As life becomes harder … it also becomes richer,
because the fewer expectations we have,
the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.
Etty Hillesum, born 1914, died in Auschwitz 1943.
Tag: Life
Inner voyages
The human heart is never still. … There are always new thoughts and experiences emerging in your life; some moments delight and surprise you, others bring you onto shaky ground. …The mind and heart are wanderers who are always tempted by new horizons. … Your longing frequently takes you on inner voyages that no one would ever guess. …longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts and blessings which our lives dream.
John O’Donohue,
White and black keys
In life, nothing dwells. The wind blows and then stops. The blossoms burst forth and then fall. Things come and go. The melody drifts back onto an aching E flat and then back to E again. The song of your life is played on white and black keys. Sadness is … an essential truth of human life. But let’s not dwell there. Not while the song is still playing.
Karen Maizen Miller, Be Sad
Photo alisson felus
When the heart is open
Sometimes we orient to the world through ideas and get fixed on our notion of how things should be. We can run from how a thing actually is. What we need at times is the courage to embrace life as it is actually unfolding, and not avoid it or hide in some concept which we think it should be.
The idea of love is not love
The idea of the ocean is neither salt nor sand;
The face of the seal cannot rise from the idea
to stare at you,
to astound your heart
Mary Oliver
Full life
Listen, are you breathing just a little,
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII
The challenge
I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015
