Tag: Be fully present

Patient waiting

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Our passing dramas stand in contrast to the enduring parts of nature, which goes back inside itself at this time of year, and then starts again.

The oak tree
loves patience,
the mountain is
still looking,

as it has for centuries,
for a word to say about
the gradual way it
slides itself

back to the
world below
to begin again,
in another life,

to be fertile.
When the wind blows
the grass
whistles and whispers

in myths and riddles
and not in our language
but one far older.
The sea is the sea is

always the sea.
These things 
you can count on
as you walk about the world

happy or sad,
talky or silent, making
weapons, love, poems.
The briefest of fires.

Mary Oliver, Patience 

What remains

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The shortest days of the year. The balance between light and darkness. A time to let go of those thoughts which hold us back and stand firm in that which we are

I move in the descent of days

from what was dreamed to what remains.

Wendell Berry, Boone

The days shorten: living fully

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Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past.

To come into the present is to stop the war.

Jack Kornfield

Our deeper mind

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From the beginning of  time,

everyone has mistakenly identified themselves with what they are aware of.

Controlled by their experience of perceived objects,

they lose track of their fundamental deeper mind.

  The Surangama Sutra, Mahāyāna Buddhist text, pre 705 AD

Sunday Quote:The best gift

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Today the Christian Liturgy starts to chant the O Antiphons –   aspirations used since the 5th Century in the final days before Christmas and which resonate with deep needs in our humanity,

The first of them wishes that we may grow in wisdom at this time of year around the Winter Solstice, when the days are shorter and nature quietens down, and we can see more clearly the bare elements in our lives. What maters most? In many old traditions, having a wise perspective on what was important in life was greatly treasured. In some ways it is the best gift one could get in these days, leading to a resting of the mind and contentment.

To the mind that is still,

the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

Always wanting

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As already said earlier in Advent, this time of year is good for noticing the restlessness of the human heart and the different ways it seeks to satisfy itself. Like other energies, desire passes through the mind-body, frequently in short bursts and is not permanent. Desire is to be understood and we come to see that we can let go of it.

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,

and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

Margaret Atwood, The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart