We don’t stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw
We often rush through a day – preoccupied with the practical things that need to get done – that we do not have time to celebrate:
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go, to take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward the territories of spirit
Where you will discover more of your hidden life,
And the urgencies that deserve to claim you
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
John O Donohue, For the Traveler
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no path;
you make your own path as you walk.
Antonio Machado
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
The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin
Parker Palmer
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