Tag: Joy

A Brand New Day

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The Navajo teach their children that every morning when the sun comes up, it’s a brand new sun. It’s born each morning, it lives for the duration of one day and in the evening it passes on, never to return again. As soon as the children are old enough to understand, the adults take them out at dawn and they say “The sun has only one day. You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won’t have wasted precious time” Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of no Escape.

Making every thing new, each day

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K. Chesterson

Asleep

Karl Duffy1 Comment

In essence,  mindfulness is about wakefulness.

Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake

to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Notice your life, today….

Karl Duffy1 Comment

No one has to master living in the now. It’s impossible to live anywhere else. Just as you can never leave now, no one will ever take away your past or withhold your future. Effortlessly, your past accumulates. Instantly, your future arrives. What matters is that you notice your life while you can still call it “alive”. That’s now.

Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold

Busyness is offered

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Busyness pervades every aspect of modern life, often presented as a virtue or even a benchmark which demonstrates that we are succesful.  In this poem,  Mary Oliver reminds us that it comes to us from outside – it is “offered” to us. We can have a lot to do each day. However, busyness or “speeding up” comes from our relationship to what we have to do. We do not have to accept it but can  protect ourselves from it by creating space. It does not have to be as extreme as the Chines poets . It can be quite simply some quiet time each day, or some time in nature.

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Mary Oliver, The Old Poets of China

Letting go of striving

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

Happiness is like a butterfly:

the more you chase it, the more it will elude you.

But if you turn your attention to other things,

it will come and sit softly on your shoulder 

Thoreau