Tag: growth

Embracing the New

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 File:Isarflöße.jpg

“I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship 

and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces,

then I will swim.”

Homer, The Odyssey

On my printer I have this quote from Odysseus,  as every morning we awake and we face the same perils as that ancient mariner.  Every day we are cast upon the high seas of the soul. Whether we wish to be or not, we are already there, and have orders to show up. We begin showing up when we ask ourselves where are we blocked by fear, by lack of permission to live our own life, by self-doubt? What do we gain from staying stuck? Where is life served by our staying stuck? Who, or what are we waiting for before beginning our real life? How does staying stuck help anyone around us? Every day we are summoned anew to high adventure on the tenebrous seas of the soul. Living our lives, and not someone else’s, calls us to voyage, and if our familiar structures falter, then we swim.

James Hollis, Embracing the New: Avoiding a Routinized Life

photo Bernd Reuschenberg

A Deep dream

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Pinus cembra shoot.jpg

I’ve spent many years learning
how to fix life, only to discover
at the end of the day
that life is not broken

There is a hidden seed of greater wholeness
in everyone and everything.
We serve life best
when we water it
and befriend it.
When we listen before we act.

In befriending life,
we do not make things happen
according to our own design.
We uncover something that is already happening
in us and around us and
create conditions that enable it.

Everything is moving toward its place of wholeness
always struggling against the odds.

Everything has a deep dream of itself and its fulfillment.

Rachel Naomi Remen, Everything has a Deep Dream

(redone as a poem by Meg Wheatley).

photo Ude

We do not see everything

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Wiesloch weiße Blüten Bärlauch.JPG

If we can possibly learn to trust darkness, to understand that life is a pattern of starts and stops, of celebrating the past,  of coming to terms with the present and of believing the future to be kind, then we can come to understand that the dark parts are only those closing-down moments, like flowers at night, till the sun shines again……Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that not all growth takes place in the sunlight.

Joan Chittister, For all that Has Been, Thanks

photo 4028mdk09

Sunday Quote: The parts of our lives

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Saint-Girons - 20130108 (5).jpg

Without darkness nothing comes to birth, 

As without light nothing flowers. 

May Sarton

photo olybrius

Trust in darkness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

File:Acorns of Quercus robur, Eichel der Stieleiche 17.JPG

No seed ever sees the flower.

Zen saying

As I said yesterday, November marks the beginning of the “darker half” of the year in the Celtic Calendar, as the balance between light and darkness in the day continues to shift. The earth becomes colder and nature more dormant,  with a different rhythm from one of growth and maturity. Parallel process can occur in our lives. For example, difficulties occur which can seem dark or unclear and without hope, or we can have parts of our lives that seem dormant.  However, darkness in nature, and in our lives, does not mean that nothing is happening.  Things that are now hidden or buried will eventually become seen. That what is now unconscious will become conscious in time. At times,  all we can do is wait and trust.

photo by friedrich bohringer

Holding both efforts

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Hananuki valley Shiomi-taki bridge.jpg

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning,

that without listening speaking no longer heals,

that without distance closeness cannot cure.

Henri Nouwen