Life bears fruit

Sometimes, things planted many years only make sense and bear fruit much later. Autumn teaches the virtue of waiting:

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.

And however sharply
you are tested – 
this sorrow, that great love  –
it too will leave on that clean knife.

Jane Hirshfield, Ripeness

A Saturday walk

 

Do not speak to me of angels 
unless you want to lie by 
their side on the surface of emerald lake 
and live forever with your eyes open. 
My own angels take many forms. 
Today they are trees.

Etel Adnan, born Beruit 1925 Lebanese-American poet

Switch off: Stay away from screens

A long weekend in Ireland. Time to switch off and nourish our deeper selves:

Make a place to sit down. 
Sit down. Be quiet.… 

Breathe with unconditional breath 
the unconditioned air. 
Shun electric wire. 
Communicate slowly.

Live a three-dimensional life; 
stay away from screens. 

Wendell Berry, How to Be a poet

The wisdom of never being secure

One of the foundations of wisdom is to see that things are always changing, and changing in ways that we do not expect. The weather we are having these “Summer” days helps – showers, followed by sun, followed today by longer spells of rain:

It must be obvious..

that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe

whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

The way to fulfillment

This weekend, thousands of pilgrims will climb Croagh Patrick, a mountain which was considered sacred as far back as 3000 years BC and associated with St Patrick from the time he fasted there. Ireland today is bombarded today with lots of examples of what will lead to a happy life, such as wearing certain types of clothes, such and such a diet, success in achieving goals, quick-fix self-help slogans and imitating celebrities. However, in the wisdom developed in Celtic spirituality around the time of Patrick –  over 1500 years ago –  a fulfilled life had three elements: being close to nature, having concern for those less fortunate and being grateful.  Let’s see which will lead to greater contentment….

Let me bless almighty God, whose power extends over sea and land, whose angels watch over all.

       Let me do my daily work, gathering seaweed, catching fishgiving food to the poor.

Let me say my daily prayers, sometimes chanting, sometimes quiet, always thanking God.

Delightful it is to live on a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell, serving the King of kings.

The Prayer of St. Columba, 521-597 A.D. 

photo: kanchelskis

The light is everything

The weekend, which allows the possibility to get out in nature, is a good time to share some of Mary Oliver’s poetry.  This one is about flowers and how some are less “perfect” than others. But it is also about  relationships and what hopes we have for our heart, about a greater beauty that embraces the clearly imperfect and allows us cast away the hassles of the everyday which are not us. We are nourished.

Shared moments, flowers, meanings and the stories that feed us.

What in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided–
and that one wears an orange blight–
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away–
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Mary Oliver, The Ponds