Category: Make the most of life

What we do not see

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sheep Gate sunrise large print.jpg

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one

John O’Donohue, The Inner History of a Day

photo of Trim, Co Meath, by Denis O’Donovan

Letting light fill our fears

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Paddling a narrow cleft below St. Abbs Head - geograph.org.uk - 1524969.jpg

And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And I thought I was in danger.

My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing.
To live and see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.

Traditional Inuit (Copper Eskimo) Song

photo andy waddington

Sunday Quote: On the shortest day in the year

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Sprouting Seeds (7644157600).jpg

With life as short as a half taken breath,
don’t plant anything but love.

Rumi

photo gila national forest

Cheerfulness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Gay Head Light during Winter Solstice 2007.jpg

As the Winter Solstice approaches the mornings are very dark,  and the daylight hours clearly shorter. It is the darkest time of the year. This quote wishes to remind us that,  in a fundamental way,  we are complete in ourselves, no matter what our passing thoughts  tell us, or if we cannot see much light in our lives.

Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness—nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

photo william waterway

Never quite settled

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

departure

Shopping, as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, is often a search for security. And currently there is a lot of shopping going on,  often presented as a way to get the perfect, or final, result – the perfect Christmas, the perfect relationship or family occasion. However, as Rilke reminds us, this search for a perfect, fixed completeness is futile,  since things are always changing. There is a fundamental groundlessness inside us, which we need to learn to relate to, without running from it or wishing to soothe or through acquiring things or experiences or fundamentally “fix” it:

Who has turned us around like this,

so that we always

– do what we may –

retain the attitude of one who is departing?

Rilke, Duino Elegies

Sunday Quote: Not taking things too seriously

Karl Duffy2 Comments

 Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap.

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. 

GK Chesterton