A place within

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Philosophically, stress is a perverted relationship to time. So that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven’t had a true moment for yourself. And you know, to relax in and to just be.

Because, you know, the way in this country — there’s all the different zones. I think there are these zones within us as well. There’s surface time, which is really a rapid-fire Ferrari time… over-structured, like, and stolen from you, thieved all the time.

And what I love in this regard is my old friend Meister Eckhart…..he said, “There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch.” And I really thought that was amazing, and if you cash it out, what it means is, that in — that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

John O Donohue, Interview with Krista Tippett, On Being

photo AgCam

A new month: Unexpected gifts

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As life becomes harder … it also becomes richer,

because the fewer expectations we have,

the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.

Etty Hillesum, born 1914,  died in Auschwitz 1943.

White and black keys

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In life, nothing dwells. The wind blows and then stops. The blossoms burst forth and then fall.  Things come and go. The melody drifts back onto  an aching E flat and then back to E again. The song of your life is played on white and black keys. Sadness is … an essential truth of human life. But let’s not dwell there. Not while the song is still playing.

Karen Maizen Miller, Be Sad

Photo alisson felus

When the heart is open

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Sometimes we orient to the world through ideas and get fixed on our notion of how things should be. We can run from how a thing actually is. What we need at times is the courage to embrace life as it is actually unfolding, and not avoid it or hide in some concept which we think it should be.

The idea of love is not love
The idea of the ocean is neither salt nor sand;
The face of the seal cannot rise from the idea
to stare at you,
to astound your heart

Mary Oliver

Sunday Quote: waiting and longing

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I am like the air on a calm day
as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape.

Colm Toibin, The Testament of Mary

photo of early morning fog University College Dublin by Crys83

Keeping a place

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If I keep a green bough in my heart,

the singing bird will come.

Chinese Proverb