The Festival of Samhain, marking the end of the year and the beginning of the new one in the Celtic calendar. Traditionally, bonfires were lit to remind us that the encroaching darkness will not prevail
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire
There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch
But it’s a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight
Stay here at the flame’s core
Rumi
Daylight saving time in Ireland and around Europe.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte, Sweet Darkness
There’s that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating,
that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust.
Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile.
Maybe it was your turn.
William Stafford, Afterwards
Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality – there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth – actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested… True heroism is you, alone, in a designated work space. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care – with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
Watch the workings of all of creation [“the ten thousand things”},
but contemplate their return to the source.
All creatures in the universe
return to the point where they began.
Returning to the source is tranquility
because we submit to heavens mandate
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 16
Do not ask
for flowery perfume
when I can give you
fruits of autumn
Do not reject nourishment
because winter is at the door
and already the old saints
have raised their brows
to contemplate eternity
We children of the moment
drink up the last of the wine.
Lalla Romana, 1906 – 2001 Italian poet
Mindfulbalance 