It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
Among the flux of happenings.
Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean the mechanical part.
I went down in the afternoon
To the sea which held me, until I grew easy.
About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be a time, again,
For the deepening and the quieting of the spirit.
Mary Oliver, Swimming, One Day in August
Every year the lilies are so perfect
I can hardly believe their lapped light crowding
the black, mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them –
the muskrats swimming among the pads and the grasses can reach out their muscular arms and touch only so many, they are that rife and wild.
But 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
Stars and blossoming fruit trees:
Utter permanence and extreme fragility
give an equal sense of eternity.
Simone Weil
photo il conte di luna
I have had some visitors staying these past days. The weather so far this year has been very unusual for this area, with clouds and rain dominating in the last few week. This certainly can make touring a little more difficult, but no matter what the weather, once we fix on one desired result, inevitably the alternative seems a disappointment. A useful practice for the larger things in life. When we notice little habits like this we can let go and save ourselves stressing over things we cannot control.
I once led a retreat during a monsoon-like rainstorm: For a few days I wanted to apologize to everyone for the weather until a …voice of deeper wisdom arose “Weather is weather. This is what happens”. We’ve all had weather moments – times when we’ve felt responsible for everyone’s good or well-being. It’s our job, we think, to fix the temperature and humidity, or the people around us (if only we could get our partner to quit smoking, consult a map, stick to a diet). We even think we’re capable of totally controlling our own emotions – “I shouldn’t feel envious, or resentful or spiteful! That’s awful! I’m going to stop”. You might as well say “I’m never going to catch a cold again!”
Though we can affect our physical and emotional experiences, we can’t ultimately determine them; we can’t decree what emotions will arise in us. But we can learn in meditation to change our responses to them. That way we are spared a trip down a path of suffering we’ve traveled many times before. Recognizing what we can’t control (the feelings that arise within us; other people; the weather) helps us to have healthier boundaries at work and at home – no more trying to reform everyone all the time.
Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness
Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real.
Thomas Merton
…You come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding
upon the brash turnip-hearted skunk cabbage…
…Your kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows in the most
unabashed way…
…but these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again – a miracle…
…What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.
Mary Oliver, Skunk Cabbage
Mindfulbalance 