Tag: Mindfulness

Sunday Quote: The mind of winter

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winter-trees

I love the feel of winter, when things are stripped back, and we can see the bare outlines of trees and branches. Wallace Stevens reminds us “One must have the mind of winter”.  As we look around at the rush and the celebrations, we can ask “what is really worth celebrating”? We end up being busy, running after experiences but somehow losing our ability to play. 

Where is the Life 
we have lost in living? 
Where is the wisdom 
we have lost in knowledge? 
Where is the knowledge we have lost 
in information?

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock

The sun and the moon and the stars

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File:Moon rises above the trees at the Mississippi River Headwaters, May 19, 2016.jpg

From the 17th to the 23rd of December a special sequence of invocations have been used since at least the 5th Century.  Today’s one – “O Wisdom,  Come to teach us the way of prudence” – reflects the age-old quest for a  balanced way of being,  that will lead to our hearts being fulfilled,  faced with all the demands on our time.

Every day we bump into things that challenge us to keep our hearts soft when fears and disappointments try to convince us to harden and close down. The temptation is to say “What can we do? It is as it is” .  However, this never-ending wisdom practice consists in keeping open to experience in all its changing forms  – its joys and its sorrows – having the courage to meet whatever comes our way with a spacious heart. We dare to believe in the underlying mystery, behind the busyness of the day.  Things may change, the attitude of the heart doesn’t:

The water in the stream may have changed many times,

but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.

Rumi

Passing through

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frost

It’s pointless to try to find peace through nullifying or erasing the sense world.

Peace only comes through not giving that world more substantiality or more reality than it actually possesses.

Ajahn Amaro

A way of holding

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File:Noah's hand.jpg

More on butterflies and lightness in dealing with the daily events, or more precisely, the thoughts they give rise to :

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life
too much,” it said,
and vanished into the world.

Mary Oliver, One or Two Things

photo andre engels

More fun

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File:Crossing Stepping Stones in Bolton Abbey - England.jpg

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

Anne Lamott,  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

photo Barney Moss

Not visible

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harvest

Some days or weeks we work with limited vision. The true meaning is hidden. We rely on inner values and on the commitment we have made.

Bringing in a full harvest from human effort has always been difficult, because what is worth bringing in is almost always hidden from us: think of the hard, protected kernel of the wheat amidst a waving sea of gold, or the the walnut nestled in its dense, unyielding skin of green and white, think of how common a much-wanted, simple understanding is needed, hidden by our complex thoughts; or the attempt to fully forgive when even forgiving a little seems to be the last thing we want to do; and lastly, the wish to love and to be loved, when loving is what we are most afraid to do.  

David Whyte, Letters from the House