Tag: Nature

Noticing beauty

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Woods 44

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

Sunday Quote: the little things

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The little things?

The little moments?

They aren’t little

Jon Kabat Zinn

Thousands of voices

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swans

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

The challenge

Karl Duffy4 Comments

lakes

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

Amazing

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File:Parc Upper Lake.jpg

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

Always hoping

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Lough Dan reflections (27765469).jpg

A lot of conversation in Ireland revolves around the weather. These days we wonder what the Summer will be like, or even stress about whether the weekend will allow a walk or a barbeque. In a way this unpredictability can support our practice and can lead to a reduction in stress: it reminds us that reality is always changing and that we have to be with the present however it manifests, open to possibility and not too fixed in expectations:

A large degree of life happens independent of, and often contrary to, your expectations. At first this may seem dismaying, but as you develop more and more awareness, you eventually start to realize that carrying around this jumble of expectations in your head is a burden  and that it gets in the way of being present in,  and responding to, the life you have.

Phillip Moffitt, Emotional Chaos to Clarity

photo of Lough Dan in Wicklow by Hugh C