Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn;
that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning,
and under every deep a lower deep opens
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tag: Nature
Every morning a new day is created
A simple poem, suggested by the sky at dawn this morning. Even as the days shorten, and darkness seems to encroach more, the light at dawn is beautiful. There are moments of light and strength, even at those times when we seem to struggle.
Every morning the world is created…
If it is in your nature to be happy..
And if your spirit carries within it
the thorn that is heavier than lead….
there is still somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted –
each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, every morning,
whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not you have ever dared to pray.
Mary Oliver
Nourishing ourselves: Being happy in the way things are
Blessed are the man and woman who have grown beyond their greed and have put an end to their hatred and no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.
Psalm 1. Translation by Stephen Mitchell
Accepting whatever comes next….
Now are the rough things smooth, and the smooth things stand in flickering slats, facing the slow tarnish of sun-fall.
Summer is over, or nearly.
And therefore the green is not green anymore but yellow, beige, russet, rust; all the darknesses are beginning to settle in.
And therefore why pray to permanence, why not pray to impermanence, to change, to – whatever comes next.
Willingness is next to godliness.
Mary Oliver, prose-poem
Widening our love of life
We prepare to die by pushing ourselves to love less narrowly.
In that sense, readying ourselves for death
is really an ever-widening entry into life.
Ron Rolheiser.
Forgetting and remembering
One of the most difficult things to remember is to remember to remember. Awareness begins with remembering what we tend to forget. Drifting through life on a cushioned surge of impulses is just one of many strategies of forgetting. Not only do we forget to remember, we forget that we live in a body with senses and feelings and thoughts and emotions and ideas. Worrying about what a friend said can preoccupy us so completely that it isolates us from the rest of our experience. The world of colours and shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations becomes dull and remote…… To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is one way of snapping out of such fixations. It is also a reasonable definition of meditation.
Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs.
Mindfulbalance 