In this moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

Back to work after the long Easter weekend:

The way to attain balance:
Who dares to equal the person
who falls into neither being nor non-being!

Everyone wishes to step out of 
the current of ordinary life,
But this person, after all, comes back
To sit among the coals and the ashes.

Dongshan Liangjie,  Chinese Chan (Zen) teacher (806-869), Verses on the Five Ranks

Sunday Quote: Hold things lightly

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Aeschylus says, “There is no effort in what is divine.” There is an easiness in salvation which is more difficult to us than all our efforts.

In one of Grimm’s stories there is a competition between a giant and a little tailor to see which is the stronger. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before it comes down again. The little tailor lets a bird fly and it does not come down at all. Anything without wings always comes down again in the end.

Simone Weil, Waiting on God

 

Stilling the mind’s questions

Karl Duffy3 Comments

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

Mary Oliver, What Gorgeous Thing

Calling our lives to attention

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That the silent presence of your death

Would call your life to attention,

Wake you up to how scarce your time is

And to the urgency to become free

And equal to the call of your destiny.


That you would gather yourself

And decide carefully

How you can live

The life you would love

To look back on

From your deathbed.

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings