Tag: heart

Summer thoughts

Karl Duffy4 Comments

mullaghrellan woods

Beautiful warm and Summer weather here in Ireland, the UK and in Europe at the moment. I know that I have posted this before,  but a walk along country roads and in the woods brought it to mind:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

photo of Mullaghreelan Woods Co. Kildare

Taking risks

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Looking over the cliffs at Howstrake - geograph.org.uk - 1727890.jpg

Leap and the net will appear.

Zen saying

photo :David long

At ease within

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File:Tree 1270070 Nevit.jpg

To be a part, that is fulfillment for us:

to be integrated with our solitude

into a state that can be shared.

Rainer Maria Rilke

photo attribution: © Nevit Dilmen

A different way of seeing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Walled Garden through pergola.jpg

Ours seems to be a world that values “strength.” We want  “strong” minds, “tough” wills, “hard as nail” determination, “rugged” personalities, “sturdy” character, and so on.  I wonder if we have confused hardness with the strength it takes to truly give and receive love. Let us praise softness. I’m speaking here of hearts, of soft hearts, of gentle spirits. I’m speaking of the gentleness to give and receive love.

Every heart has a wall around it, a wall that protects, yet also keeps out. Every heart is a walled garden, the original meaning of Paradise –  the inner garden that’s protected by the wall. Yet I wonder how often the wall becomes a fortress, keeping out the very ones who are meant to reach us, nurture us, love us? Let us praise softness. Let us seek a heart that is not hard, but soft. Let us seek a heart that is not hardened like dry land, but a soft soil tilled over again and again.

In many languages, the words for “love” have a connection to words for “seed.” In Arabic and Persian, a word for love (hubb) comes from the seed that is planted in the ground. Sometimes a seed of love is planted in the heart’s ground through a glance, a touch, a word. Will the seed take root? Will it be nurtured? Will it be fed?

Are we strong enough not to keep out, but to welcome in?

Omid Safi, In Praise of Softness

photo greenlamplady

Early morning walk

Karl Duffy2 Comments

abbey river

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the range of our lives,

and it’s good for the head no doubt
to undertake such meditation;

Mystery, after all, is God’s other name, and deserves our  considerations surely.

But, but – excuse me now, please;
it’s morning, heavenly bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on into the next exquisite moment.

Mary Oliver, Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

 

Finding happiness inside…

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Inside the chapel with rainbow Glendalough.jpg

The main object of religion

is not to get a man into heaven

but to get heaven into him

Thomas Hardy

photo from Glendalough by katzegoesireland