Tag: balance

Hold lightly

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:U.S. Army Capt. Erik Hickly, foreground, and other members of the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team participate in a nine-mile rucksack march Sept 120911-N-II659-690.jpg
We have these incredibly heavy burdens we carry with us like rocks in a big rucksack.
We think that carrying this big heavy rucksack is our security; we think it grounds us. We don’t realize the freedom,  the lightness of just dropping it off, letting it go. That doesn’t mean giving up relationships; it doesn’t mean giving up ones profession, or one’s family, or one’s home. It has nothing to do with that; it’s not an external change. It’s an internal change. It’s a change from holding on tightly to holding very lightly
Tenzin Palmo, Into the Heart of Life

Speed

Karl Duffy3 Comments
File:Shenandoah National Park SHEN9228.jpg
It’s a long weekend here in Ireland and the weather is even forecast to be good. A time to slow down, let go our that part of the mind which is task driven and touch into some non-doing:
The great tragedy of speed as an answer to the complexities and responsibilities of existence is that very soon we cannot recognize anything or anyone who is not traveling at the same velocity as we are…..as slaves to speed, we start to lose sight of family members, especially children, or those who are ill or infirm, who are not flying through the world as quickly and determinedly as we are. Just as seriously, we begin to leave behind the parts of our own selves that limp a little, the vulnerabilities that actually give us color and character. We forget that our sanity is dependent on a relationship with longer, more patient cycles extending beyond the urgencies and madness of the office.
David Whyte.

Falling and getting back up

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Toddler running and falling.jpg

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe,

I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me.

But this was shown:

that in falling and rising again we are always kept in the same love

Julian Of Norwich 1342 – 1416, Anchoress at the church of St Julian, Norwich

photo Jamie Campbell

Loving kindness

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Baby Elephant.jpg

I love the gentle kindness in these words, and they are so true of real love. 

Sadly, they are far away from how we often treat ourselves. 

We are not wholly bad or good

We who live our lives under Milk Wood

And Thou, I know will be the first

To see our best side, and not our worst. 

Minister Eli Jenkin’s prayer in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood,  sometimes known as the Sunset poem

photo wiliam warby

A hidden stream within

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Silence comes from the Latin word, silens, meaning to be still, quiet, or at rest. Other words related to it are: calm, peace, serenity, tranquility, poise, composure, noiselessness, hush, and solitude. In his description of stillness, Romano Guardini cuts to its very essence: “Stillness is the tranquility of the inner life; the quiet at the depths of its hidden streams. It is a collected, total presence, a being ‘all there,’ receptive, alert, ready . . . It is when the soul abandons the restlessness of purposeful activity.”  Within this definition we learn silence’s first fundamental lesson: It is not so much a lack of sound as it is a cultivation of interior stillness.

Eugene Hemrick, Silence: Taken from the promise of virtue

Learning from the birds these days

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sayornis phoebe 1905.jpg

The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.

Can I weave a nest for silence,
Weave it out of listening,
Listening, Layer upon layer?

But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence,
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish,
No tendril of a wish
Toward anything that might happen
Or be given,
Only the warm, faithful waiting,
Contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Before the answer, the silence.

May Sarton, Beyond the question, 1