Tag: balance

Surprised by joy

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

This discipline is the hardest one. It is the discipline to be surprised not by suffering but by joy.

As we grow old, we will have to stretch out our arms, be guided and led to places we would rather not go. What was true for Saint Peter will be true for us. There is suffering ahead that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road and that others were more shrewd than we were. But don’t be surprised by pain. Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus

Sometimes, let go

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone

Alan Watts

Inner travel

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

I’ve been really lucky to see many, many places. Now the great adventure is the inner world, now that I’ve spent a lot of time gathering emotions, impressions and experiences. Now I just want to sit still, charting that inner landscape, because I think anyone who travels knows that you’re not really doing it in order to move around – you’re travelling on order to be moved.

Pico Iyer

no special thinking

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

I just need to have long periods of no talking and no special thinking,

and immediate contact with the sun, the grass, the dirt, the leaves. 

Undistracted by statements, jokes, opinions, news. 

Thomas Merton, June 15, 1968, The Other Side of the Mountain.

Sunday Quote: beauty

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul

Marcus Aurelius

Thresholds in life

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold”, it comes from “threshing” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into a more crucial and challenging and worthy fullness. There are huge thresholds in every life.

You know that, for example, if you are in the middle of life on a busy evening…..and you get a phone call that someone you love is suddenly dying, it takes just ten seconds to communicate that information. But when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. Suddenly everything that seemed so important before is all gone, and now you are thinking of this.

So the given world that we think is there and the solid ground we are on is so tentative. And the threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and very often how we cross is the key thing

John O Donohue, quoted in the beautiful book, Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living