Category: Be fully present

Patience: Darkness and light, conscious and unconscious

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Lilium candidum 'Madonna lily' (Liliaceae) flower.JPG

Night after night, darkness enters the face
of the lily which, lightly, closes its five walls around itself,
and its purse of honey, and its fragrance,
and is content to stand there
in the garden, not quite sleeping,
and, maybe, saying in lily language
some small words we can’t hear
even when there is no wind anywhere,
its lips are so secret, its tongue is so hidden –
or, maybe, it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it, the perfect prayer?

Mary Oliver, The Lily

photo magnus manske

Where you are

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Black River

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.

Kabir

Sacred

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File:Kiliney-Hill.jpg

When you treat your time as though you are a machine;

a doing machine;

you are committing violence against the sacredness of life itself.

Philip Moffitt

Beyond words

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enso_sm

Happy are those who know:
Behind all words, the Unsayable stands;

And from that source alone, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness,

and us — free of our bridges,
Built with the stone of distinctions;
So that always, within each delight,
We gaze at what is purely single and joined.

Rainer Maria Rilke

As the week begins

Karl Duffy1 Comment

snow bolton

Mysteriously, wonderfully,

I bid farewell to what goes

I greet what comes;

for what comes cannot be denied

and what goes cannot be detained

Chuang Tzu

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

(But where are the snows of yesteryear?)

French saying

photo of last fridays Spring weather in Kildare

Putting labels

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Verona - maschera veneziana2.jpg

A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. ‘Right,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘success,’ ‘failure, ‘ lucky’, ‘unlucky’ may be as limiting a way of seeing things as ‘diabetic’, ‘epileptic’, ‘manic-depressive’ ….. Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself.. Belief traps or frees us. Labels may become self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Rachel Naomi Remen

photo rinina25