Go easy

Was walking in the woods over the long weekend with an awareness of the Japanese term komorebi – the flickering of sunlight filtering through the leaves, ever changing. We can learn life lessons here:

When I am among the trees….
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees

in mud, the lotus blooms

There is a hard truth to be told:

before Spring becomes beautiful

it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck…

But in that muddy mess,

the conditions for rebirth are being created

Parker Palmer

parts of holiness

I don’t know who God is exactly. But I’ll tell you this. I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.

Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say, and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water. And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying. Said the river I am part of holiness. And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.

Mary Oliver

Nature

Feastday of Saint Francis of Assisi

The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.

Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all.

But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

William Blake

The best teachers

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Thomas Merton

taking the light within

The Summer Solstice

Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible.

Awakening and surrender: they  frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.

John O’Donohue.

photo of the Grianán of Aileach in County Donegal by Mark McGaughey on Wikipedia