The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us: The harvest of youth is achievement; the harvest of middle age is perspective; the harvest of age is wisdom; the harvest of life is serenity.
Joan Chittister, In a High Spiritual Season
The Irish word for October is Deireadh Fomhair, which means the “last harvesting” of the fruits of what we have planted earlier in the year. There is a rich crop of black berries on the hedgerows after the long Summer and mild Autumn here in Ireland. So a quote which I am fond of, and which resonates with some of the recent words on autumn, second half of life and integration:
There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Lets remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.
Henri Nouwen
photo elin
People are in every way prevented from getting inside themselves.
Our greatest problem is a fear of depth
Thomas Merton
photo anjali.verma999
Our entire life has been training. The question is: training in what? This question means: training in which direction? If we train ourselves to reach for a snack or pick up the phone to text-message whenever we feel frightened or bored, this is definitely training. The next time we feel uncomfortable we will also tend to reach for some comfort outside ourselves, eventually establishing a deeply ingrained habit, another brick in the wall of our mental prison. Are we training in how to distract ourselves from inner discomfort or anxiety? Are we training in numbing ourselves in the face of fear, or training in waking up? Training in opening the heart, or training in shutting down?
Gaylon Ferguson, Fruitless Labor
We are a “first-half-of-life-culture”, largely concerned with surviving successfully. We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands to us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, a family, community, security and building a proper platform for our only life. But it takes us much longer to discover “the task within the task” as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward.
Our life’s work is to use what we have been given to wake up. If there were two people who were exactly the same – same body, same speech, same mind, same mother, same father, same house, same food, everything the same – one of them could use what he has to wake up, and the other could use it to become more resentful, more bitter, and sour….whatever you’re given can wake you up or put you to sleep. That’s the challenge of now: what are you going to do with what you have already – your body, your speech, your mind.
Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape
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