Tag: Life

We are more than what happens to us

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Our awareness of our depth of being is fleeting. Yet just because we close our eyes doesn’t mean the sun has disappeared. And just because we can’t keep the unquestionable fact of being alive in view doesn’t mean that the inherent vitality of life has disappeared. We are more than what happens to us. We are more than what we think or fear. The turbulence we encounter is very real, but underneath what happens to us is the inherent, unwavering fact of life filling us from within.

Mark Nepo, The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart

….Yet knowing as the leaves do

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange

(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.

May Sarton, Autumn Sonnets

Not knowing….

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The essential religious experience is that you are being “known through” more than knowing anything in particular yourself. Despite this difference, it will feel like a true kind of knowing. But it is also a freedom not to have to know!

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now

The privilege of this day

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

Bill Bryson, 10 Simple Rules for Happiness, Graduate College Commencement Ceremony Address

No other life

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In yourself right now, is all the place you’ve got

Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.

Hafiz

Sunday Quote: Embrace

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Morning to night I am never done with looking

Looking, I mean not just standing around

but standing around as though with your arms open

Mary Oliver, Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?