The river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.
Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
photo: vincent, la rivière Rouvre.
At every moment we have the choice of either feeling gratitude for what has been given to us or indulging in grievance about what is missing. Grievance and gratitude are polar opposites. Grievance focuses on what is not there – the imperfections of relational love – and looks for someone to blame. Gratitude recognises what is here – the simple beauty of human presence and contact – and responds to it with appreciation
John Welwood, Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships.
photo from Saint Roch Cemetery, New Orleans
Each thing — each stone, blossom, child— is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rilke, The Book of Hours
The invariable mark of wisdom
is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, chapter 8
I love this quote from Karl Rahner, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the last Century. There is a great comfort in knowing in our bones the truth of these words. We have to continually balance two aspects within us: one which wants to know everything, to be everywhere, to be faithful to the energy and desire within. The other is that restlessness which knows that this can never really be possible, and that how we relate to what we don’t know is ultimately more important than what we do know.
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable
we eventually learn that here, in this life,
all symphonies remain unfinished
But this morning, a kind day has descended, from nowhere,
and making coffee in the usual way, measuring grounds
with the wooden spoon, I remembered,
this is how things happen, cup by cup, familiar gesture
after gesture, what else can we know of safety
or of fruitfulness?
Marie Howe, American Poet, From Nowhere
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