Tag: heart

Love is vulnerable

Karl Duffy3 Comments

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that  casket –  safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C.S. Lewis, The Fours Loves

Support

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A stormy morning here with high winds predicted for the day. Turbulent news reports also these days, full of dire predictions and evidence that we live in an age of division and suspicion.

Out

Of a great need

We are all holding hands and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen, the terrain around here

Is

Far too

Dangerous

For

That.

Hafiz, from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky. 

No permanence

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Still in China. This time an even earlier thinker. We could save ourselves a lot of hassle if we truly lived this:

We cling to our own point of view, as if everything depended on it.

Yet our views have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

Chuang Tzu, Chinese Philosopher,  4th century 

What she has learned

Karl Duffy3 Comments

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.    

Maya Angelou 

Out of the depths

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The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,  Death: The Final Stage of Growth,

Our surroundings

Karl Duffy1 Comment

As David Whyte says, we have many allies as we make our way through each day and each week – the blue sky, the wind on our face, the yellow daffodils blooming early because of the mild early Spring. If we can notice them we get some space from the worrying thoughts that accompany us 

To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings

David Whyte