Tag: Awareness

Saddened

Karl Duffy2 Comments
  • File:Underaged refugees in a camp located at the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 30 January 2016.jpg

The Christian calendar is quite wise in placing the feast-day of the Slaughter of the Innocents today,  just immediately after the Christmas celebrations. It faces into the reality of this world, with the sad turns which we cannot understand, and the fact that we can lose that which is most important to us, due to factors which are unexpected or outside of our control.  It is the opposite to the distracting tactics which we see scattered all through the modern understanding of this holiday.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world

without being saddened very often.

Erich Fromm

photo Mstyslav Chernov

Underaged refugees in a camp located at the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 30 January 2016.

To really see

Karl Duffy1 Comment

mary-oliver

The highest goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information,

but to face our moments as sacred

Abraham Herschel

What we remember

Karl Duffy6 Comments

File:Hanukkah candles 2015 (48).JPG

We do not remember days,

We remember moments

Cesare Pavese 1908 – 1950 Italian poet and novelist

Paying attention

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Efterår i Mollerup Skov.jpg

Friday…a little more space appears…we can perhaps notice the beauty all around us, in the little things, new colours, some time for ourselves:

I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do.

The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me; the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel,

the unutterable muddiness of mud…

GK Chesterton

Making the most of life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Eight-Fold Screen Painting of the Sun, Moon and Peach Trees 02.jpg

Mindful eating at its best, the poet fully taken by the eating of a peach. It can be the same for us today if we give any moment our full awareness:

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

extract, Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms

South Korean Screen painting of the Sun, Moon and Peach Trees

Sunday Quote: Broken but..

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

crack

Lessons learnt from the week that has passed.  Two different personalities using words in different ways: one path ascends, the other descends.

This was reinforced in a conversation with a close friend yesterday: The Western mind is performance driven, with value being given to the highest achiever. This might be good for external advancement and achievement, but will it last in terms of wisdom and inner peace?

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again, I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack in everything 
That’s how the light gets in 

Leonard Cohen, Anthem, died Friday November 11th

photo of centuries old rock in Glendalough