A place within

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Philosophically, stress is a perverted relationship to time. So that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven’t had a true moment for yourself. And you know, to relax in and to just be.

Because, you know, the way in this country — there’s all the different zones. I think there are these zones within us as well. There’s surface time, which is really a rapid-fire Ferrari time… over-structured, like, and stolen from you, thieved all the time.

And what I love in this regard is my old friend Meister Eckhart…..he said, “There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch.” And I really thought that was amazing, and if you cash it out, what it means is, that in — that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

John O Donohue, Interview with Krista Tippett, On Being

photo AgCam

Gratitude

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When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude. For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and author, died July 2nd 2016

Simple flowers from the Mad Hatter Cafe, Castledermot

Sunday Quote: Life is short

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We need to give up what no longer works

and find new ways of being

that keep us close to what matters

Mark Nepo

The real enemy

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Death is not the enemy. Age is not the enemy. These things are inevitable, They happen to everyone. But what we ought to fear is the kind of death that happens in life. It can happen at any time that you are going along, and then, at some point you congeal. You know,  like jelly. You’re not fluid anymore. Your solidify at a certain point in your life and from then on your life is doomed to be a repetition of what you have done before. That’s the enemy. 

Gail Godwin, The Finishing School

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A new month: Unexpected gifts

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As life becomes harder … it also becomes richer,

because the fewer expectations we have,

the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.

Etty Hillesum, born 1914,  died in Auschwitz 1943.

Inner voyages

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The human heart is never still. … There are always new thoughts and experiences emerging in your life; some moments delight and surprise you, others bring you onto shaky ground. …The mind and heart are wanderers who are always tempted by new horizons. … Your longing frequently takes you on inner voyages that no one would ever guess. …longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts and blessings which our lives dream.

John O’Donohue,