Tag: Nature

Hearing the song

Karl Duffy2 Comments

river-glendalough

I spent the weekend in Glendalough and was able to walk in nature early in the morning among the trees and rivers. Some say even the rocks there vibrate with life. It was easy to feel grace and see wonder, just as we did as children.  So what we strive for in our working days – in the “chambers of commerce” –  is to remember that beauty and grace are never far from us. They are in the leaf, the stone, the heart.  If we listen,  there is wonder all around, and it sings. Can we hear it today?

What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still

Mary Oliver,  What can I say?

Endings are also beginnings

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File:Vaaggegordelde gordijnzwam (Cortinarius anomalus). Locatie, Hortus (Haren, Groningen).jpg

Become totally empty. Let your heart be at peace.

Amidst the rush of things coming and going,

observe how endings become beginnings.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

 To see beginnings and endings is a great support in difficult times. Early on, as I began to trust in the fiber of my being that nothing lasts, I became less afraid of pain. The fact that everything has an end comforted me. “One way or another,” I would say to myself, “this too will pass.” I was glad I saw that…the end of the day is the beginning of the night, and that a dead rose becomes compost for new growth….When I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.

Sylvia Boorstein

photo dominicus johannes bergsma

Trust

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File:Soft shades of autumn - geograph.org.uk - 1585929.jpg

Sometimes it is hard to see what what is really going on in our lives or where they are leading to. Underneath, something is happening. We just have to be patient for it to emerge.

If you break open the cherry tree

Where are the flowers?

But in the Springtime

see how they bloom!

Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481 Japanese Zen monk and poet

 

Saturday Rest

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Fall in Cleveland.jpg

Here close to earth be cherished, mortal heart,
Hold your way deep as roots push rocks apart
To bring the spurt of green up from the dark.

Where music thundered let the mind be still,
Where the will triumphed let there be no will,
What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

Here close to earth the deeper pulse is stirred,
Here where no wings rush and no sudden bird,
But only heart-beat upon beat is heard.

Here let the fiery burden be all spilled,
The passionate voice at last be calmed and stilled
And the long yearning of the blood fulfilled.

Now voyager, come home, come home to rest,
Here on the long-lost country of earth’s breast
Lay down the fiery vision, and be blest, be blest.

extract May Sarton, Now Voyager

photo Yu-hong Wen

Wiser teachers

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File:Autumn forest.jpg

It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest.

But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers.

Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons,

instead of trying to understand the ways of men,

Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

photo mwolf89

Autumn: Not getting discouraged

Karl Duffy1 Comment

harvest

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:

reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time:

not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,

after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

from Marge Percy, The Seven of Pentacles