Tag: Joy

Sunday Quote: Share

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
The Joy that isn’t shared,
I’ve heard,
dies young.
 
Anne Sexton, Welcome Morning

From dawn to dusk, compete and yet not

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Light filters through tinted windows over a set of stairs at United Evangelical Lutheran Church on Sunday, March 25, 2012, in Swiss Alp , Texas. ( Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle ) Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Staff / © 2012 Houston ChronicleAs the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Jane Hirshfield, (extract), Standing Deer

Noticing the sun shine today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Creatures of a day,  what is anyone? What are they not?

We are just a dream of a shadow.

But when there comes,  as a gift from heaven,  a gleam of sunshine

Then rests on the heart a light of glory,

And blessed are the days.

Pindar (518-438 BCE)

Having and being enough, today

Karl Duffy4 Comments

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.

Lynne Twist, The Surprising Truth of Sufficiency

 

On seeing some beautiful flowers

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 

We are dust and to dust return.
In the end we’re
neither air, nor fire, nor water,
just
dirt,
neither more nor less, just dirt,
and maybe
some yellow flowers.

Pablo Neruda, Ode to Some Yellow Flowers

Trusting the ups and downs of life

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Due to the current overlay of therapy terminology in our language, everyone now seems to wish for “closure.” This word is unfortunate: it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skins and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word completion is a truer word. Each experience has within it a dynamic of unfolding and a narrative of emergence. Oscar Wilde once said, “The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.” When a person manages to trust experience and be open to it, the experience finds its own way to realization. Though such an ending may be awkward and painful, there is a sense of wholesomeness and authenticity about it. Then the heart will gradually find that this stage has run its course and the ending is substantial and true. Eventually the person emerges with a deeper sense of freedom, certainty, and integration.

The nature of calendar time is linear; it is made up of durations that begin and end. The Celtic imagination always sensed that beneath time there was eternal depth. This offers us a completely different way of relating to time. It relieves time of the finality of ending. While something may come to an ending on the surface of time, its presence, meaning, and effect continue to be held into the eternal. This is how spirit unfolds and deepens. 

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us