Everyone who lived at that time –
not being as wise as you young ones are today –
found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone,
so long as it was telling the truth.
Plato, Phaedros
photo of County Wicklow by J H Janssen
Belonging is related to longing. If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: Be – Your – Longing. Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity. You should belong first in your own interiority. If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away. You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul, where you are not a tenant, where you are at home.
John O’Donohue, Anamchara
photo bart whelan
I went for a walk yesterday, but being Ireland, it started to rain and I had to abandon my plans. The day before had been so warm and bright…At times like this we can get irritated, as what “should” have happened gets disrupted. We rush on to the next moment, not noticing what is actually in front of us. We want reality to correspond to what we think should be going on, and do not go slow enough to notice what actually is:
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
John O’Donohue, A Blessing for One who is Exhausted.
photo adrian benko
Beautiful warm and Summer weather here in Ireland, the UK and in Europe at the moment. I know that I have posted this before, but a walk along country roads and in the woods brought it to mind:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
photo of Mullaghreelan Woods Co. Kildare
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
photo kevin higgins
Episcopal Priest Robert Farrer Capon warns “We spend a long time wishing we were elsewhere and otherwise“. We are like the character in the movie Postcards from the Edge who sends a card home from vacation, “Having a wonderful time. Wish I were here”
Frederic Brussat, Spiritual Literacy
photo coillte.ie
Mindfulbalance 