the invisible

“Work in the invisible world

at least as hard as you do in the visible. Be companions
with the prophets even though

no one here will know that you are . . .”

—Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks, The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things.”

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden