We often go through our day or our life with our defenses up…
I seemed to hear God saying, “Put down your gun and we’ll talk.”
C.S. Lewis
Tag: Be fully present
Paying attention
Friday…a little more space appears…we can perhaps notice the beauty all around us, in the little things, new colours, some time for ourselves:
I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do.
The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me; the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel,
the unutterable muddiness of mud…
GK Chesterton
Making the most of life
Mindful eating at its best, the poet fully taken by the eating of a peach. It can be the same for us today if we give any moment our full awareness:
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
extract, Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms
South Korean Screen painting of the Sun, Moon and Peach Trees
One step at a time
Ideals exist in the mind, with absolutes of right and wrong, which tend to give us a sense of striving, of not being good enough On the contrary, once we touch into the heart faculty, we connect more with the actual here and now and let go of the need to be prefect and certain. This brings about a deeper sense of balance and groundedness:
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.
The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
Agnes George de Mille, American dancer and Choreographer.
When things fall apart
Today is the Feast of St Martin, traditionally one of the big feasts which defined how we should work with time and the pace of our lives. It marked the start of winter and signalled a change of tempo. From tomorrow, a forty day period of preparation for Christmas began, a time which recommended that we should slow down, simplify our activity, reflect and see what really endures.
Perhaps this is fitting at the end of a tumultuous and frenetic week, which caused a lot of uncertainty in many people, and made us all examine our values, and the different solutions to being human which are being offered. We need to see what will withstand the passing of time, the passing of empires and changing human paradigms. It reminded us to connect with a deeper wisdom in order to learn how to deal with the frequently moving and disappointing nature of life:
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, the ground is always shifting. Nothing lasts, including us. … It’s not impermanence per se that is the cause of our suffering. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our effort to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness.
Pema Chodron, The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human
Trusting our inner sense
The center that I cannot find
is known to my unconscious mind.
W.H. Auden
