Month: October 2016

When you get stuck behind a tractor

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:A traffic tail back behind a tractor by the former Coedana Rectory - geograph.org.uk - 1399270.jpg

It always happens when we are on the way to some appointment….trapped in our schedules, trapped in our cars…

Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn’t look out, they would make us live in cages too.

So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put your fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares. Then after you had all these cages you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. All laws about what you couldn’t do. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren’t happy and didn’t feel free.

You made all the cages, then you wondered why you didn’t feel free.

Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

photo eric jones

Actually living

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Autumn Berries (22337433066).jpg

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Alan Watts

photo Shenandoah national park

Keep knocking

Karl Duffy1 Comment

doorIt must be said that things do not always work out as we would like. This teaches us patience and trust.

However, sometimes we get news of  reward after long effort that is richly deserved. We don’t expect it, find it hard to believe,  and yet –  as Heaney says –  it is like a gust of wind that can catch “the heart off guard and blow it open”. This teaches us the unforced nature of  joy:

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about giving up from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.

Rumi

The Comparing Mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:The grass is always greener - geograph.org.uk - 783326.jpg

Our tendency to compare nearly always robs us of joy

and stops us living fully the life that we actually have.

What you do not have you find everywhere

W.S. Merwin, American Poet, born 1927, Provision

photo evelyn simak

Open to surprise

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Scenery of Shinji pond at Expo’70 Commemorative Park in Osaka.jpg

Gorgeous amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention:

Mangoes, Grandchildren, Bach, ponds…

This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible.

If you say, “Well, that’s pretty much what I thought I’d see,” you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here.

[…] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers

photo: laitche

Sunday Quote: Desert moments

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File:Bare Ridges (2993439668).jpg

No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.

Annie Dillard

photo peter dowley