Tag: Life

Holding tension

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:GocheGanas - View on walking activity.jpg

We must cultivate the ability to hold tension in life-giving ways. Our lives are filled with contradictions — from the gap between our aspirations and our behavior to observations and insights we cannot abide because they run counter to our convictions. If we fail to hold them creatively, these contradictions will shut us down and take us out of the action. But when we allow their tensions to expand our hearts, they can open us to new understandings of ourselves and our world, enhancing our lives and allowing us to enhance the lives of others. We are imperfect and broken beings who inhabit an imperfect and broken world. The genius of the human heart lies in its capacity to use these tensions to generate insight, energy, and new life.

Parker Plamer, Healing the Heart of Democracy

photo gocheganas

Only present time

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:La Rouvre.JPG

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.

Seizing the moment

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:A full moon reflecting off the river - NOAA.jpg

Although the reflection in the pond
is often blurry to us:
Grasp the image.

Only in the double world
do voices become
tender and eternal.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I,9

Dreams that purify

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

photo(5)

I have noticed in my life that all men have a liking for some special animal, tree, plant, or spot of earth. If men would pay more attention to these preferences and seek what is best to do,  in order to make themselves worthy of that toward which they are so attracted, they might have dreams which would purify their lives.

Brave Buffalo, Teton Sioux,  By the Power of their Dreams (late 19th century)

Not limiting

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Zeď2005.jpg

When you are identified on the level of “I am the body and I am my feelings, thoughts and memories”, you’re always limiting, binding yourself to unsatisfactory conditions. These conditions can never satisfy you, because they’re changing: when you try to find security and lasting happiness in things that are forever changing, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. You going to feel this… sense of lack, and we tend to take that as a very personal flaw: “There’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with me that I should feel lonely, inadequate, incomplete, or unfulfilled?“

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of SIlence

Paying attention to our work….

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Rocker in the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill.jpg

The peculiar grace of a shaker chair is due to the fact

that it was made by someone capable of believing

that an angel might come and sit on it.

Thomas Merton

photo carl wycoff, Shaker Village,  Pleasant Hill.