A reminder: meditation is not an activity. Its not something you do, its not another thing on the list.
Its a stopping of activity, it’s a returning to this home base, to our very own existence, that we totally ignore almost all our lives unless we remember not to.
We shouldn’t really call it meditation, perhaps non-meditation would be better.
It’s a return to what’s already here before we’ve done anything.
Henri Shukman
I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour.
If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
If you’re a stranger to your own wound,
then you’re gonna be tempted to despise the wounded.
Fr Gregory Boyle
It is important to focus on the reality of cycles.
Good follows bad and bad follows good. Life is a series of ups and downs. It is important not to identify with the ups and downs of life; rather we must learn how to step outside ourselves and just notice.
We must not be attached to the good; we must not be depressed by the bad.
The ups and downs are just part of the flow of life.
Susan Jeffers, Embracing Uncertainty
I see a hundred insects moving across the air, rising and falling. Chipped notes of birdsong descend from the trees, tuneful and broken; the notes pile about me like leaves. Why do these molded clouds make themselves overhead innocently changing, trailing their flat blue shadows up and down everything, and passing, and gone?
Ladies and gentlemen!
You are given insects, and birdsong, and a replenishing series of clouds.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
Caroline asked him what message should be given to future generations.
Tell them to stop and enlarge moments throughout their days to become aware of the mysteries and miracles of creation all around them –
the movement of a squirrel, the sound of a bird, the pattern of a leaf, changing patterns of light, the sun, the rain, the stars, dawn and sunset.
Tell them we are not ourselves without everything and everyone else.
Thomas Berry as reported in Carolyn W. Toben’s book Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry
