Tag: inspiration

A quiet day…taking time to rest ….

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In the traditional Christian understanding, this Saturday – between Good Friday and Easter –  is the day of growth and hope hidden deep in our existence, despite  all evidence to the contrary. It is a day for patience and quiet reflection. And indeed, despite all the work we do, and our best efforts, much of life remains unresolved, incomplete, frustrating and un-reconciled. We do not see all the answers or why some things are as they are. That is why days which encourage us to be silent and to wait – to get used to this in-between state –  are useful. They balance the desire of the mind to know everything and to be in control.

It’s important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don’t necessarily nurture soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal’s rhythm of rest and activity.

Thomas Moore

Opening our eyes

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.

David Whyte

Little moments of gratitude

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I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

 I get a glass from a cabinet, open a bottle of wine,

then I sit back in a ladder-backed chair,

a benevolent god presiding over a miniature creation myth,

and I began to sing a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth to hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave, the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightening on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather, singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

Billy Collins,  As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse

Sunday Quote: Seeing each moment as new and unique

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The art of living….consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Alan Watts

Cherry Blossom buds with snow on the Jura, March 31st, 2012

….and of becoming our true self

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As soon as a man tries to escape every risk and prefers to experience life only in his head, in the form of ideas and fantasies, as soon as he surrenders to opinions of ‘how it ought to be’ and, in order not to make a false step, imitates others whenever possible, he forfeits the chance of his own independent development. Only if he treads the path bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and fighting shy of no experience, will he mature his personality more fully than the man who is ever trying to keep to the safe side of the road.

Jolande Jacobi, Jungian analyst and author

Holding a conversation with life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

David Whyte, Everything is waiting