Contentment seems more about switching off, at source, some of the driven aspects of our personalities,
rather than achieving that “more” which we think will fulfil them.
It is related to a quality of not-always-leaning towards something else:
A person is satisfied not by the quantity of food,
but by the absence of greed.
Gurdjieff
photo timothy krause
Until you can forgive and include all of the parts, every part belonging, every part forgiven, even the tragic parts now seen as necessary lessons, you cannot come “home.”
When you succeed at your real life task, or what I like to call “the task within the task,” then wherever God leads you, it doesn’t really matter. Home is not a geographic place. It is a place where everything belongs, and everything can be held, and everything is another lesson and another gift. “Hell” would be whenever life has come to a halt, where there is no rejoining, but all is exclusion, blaming, and denying. We no longer need to believe in hell as a doctrine or a geographic place. We see it in this world almost every day.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) – one of the Eastern fathers of the church, and one of my favorites – defined sin as “the refusal to keep growing.” The saint and the true elder grow from everything, even and especially their failures.
Today is the Feast of All Saints, which traditionally began a month of reflection on letting go and endings, and remembering those who have gone before us. One of today’s themes is the inter-connectedness between us and our ancestors, those who have shaped us – even over the centuries – into who we are today. As Jung said, more than the lived parts, the “unlived parts” of our parents lives have a profound impact upon us. Another theme is that of thin places, the closeness between this world and the spiritual world, which gives rise to the sacredness of all reality, not just those moments or people who stand out. All of the places in our lives are temples, not just the ones which have candles and incense. Can we notice this in the simple things and moments of this day?
For a table to exist, we need wood, a carpenter, time, skillfulness, and many other causes to be. The wood needs the forest, the sunshine, the rain, and so on. The carpenter needs his parents, breakfast, fresh air, and so on. And each of those things, in turn, has to be brought about by other conditions. If we continue to look in this way, we will see that nothing has been left out. Everything in the cosmos has come together to bring us this table. Looking deeply at the sunshine, the leaves of the tree, and the clouds, we can see the table. The one can be seen in the all, and the all can be seen in the one.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo rick harris
This evening marks the important Celtic feast of Samhain which starts winter and we enter the “darker half” of the year, a theme which is somewhat reflected in the celebration of Halloween. However, the ancient idea was far deeper, as we are invited to go inside and imitate the landscape in slowing down. Some element of darkness is present in all our lives. Modern society has enough elements to keep up distracted, but inevitably, from time to time, we are confronted with life’s fragility and we are invited to welcome its lessons. Moments such as these help burn away what is not essential and bring us back to our foundations. We see what really matters and realize that searching outside of ourselves is not the way:
How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames,
our one work is
to open ourselves, to be
the flames?
Galway Kinnell
What in your life is calling you…
When all the noise is silenced, the meetings adjourned…the lists laid aside,
And the wild Iris blooms by itself in the dark forest…
What still pulls on your soul?
Rumi
