Month: August 2014

A bigger picture

Karl Duffy3 Comments

The  Comet Jacques passed over Ireland these last few days, but unfortunately cloud cover made it difficult to experience this “once in a lifetime” event. It will not be back for another 20,000 years. The night sky tends to put things into perspective:

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently.

When you look into infinity you realize that there are more important things than what people do everyday.

Calvin in Bill Watterson‘s Calvin and Hobbes

Begin Again

Karl Duffy2 Comments
File:Wine glass.jpg

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

Bertholt Brecht, Sometimes

photo Scmtb49

Courage

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Croagh patrick path.jpg

The whole process of meditation is one of creating a good ground, a cradle of loving-kindness where we actually are nurtured. What’s being nurtured is our confidence in our own wisdom, our own health, and our own courage, our own goodheartedness. We develop some sense that the way we are — the kind of personality that we have and the way we express life — is good, and that by being who we are completely and by totally accepting that and having respect for ourselves, we are standing on the ground of warriorship.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

photo of Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo by Kanchelskis

The way changes as we walk it

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:La route qui mène vers le coté obscur.jpg

Even in a country you know by heart
     it’s hard to go the same way twice

The life of the going changes.
         The chances change and make a new way

Any tree or stone or bird
    can be the bud of a new direction. The
        natural correction is to make intent
of accident.

To get back before dark
is the art of going.

Wendell Berry, Travelling at Home

photo: padawane

No Maps

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File:Ortelius 1592 Ireland Map.jpg

It’s so tempting to want the answers before we begin the journey. We like to know our way.  We like to have maps.  We like to have guides.  But we are more like a breathing puzzle, a living bag of pieces, and each day shows us what a piece or two is for, where it might go, how it might fit.  Over time, a picture starts to emerge by which we begin to understand our place in the world. Unfortunately we waste a lot of time seeking someone to tell us what life will be like once we live it. We drain ourselves of vital inner fortitude by asking others to map our way. The instructions are in the living.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Map of Ireland 1592 by Abraham Ortelius