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
Sometimes I can take things or people for granted and everything becomes part of the “normal everydayness.” At times like this I can drift from one moment to another, doing the best to fit into this place called life. And because of this I can get lost and lose heart. We all can lose each other. It can take reminders to make us step back and realize what a blessing it is to be immersed in a life that is just full of meaning. As de Chardin said “Nothing here is profane for those who know how to see”.
Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.
Rumi, Story Water
The little things?
The little moments?
They aren’t little
Jon Kabat Zinn
Do you bow your head when you pray
or do you look up into that blue space?
Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don’t worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.
Even when the swans are flying north
and making such a ruckus of noise,
God is surely listening and understanding.
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring
and how it springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks,
but is that really a problem?
There are thousands of voices, after all.
And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)
that the swans know about as much as we do
about the whole business?
So listen to them and watch them,
singing as they fly.
Take from it what you can.
Mary Oliver, Whistling Swans
I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015
According to the ancient Chinese, one of the main goals in life is to reach the evening of our life without regret. So we can ask: What fears hold us back from fully embracing what is offered now? What preoccupied thoughts hinder us from seeing the beauty that is before us in each moment?
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
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