The plain concerns of ordinary work are the raw material – the materia prima as the alchemists called it – for working out the soul’s matter.
We work with the stuff of the soul by means of the things of life.
Thomas Moore
Tag: balance
Accomodating
Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life: lIfe remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever: Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodating is a gratifying choice. accommodation of the heart is not always easy. Knowing that it is a possibility is a great inspiration. Having an accommodating heart is the ultimate freedom. Practicing accommodation on the small, moment-to-moment disappointments of life – not forgetting our preferences but remaining spacious and relaxed when they are not met – prepares us to deal with the larger challenges of life.
Sylvia Boorstein, Don’t just do something, sit there
Noticing the ordinary
or·di·nar·y/ˈôrdnˌerē/ Adjective: With no special or distinctive features; normal.
The Catholic liturgical tradition has long divided time in two: There are two kinds of days in life and two periods of the year. The days were either feast days or ferial days. The year was divided into “ordinary” time and …well, “extra-ordinary” time, I guess. This second segment of the year, come to think about it, I never heard anyone name at all. It was a number of times: Advent, Lent, the Christmas, Easter and Pentecost seasons. This kind of information may be boring stuff but it’s important stuff, too. Ordinary time, you see, was the longest period of all. It was the time when life went its long, dull way, predictable to the ultimate. Monday, we did the laundry; Tuesday, we did chapel, altar breads, and house-cleaning; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday we did it all again. More of the same. Same old, same old. Week after week, month after month, year after year.
Every once in a while, of course, life was punctuated by a feast day with its special meals and polyphonic liturgies but, in the end, the normal, the daily predominated. As it does for all of us yet. The commute, the paperwork, the housework, the school run, eat up day after day with mind-numbing regularity. And yet, it is in “ordinary” time that the really important things happen: our children grow up, our marriages and relationships grow older, our sense of life changes, our vision expands, our soul ripens. No doubt about it, [my father’s] prayer card was right: To lose the glory of ordinary time is to suffer the loss of the greater part of life.
Joan Chittister, Ordinary Time
Sunday Quote: Trust in moments of darkness
No seed ever sees the flower
Zen Saying
Simplification of outward life
Simplification of outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside. I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life — the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is only a technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American writer and aviator, Gift from the Sea
Go home
You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call ‘taking refuge in the island of self.’ If you don’t go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Peace Begins Here
