What will it be for you today?
It could be a meeting, a walk in nature, even just a cup of coffee…
To pay attention and be fully present is the key
Every day has something in
it whose name is forever.
Mary Oliver, Everything That Was Broken
Tag: Awareness
Hearing the song
I spent the weekend in Glendalough and was able to walk in nature early in the morning among the trees and rivers. Some say even the rocks there vibrate with life. It was easy to feel grace and see wonder, just as we did as children. So what we strive for in our working days – in the “chambers of commerce” – is to remember that beauty and grace are never far from us. They are in the leaf, the stone, the heart. If we listen, there is wonder all around, and it sings. Can we hear it today?
What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still
Mary Oliver, What can I say?
Sunday Quote: Stilling the mind
I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying …
Pablo Neruda, It is Born
photo calflier001
When you get stuck behind a tractor
It always happens when we are on the way to some appointment….trapped in our schedules, trapped in our cars…
Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn’t look out, they would make us live in cages too.
So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put your fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares. Then after you had all these cages you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. All laws about what you couldn’t do. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren’t happy and didn’t feel free.
You made all the cages, then you wondered why you didn’t feel free.
Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
photo eric jones
Open to surprise
Gorgeous amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention:
Mangoes, Grandchildren, Bach, ponds…
This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible.
If you say, “Well, that’s pretty much what I thought I’d see,” you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here.
[…] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.
Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers
photo: laitche
Trust
Sometimes it is hard to see what what is really going on in our lives or where they are leading to. Underneath, something is happening. We just have to be patient for it to emerge.
If you break open the cherry tree
Where are the flowers?
But in the Springtime
see how they bloom!
Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481 Japanese Zen monk and poet
Mindfulbalance 