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
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
If I keep a green bough in my heart,
the singing bird will come.
Chinese Proverb
Listen, are you breathing just a little,
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII
I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015
If you have one hour of air and many hours to go,
you must breathe slowly.
If you have one arm’s length and many things to care for,
you must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must
set your heart on fire.
We are blessed.
Every day is a chance.
We have two arms
Fear wastes air.
Mark Nepo, Freefall
