Tag: inspiration

Being useless

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It takes time and patient practice to develop qualities that make for a lasting effect. This idea is not easy to hold on to in a society that prizes immediate results. Emptying the mind of the need to be noticed, or thought as special,  allows us to just be ourselves in a simple way:

The sage Chuang-Tzu was walking with a disciple on a hilltop. They saw a crooked, ancient tree without a single straight branch. The disciple said the tree is useless, nothing from it can be used. Chuang-Tzu replied: That’s the reason it is ancient. Everyone seems to know how useful it is to be useful. No one seems to know how useful it is to be useless. 

Sunday Quote: Wisdom

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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge

faster than society gathers wisdom.

Isaac Asimov

Rest

Karl Duffy2 Comments

In the rhythm of the Christian Tradition, Holy Saturday was a day of waiting, of bare church decoration, of things pared down and distractions minimized.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. T. S. Eliot

Wise intention and skillful service need to be nourished by periods of quiet and prayer. Every great tradition includes some from of the Sabbath. In the West we inherited the blessing of the Christian and Jewish Sabbath. Muslims have Friday as their holy day, and likewise Hindus and Buddhists renew their vows of simplicity on full moon, new moon, and quarter moon days. When I was young, Massachusetts had Sabbath “Blue Laws” requiring all forms of business to stop on Sundays. But now, one generation later, we have twenty-four-hour supermarkets and twenty-four-hour banking, seven days a week; our consumer society has claimed the right to operate without constraint. This is a recipe for burnout.

Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the heart grows wise on the Spiritual Path

A reminder about love: Will not run out

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Freud thought that each person possessed a fixed stock of affection. So if you love someone else you love yourself less.  Freud’s wrong. Love doesn’t run out. It’s the miracle of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The more we love another person, the more we love ourselves, and everything else, and the world. 

Anna Kamienska, A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook

A Celtic blessing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

This old Celtic prayer from Scotland is appropriate for two reasons today –  the feast of Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland and because of the weather we have had this week: 

May the blessing of the rain be on you, 
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, 
and sometimes a star. 

And may the blessing of the earth be on you, 
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, 
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; 
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it. 

May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly;up and off and on its way to God. 

And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.

Amen.

Sunday Quote: A light within

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Most days we resist the moment as it presents itself – even if good –  as we either try to make it last longer or change into something else. So we go out of the heart and into the head, judging, plotting,  wishing.  But becoming whole is only realizable from within, when we come to see the heart is complete when it is free of wanting more or wanting less.

As if you were on fire from within. 

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Pablo Neruda, Ode to a Naked Beauty