Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no path;
you make your own path as you walk.
Antonio Machado
Tag: Joy
Moments of orange light: An invitation to happiness
A very grey start to the day here in Ireland …but every day we are given opportunities to collect little moments of colour that give us courage to keep going and renew happiness.
We are invited not just to live life, but to celebrate it.
The poppies send up their orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while, the roughage
shines like a miracle as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course, loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light is an invitation
to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields, touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do —
what can you do about it —
deep, blue night?
Mary Oliver, Poppies
Sunday Quote: At home
The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin
Parker Palmer
Simple treasures
The little things? The little moments?
They aren’t little.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Oh Soul,
You worry too much
Your arms are filled with treasures of all kinds
Rumi
Sightless among wonders
A prayer, this time from the Hebrew tradition, encouraging us to embrace each moment and the “ordinary blessings” of this day:
Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”
Jewish Sabbath Prayer
Light which gives meaning
When you possess light within, you see it externally.
Today is the Summer Solstice, the northern hemisphere’s longest day – the official start of Summer – when the longer days of sunlight follow. Unusually for Ireland we are actually forecast a day of very warm sunshine. Traditionally, cultures knew the significance of this date and marked it by the lighting of bonfires. It reminds us that we are at a midpoint of the year, which hints at every midpoint on a journey. Life is short and there are many challenges each day. However, we choose how to use time, bringing the light of beauty to each moment, long or short
We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender.
Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible.
Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.
John O’Donohue.
photo SK
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