Category: Be fully present

Every moment is profound

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Human life itself, the mystery of being thrust into the world by birth and swept out of it by death, is an imponderable puzzle, one that we can try to ignore but cannot escape. So much of what passes for ‘ordinary’ life is, when seen through different eyes, not ordinary at all, but full of potential for spiritual learning. To practice the koan of everyday life means to confront every situation as though it were a profound spiritual question.

       Lewis Richmond: Work as a Spiritual Practice. A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job. 

Noticing

Karl Duffy4 Comments

 

It is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain

Mary Oliver, Daisies

Sunday quote: Joy

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The Joy that isn’t shared,
I’ve heard
dies young.
Anne Sexton, from Welcome Morning
 
                           

Sacred space

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Sanctuary is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm: it’s about spiritual survival. Today, seeking sanctuary is no more optional for me than church attendance was as a child.

 Sometimes I find it in churches, monasteries, and other sites designated as sacred.

But more often I find it in places sacred to my soul: in the natural world, in the company of a trustworthy friend, in solitary or shared silence, in the ambience of a good poem or good music.

Parker Palmer, Seeking Sanctuary in our own Sacred Places

The big challenge

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Merely to say the same thing twice — language is language — how is that supposed to get us anywhere?

But we do not want to get anywhere.

We would like only, for once, to get just to where we are already.

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1889 – 1976

A desperate need to be busy

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What is astonishing about our contemporary world is how few people are present to what is physically occurring around them. Distracted thumbs on phone keys are a brilliant, iconic image Shakespeare would use today, were he alive, to illustrate the desperate need to be busy and remain undisturbed by a larger horizon of human endeavor for which we might feel inadequate. There is an unconscious sense that if we refuse to be present to the physical world around us, we will be held harmless from any of the greater physical patterns that might disturb and destroy the protected, often virtual worlds we have taken so much effort to construct around us.

David Whyte