Something beautiful

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Beannachtai na Féile Padraig oraibh go léir: The blessings of  Saint Patrick’s Day to you all.

There is some kind of sense of beauty that knows the horizon that we are really called to in some way. I love Pascal’s phrase, that you should always keep something beautiful in your mind. And I have often — like in times when it’s been really difficult for me, if you can keep some kind of little contour that you can glimpse sideways at, now and again, you can endure great bleakness.

John O’ Donohue, The Inner Landscape of Beauty

A portable home

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Your true home is something you have to create for yourself.  When we know how to make peace with our body, take care of and release tension in our body, then our body becomes a comfortable peaceful home for us to come back to in the present moment.  When we know how to take care of our feelings, how to generate joy and happiness and handle a painful feeling, we can cultivate and restore a happy home in the present moment.  And when we know how to generate energies of understanding and compassion our home will become very cosy and a pleasant place to come back to.  Home is not something to hope for but something to cultivate.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Be patient

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A way of working with difficult moments, difficult emotions and with these difficult times:

When you’re like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point – just pausing- instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless energy – knowing it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves.

Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War

Sunday Quote: Drained

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Limp along until your legs are spent, and you fall flat and your energy is drained.

Then the grace of the Divine will lift you.

Rumi

The bush may flare

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There is no less holiness at this time – as you are reading this – than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha’s bo tree. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

Everyday miracles

Karl Duffy4 Comments

It is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.

John O’Donohue