People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state – it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
Abraham Heschel
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes
There is only one day left,
always starting over:
it is given to us at dawn
and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre
We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us
Joyce Rupp, Praying our Goodbyes
photo pauline eccles
We can spend a lot of time each day as if in a trance, missing each moment as we lean into the next. One way to counteract this, and enjoy your life more, is to let yourself notice the little things today with fresh eyes; simple things, like a cup of coffee, a smile from a colleague, the dew on the grass. In this way we pause and refresh the heart.
In the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
