As the wind loves to call things to dance
May your gravity be lightened by grace
John O Donohue, To Bless the Space between Us
photo ceridwen
Tag: Nature
Learning to be calm
Now and again the earth begins to desire rest. And in the weeks of autumn especially it shows its disposition to calm, to what feels like a stasis, a pause. The ocean retains its warmth, while high white cloud-boats ride out of the west. Now the birds of the woods are often quiet, but on the shore, the migrating sanderlings and plovers are many and vocal, rafts of terns with the year’s young among them come with the incoming tides, and plunge into the waves, and rise with silver leaves in their beaks. One can almost see the pulsing of their hearts, vigorous and tiny in the trim of white feathers. Where I live, on the harbor edge of the Cape’s last town, perfect strangers walking along the beach turn and say to each other, without embarrassment or hesitation: isn’t it beautiful.
Mary Oliver, Where I Live
photo mozzercork @ flickr
Sunday Quote: Learning to listen
Nothing has ever been said about God
that hasn’t been said better by the wind in the pine trees
Thomas Merton
The stories we tell, the metaphors we use
Most of us have a metaphor, conscious or not, that names our experience of life. Animated by the imagination, one of the most vital powers we possess, our metaphors are more than mirrors to reality — they often become reality, transmuting themselves from language into the living of our lives. We do well to choose our metaphors wisely.
“Seasons” is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think. It suggests that life is neither a battlefield nor a game of chance but something infinitely richer, more promising, more real. The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all — and to find in all of it opportunities for growth.
Parker Palmer, From Language to Life
photo SK
On stillness and the sources of life
Yesterday, along the Barrow River, I saw a heron standing on a weir, solitary and still, and then rise up and fly away in a slow and dignified movement. This last week of October was a special time for the ancient Celts, and so I was glad to have this encounter, because herons were special creatures for them, dwelling between the different realms of land, water and sky. Maybe because of their solitary and independent nature, herons were also seen as messengers from the gods.
Certainly, moments when we come across beauty in nature often feel like blessed moments, which lift the heart, especially as we stand in the stillness looking after them. And when Mary Oliver saw a heron rising up, she reflected on life rising up from the depths of pools in which we stand. It is only from developing a capacity to be still, from having our own wells, that we can really relate with wisdom to all that happens in our lives. We have to descend before we can arise.
So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings
open and she turns
from the thick water, from the black sticks
of the summer pond, and slowly rises into the air
and is gone.
Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is
that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed
back into itself –
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle, the fallen gate.
And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle
but the common thing, this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body
into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.
Mary Oliver, Heron Rises from the Dark Summer Pond
Sunday Quote: Sit and be still
Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear,
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees,
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2001
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