Tag: Nature

The slow pace of creation

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Early Morning Driveway.jpg

Slowing how we think and feel and take in the world is directly related to being centered. The wisdom traditions all have some form of meditation and prayer that is aimed at slowing us into this center, where the very pace of creation breathes…..At the pace of creation, all things breathe the same way….So, when we slow and open and center ourselves, we breathe in unison with all of life, and breathing this way we draw strength from all of life.  At the pace of creation, the beginning enters us and we are new.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

photo josh hallett

Light after darkness

Karl Duffy3 Comments

dawn33

It was a nice bright morning here in Ireland and it is always heartening when we see the sun beginning to brighten the sky. So, here are another few words from Mary Oliver, on how darkness, in different senses, can give way to light, and how nature can soothe the spirit. Often at night the fixing side of our mind gets stuck in some problems or challenges we face and it can seem very dark. The light of morning or of nature can sometimes put things into perspective:

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Dreams that purify

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photo(5)

I have noticed in my life that all men have a liking for some special animal, tree, plant, or spot of earth. If men would pay more attention to these preferences and seek what is best to do,  in order to make themselves worthy of that toward which they are so attracted, they might have dreams which would purify their lives.

Brave Buffalo, Teton Sioux,  By the Power of their Dreams (late 19th century)

and quieting the spirit

Karl Duffy1 Comment

portmarnock sun

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

Summer light

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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

Permanance and impermanence

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File:Il conte di Luna - Night stars (by-sa).jpg

Stars and blossoming fruit trees:

Utter permanence and extreme fragility

give an equal sense of eternity.

Simone Weil

photo il conte di luna