Tag: Look for Happiness

The basic truth about happiness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Blackberries, Swindon and Cricklade Railway - geograph.org.uk - 549615.jpg

“All is always now,” says T. S. Eliot.

This statement implies a profound insight: Not only is the now not in time; time is in the now.

When the future comes, it will be now, and any past event becomes now as we remember it. There is only one now. It cannot be multiplied; it simply is.

The now is the opposite of time.

In fact, this is Augustine’s definition: “Eternity is the now that does not pass away.”

A happiness anchored in the now is eternal.

David Steindl-Rast, A Basic Human Approach to Happiness

photo Brian Robert Marshall

Moments are all we have

Karl Duffy1 Comment

forest light 2

Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.

Mary Oliver, Hum

What Holiness is

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File:Gougane Barra.jpg

This is, I think, what holiness is:

the natural world, where every moment is full
of the passion to keep moving.

Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light,
full of snow, full of concentration.

I’ve knelt there, and so have you,
hanging on to what you love,

to what is lovely.

Mary Oliver, At the Lake

photo of St. Finbar’s Oratory, Gougane Barra by (WT shared) Spircle at wts Wikivoyage