Men build their dreams as they build their circles of friends. God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday. A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears; A pearl necklace around the neck of poverty.

Today being Bloomsday, I Felt I should post something from an Irish writer. Not Joyce, but rather I chose the poet Patrick Kavanagh, whose  poems celebrate the ways in which the most trivial things reveal God. He saw the sacred in the small details of everyday life and in the unexpected places of ordinary events.   He believed that meaning can be found within and in the mundane tasks of each day, even in the poor landscape where he lived in Ireland. For him, there was no task or moment in the day which could not become an occasion for grace and where meaning could be found.

This reminds me today to try to pay attention. When I am not conscious of this, I can be  pulled by more exciting or demanding sights on my journey, sounds, fashions, headlines, and the advertisements that are specially designed to capture my attention.  I can get distracted by my desire to be part of something more stimulating elsewhere and neglect the quiet routine in my daily life. These  big attractions always suggests that more and somewhere else is better, that our lives are not complete until we have what we feel is missing. However, often what we need is not missing; We do not have to go far, but can find it right in front of us, so we need to cultivate the vital work of noticing in our practice. As the quote below reminds us, not paying attention is a type of terminal sleepwalking through life, missing out on all the richness presented to us each day: