Stepping out of the busyness,
stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else,
is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.
Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in your own Awakened Heart
Tag: balance
Nowhere to go, Nothing to achieve
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one with oneself.
(La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi)
Michel de Montaigne, Essais Book I, ch. 39
Returning home
Remember that your ‘True Home’ is not found outside yourself, but it is right in your own heart. We do not need to bring home anything for us to feel fulfilled. We have everything we need, right in our heart. We do not need to practice for many years or to travel far to arrive at our true home. If we know how to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration, then with each breath, with each step, we arrive at our true home. Our true home is not a place far removed from us in space and time. It is not something that we can buy. Our true home is present right in the here and now; if only we know how to return and to be truly present to it.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Home is the Way – A Christmas Message
photo randi hausken
A time for rest
O little forests, meekly
Touch the snow with low branches!
O covered stones, Hide the house of growth!
Secret vegetal words, Unlettered water,
Daily Zero.
Pray undistracted, Curled tree carved in steel –
Buried zenith!
Fire, turn inward
To your weak fort, To a burly infant spot,
A house of nothing.
O peace, bless this mad place:
Silence, love this growth.
O silence, golden zero, Unsetting sun
Love winter when the plant says nothing
Thomas Merton
photo lumpytrout
What we do not see
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one
John O’Donohue, The Inner History of a Day
photo of Trim, Co Meath, by Denis O’Donovan
Letting light fill our fears
And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And I thought I was in danger.
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing.
To live and see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
Traditional Inuit (Copper Eskimo) Song
photo andy waddington
