Tag: Mindfulness

Have wings

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Sentiments – on a very cold and wintry New Years Eve morning in Ireland – for the end of this year and the start of a new one:

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter

When our story becomes too small

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An individual embarks on a rite of soul encounter when he recognizes the story he has been living has become too small.

He will have to sacrifice the old story, provoking the ordeal of a good deal of grief. He longs for a new, larger story but knows he cannot discern it with the limited powers of his thinking mind, which naturally clings to the old story. He has many reasons to lament. Lamenting puts the emphasis in the right place. An unrestrained lament is a crowbar into the dark depths of the self. …vision waits in those shadowy realms. The lament expresses, in essence, that the quester has lost his way, has strayed off his path of heart, or has gone as far as he could with what he knows. Your lament, once begun in earnest, gathers emotional momentum; it opens your eyes wide to the world as it opens your heart to your deepest longing. Lamenting takes you to a level of consciousness far deeper than familiar ego concerns, introducing your conscious self to your soul

Bill Plotkin

Keep going

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Tighter restrictions imposed again after the brief respite of Christmas. Noticing small moments of beauty nourish the spirit

Friend, we’re travelling together.

Throw off your tiredness.

Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty that cannot be spoken.

Rumi

Sunday Quote: Fully present

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Experiencing,

rather than trying to have special experiences,

is where real freedom lies

Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water

In the heart

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You do not convince people with arguments, strategies or tactics.

You convince them by learning how to welcome them.

For that, it is necessary to keep doors open, above all the doors to the heart.

Pope Francis

Where

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God comes to you disguised as your life.

Paula D’Arcy, American Writer, retreat leader and seminar speaker