Tag: heart

Opening to the soul in ordinary life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The three days of the Easter Festival contain a number of beautiful rituals  which have been celebrated  by human beings for thousands of years. These rituals  touch of the big themes of human life –  loss and death, betrayal and loyalty, meaning and love –  and do so in a way that  allow us ways to share significant emotions with others. The city of Geneva was quiet this morning, as it has been the last  few days.  It is good to have seasons and rhythms in our lives, periods of less activity with time to celebrate with family and friends.  These celebrations  can become familiar rituals in our lives – they bring us together and allow us to connect, and through connection find support and meaning. They open us up to something which is beyond the rush of each day and the limitations of work:

Ritual maintains the world’s holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection and care. As in a dream a small object may assume a significant meaning, so in a life that is animated with ritual there are no insignificant things. When traditional cultures carve elaborate faces and bodies on their chairs and tools, they are acknowledging the soul in ordinary things, as well as the fact that simple work is also ritual. When we stamp out our mass-made products with functionality blazoned on them but no sign of imagination, we are denying ritual a role in ordinary affairs. We are chasing away the soul that could animate our lives.

Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

Being happy today 2: Finding joy today and everyday

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Look at everything
as though you were seeing it
either for the first
or the last time.
Then your time on earth
will be filled with glory

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Waiting: the patience that is found in Nature

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The Lily is a symbol of Easter, being associated with new life and a pure offering to God. In this poem, Mary Oliver sees the flower silently following night and day, darkness and light, the up’s and down’s of life, trusting, knowing that the dawn will follow the night. It is a thought which suits this Easter Saturday,-  starting , as it has, in more muted colours than the glorious sunshine of yesterday – a day which places the emphasis on waiting. The flower waits for the silver moon and the golden sun, which are often used to refer to the unconscious, unknown part of our lives and the conscious, known parts.  It trusts that what is now unconscious will become conscious in time. This trust is a  quiet, contented attitude – the trust of a child  who knows that ultimately all is good  –  an attitude that we  cultivate when we sit in meditation.

Night after night, darkness enters the face
of the lily which, lightly, closes its five walls around itself,
and its purse of honey, and its fragrance,
and is content to stand there
in the garden, not quite sleeping,
and, maybe, saying in lily language
some small words we can’t hear
even when there is no wind anywhere,
its lips are so secret, its tongue is so hidden –
or, maybe, it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it, the perfect prayer?

Mary Oliver, The Lily

Another day dawns

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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that Love is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, Love is under the porch as well as on the top of the mountain, and JOY is both in the front row and in the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

What kindness really is

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I really like this poem and think there is a great truth in it. Real commitment to one another has a depth which is learned in times of difficulty. Love is talked about a lot today but what we seek deep down is a real kindness which is more than just words,  but proves itself in deeds:

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
    purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye, The Words Under the Words

To be at peace today

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To be at peace with myself means to accept myself the way I am; to reduce the split that is created by the image of what I would like to be and who I really am; to be patient with myself, especially in regard to what conflicts with my idealized self.

Anselm Grun