It is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
Mary Oliver
photo sharon mollerus
Tag: Be fully present
True to oneself
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular
but because it never forgot what it could do
Naomi Shihab Nye, Famous
photo tony hisgett
Illusions
Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion.
This is it.
Jon Kabat Zinn
photo thhe at english wikipedia
Focus on the now
We are endlessly offered into life: all time is ours.
And what any one of us might be worth,
death alone knows – and does not tell.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 24
Stop, look, go
It helps me to review my practice of gratefulness by applying … the rule I learned as a boy for crossing an intersection: “Stop, look, go.” Before going to bed, I glance back over the day and ask myself: Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or did I trudge on in a daze? Was I too busy to wake up to surprise? And once I stopped, did I look for the opportunity of that moment? Or did I allow the circumstances to distract me from the gift within the gift? (This tends to happen when the gift’s wrappings are not attractive.) And finally, was I alert enough to go after it, to avail myself fully of the opportunity offered to me?
My simple recipe for a joyful day is this: Stop and wake up; look and be aware of what you see; then go on with all the alertness you can muster for the opportunity the moment offers. Looking back in the evening, on a day on which I made these three steps over and over, is like looking at an apple orchard heavy with fruit.
David Steindl-Rast, Awake, Aware and Alert
Not fixing
Often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held. I am learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to fix those we love.
Mark Nepo
