The most important thing, in the show of the temporal and the transient,
is to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present.
Hegel, Works, VII, 17.
photo matt jigins
Tag: Awareness
The wonder of this day
All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shells of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
John O’Donohue, Morning Prayer
Small things
Whenever I stopped long enough to reflect on such questions as “Why am I here?” and “What is my purpose?” the answer seemed pretty clear. I actually found it long ago in some lines by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, words I’ve quoted often because they’ve served me so well as a kind of north star, timeless wisdom by which to navigate:
“Ours is not the task
of fixing the whole world at once
but of stretching out to mend
the part of the world that is within our reach”
Katrina Kenison, Mending the world
The stories that keep us back
One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true – it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us.
David Whyte
photo Uwe H. Friese
Each moment
Most of us wonder from time to time how to give meaning to some days:
A Lord asked Takuan how he might pass the time, as his days were long in the office,
sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others.
Takuan wrote these 8 Chinese characters and gave them to him:
“Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem
This day will not come again
Each minute is worth a priceless gem”
Takuan Sōhō 1573 – 1645, Japanese Zen Buddhist Master
photo Lorenz Kerscher
Fresh starts
A friend reminded me yesterday that it is all about starting each day anew, with fresh eyes – like lighting a candle in the darkness and seeing things in the glow of a kind light:
I’m heading into 2017 aspiring to look at life through the eyes of a child. Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind” — a corrective to the cynicism that comes when we let hard realities darken our vision and diminish our imagination. It’s a way of looking at the world that doesn’t deny the darkness, but makes fresh starts possible in everything – from our personal to our political lives.
What’s “the growing edge” in your life?
Whatever it is, may 2017 be a year in which our adult powers dance with our child-like imaginations to help make all things new.
Parker Palmer
With thanks to makebelieveboutique.com
