Tag: heart

…. being and doing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Bucegi Romania feet.jpg

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling in the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have not rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

photo : jon rawlinson

Being non-aggressive towards ourselves

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Reflection in a soap bubble edit.jpg

Coming back to the present moment takes some effort, but the effort is very light. The instruction is to “touch and go.” We touch thoughts by acknowledging them as thinking and then we let them go. It’s a way of relaxing our struggle, like touching a bubble with a feather. It’s a non-aggressive approach to being here.

Pema Chodron

Photo: brokeninaglory

More how than why

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window dirt

The way of Wisdom is not the way of why, but the way of what. The Hebrew word [for wisdom] “chochma”  can be read as choch mah, “what is”. Wisdom will not tell you why things are the way they are, but will show you what they are and how you can live in harmony with them

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, The Divine Feminine in Biblical Wisdom Literature

Take what is given

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Daisy 210309 Dumpling Cottage#001

At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their – if you don’t
mind my saying so – their hearts.

Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots.

What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example – I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch –
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field

Mary Oliver, Daisies

No feeling is final

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File:Love - Engagement.jpg

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rilke, Book of Hours, I

photo April Killingsworth

Kindness towards ourselves…

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File:Mother-Child care.jpg

May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.

May you never place walls between the light and yourself.

May your angel free you from the prisons of guilt, fear, disappointment, and despair.

May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.

John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Photo: without you