Tag: Nature

Walking by

Karl Duffy1 Comment

I think it pisses God off
if you walk by the color purple in a field
and don’t notice it.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Sometimes we can get caught up in the rush of every day or the familiarity of our routines. We can fail to notice the beauty in ordinary experience. When we travel or are starting something new, we are struck by the experiences, noticing, for example,  the energy and the qualities of  people or the way they do things differently. Everything registers in a heightened way. In these moments things seems more real, more alive. The brain cannot always function like that,  so it creates schemas to allow it quickly locate everyday experiences into familiar categories – cars, buses, flowers,  trees and so on. So in order to really see we have to go against an established habit. We have to slow down in order to really notice; focus in order to really attend.  Today let us try to  look at one or two  things we encounter as if for the first time: Open our eyes, pause, wonder, notice the details, celebrate life.

Living your life in tune with all of life

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To me this would be the best way to live — to situate yourself within your life in such a way as to feel that your own life was unfolding with the pattern of all of life. I suppose this might seem megalomaniacal, but I see it as quite humble. My life isn’t mine, it is just life living itself through me. I think, if you lived your life like that, then a lot of what bothers you wouldn’t bother you any more, and a lot of things that don’t bother you now would seem very important, very personal.

Norman Fischer

Becoming one who sees

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Despite the incredibly warm weather, the berries have appeared on the bushes in the garden. They reminded me of this quote,  and its encouragement to see into the heart of things, happening in each moment of the day. Sometimes we are just to preoccupied and hurried to notice.  We let life – and heaven – pass by,  unnoticed.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes…

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh


Sunday Quote: Loving the moment for what it is.

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We could learn a lot from what Wordsworth observed in his mother. She did not demand more than what was contained in each moment:

Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are.

Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book Five

Asleep

Karl Duffy1 Comment

In essence,  mindfulness is about wakefulness.

Our minds are such that we are often more asleep than awake

to the unique beauty and possibilities of each present moment as it unfolds.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Always judging our lives

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We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. Without exception, we all do this. We remain separate from our life, looking at it, analyzing it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions, ‘What am I going to get out of it? Is it going to give me pleasure or comfort or should I run away from it?” We do this from morning until night.

Charlotte Joko Beck