Tag: Acceptance

Life as it is

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Those who don’t love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat  ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength and greatness.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Everything is here

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Cherai-sea-shore-kerala-india.jpg

air carries the taste
of ocean-going liners

shadows of Canada geese
colour the salt grass

water trickles inland
suggests the threat of nesting swans

black Essex mud
refuses to take shape

I can live with this promise

that nothing is in place
but everything is here

Levinia Greenlaw, Estuary

Never fully knowing

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File:The End Book.png

You can never know whether or not God is in a story until you get all the way to the end. For if only two words are still missing, yes, even if the pause after the final words still hasn’t occurred, He can always still show up.

 Rilke,  Stories of God

The everyday

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SweepingMonk

We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy,

but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are,

not where we wish we were.

 Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work”

Trusting in times of danger

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File:Looking Foxy.jpg

All night under the pines
the fox moves through the darkness
with a mouthful of teeth
and a reputation for death
which it deserves.
In the spicy villages of the mice
he is famous, his nose in the grass
is like an earthquake, his feet on the path
is a message so absolute
that the mouse, hearing it,
makes himself as small as he can
as he sits silent or, trembling, goes on
hunting among the grasses
for the ripe seeds.

Maker of All Things,
including appetite, including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us, sometime or other,
flee for the sake of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow–
let me hold on to the edge of your robe
as you determine what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.

Mary Oliver, Maker of all Things, even Healing

Making friends

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File:Buncyou-tenori.jpg

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.  One of the major obstacles to what is traditionally called enlightenment is resentment, feeling cheated, holding a grudge about who you are, where you are, what you are. This is why we talk so much about making friends with ourselves, because, for some reason or other, we don’t feel that kind of satisfaction in a full and complete way. Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.

Pema Chodron, The wisdom of No Escape