What is unique about a moment that has the power to bless us and the potential to feed us is not so much in the power of the moment itself, but rather the quality of the presence we bring to that moment.
Our presence can change an ordinary, unnoticed moment into a moment of beauty that can feed the soul.
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
Macrina Wiederkehr, osb, 1939 – 2020
If you’re a stranger to your own wound,
then you’re gonna be tempted to despise the wounded.
Fr Gregory Boyle
It is only because our life is so habitually and so firmly based on a mechanical understanding that we think that our everyday life is repetitious.
But it is not so. No one can repeat the same thing.
Whatever you do, it will be different from what you do in the next moment.
That is why we should not waste our time
Shunryu Suzuki.
It is important to focus on the reality of cycles.
Good follows bad and bad follows good. Life is a series of ups and downs. It is important not to identify with the ups and downs of life; rather we must learn how to step outside ourselves and just notice.
We must not be attached to the good; we must not be depressed by the bad.
The ups and downs are just part of the flow of life.
Susan Jeffers, Embracing Uncertainty
I see a hundred insects moving across the air, rising and falling. Chipped notes of birdsong descend from the trees, tuneful and broken; the notes pile about me like leaves. Why do these molded clouds make themselves overhead innocently changing, trailing their flat blue shadows up and down everything, and passing, and gone?
Ladies and gentlemen!
You are given insects, and birdsong, and a replenishing series of clouds.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
Caroline asked him what message should be given to future generations.
Tell them to stop and enlarge moments throughout their days to become aware of the mysteries and miracles of creation all around them –
the movement of a squirrel, the sound of a bird, the pattern of a leaf, changing patterns of light, the sun, the rain, the stars, dawn and sunset.
Tell them we are not ourselves without everything and everyone else.
Thomas Berry as reported in Carolyn W. Toben’s book Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry
