Category: Make the most of life

Trusting our inner sense

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The center that I cannot find
is known to my unconscious mind.

W.H. Auden

Halloween bonfires

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This evening marks the important Celtic feast of Samhain which starts winter and we enter the “darker half” of the year, a theme which is somewhat reflected in the celebration of Halloween. However, the ancient idea was far deeper, as we are invited to go inside and imitate the landscape in slowing down. Some element of darkness is present in all our lives. Modern society has enough elements to keep up distracted, but inevitably, from time to time, we are confronted with life’s fragility and we are invited to welcome its lessons. Moments such as these help burn away what is not essential and bring us back to our foundations. We see what really matters  and realize that searching outside of ourselves is not the way:

How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,  
that for us  
as we go up in flames,

our one work is
to open ourselves, to be  
the flames?

Galway Kinnell

The vulnerability of life

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Things are changing all the time. This makes us seek who and what will anchor us in all of this change:
Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird.
To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support.
Life and death are connected by vulnerability.
The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives.
Let’s not forget the preciousness and vulnerability of life during the times we are successful and popular.
Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

The kingdom of the eternal

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When we love and allow ourselves to be loved,

we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal.  

Fear changes into courage, emptiness becomes plenitude, and distance becomes intimacy.

John O’Donohue, AnamCara

Problems and Inconveniences

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If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you have a problem.

Everything else is an inconvenience.

Life is an inconvenience.

Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems.

You will live longer.

Robert Fulghum, American author and Unitarian Minister, 

Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door

Inner confidence

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Suffering sometimes arises when we seek outside ourselves – in others or in achievements – what has to be found within:

I have nothing to defend,  for all is of equal value to me.

I cannot lose anything in this
place of abundance
I have found.

Catherine of Siena,  Catholic Saint and mystic, 1347 – 1380