Tag: heart

A flash of lightning

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File:Temporale.jpg

I had a conversation the other morning with a friend on the need to have a certain lightness in the way we hold life each day, a kind of simplicity. Getting the balance between the demands of love and the pull it places on the heart on one hand and detachment  on the other is not easy. However, modern society stimulates attachment,  so the letting-go perspective of all the wisdom and religious traditions is a useful reminder.  The fact that it is a consistent presence in all cultures would suggest that it is a truth closely related to our deepest happiness:

So you should view this fleeting world
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Diamond Sutra

A pilgrim soul

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mullaghrellan woods

In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission.

When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition.

It will always mean leaving something behind,…

The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.

David Richo, How to be an Adult

Determination

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File:Depth of Field (8693568483).jpg

And consider, always, every day,

the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles. 

Mary Oliver

photo Takashi Hososhima

Sunday Quote: Life is short

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leaves in wood

We need to give up what no longer works

and find new ways of being

that keep us close to what matters

Mark Nepo

Inner voyages

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sea

The human heart is never still. … There are always new thoughts and experiences emerging in your life; some moments delight and surprise you, others bring you onto shaky ground. …The mind and heart are wanderers who are always tempted by new horizons. … Your longing frequently takes you on inner voyages that no one would ever guess. …longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts and blessings which our lives dream.

John O’Donohue,

When the heart is open

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:2005 RUSSIA Ozernoy Gulf 0121 small.jpg

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