If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word,
if it does not draw us into his superluminous darkness,
if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths ...
we have misunderstood the words of Christianity.
For they all speak of the unknown God who only reveals to give himself as the abiding mystery.
Karl Rahner sj., 1904 – 1984 Jesuit Theologian, Poetry and the Christian.
In these days it can be just small things, like the song of a bird….
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from
all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.
William Stafford, Cutting Loose
The gift of remembering and binding time creates the illusion that the past stands to the present as agent to act, mover to moved.
Living thus from the past, with echoes taking the lead, we are not truly here, and are always a bit late to the feast
Alan Watts
More from Thich Nhat Hanh: we need to consciously practice joy in these Covid-19 times
We may think of joy as something that happens spontaneously. Few people realize that it needs to be cultivated and practiced in order to grow. Mindfulness is the continuous practice of deeply touching every moment of daily life. To be mindful is to be truly present with your body and your mind, to bring harmony to your intentions and actions, and to be in harmony with those around you. We don’t need to make a separate time for this outside of our daily activities.
Thich Nhat Hanh
As Sylvia Boorstein frequently reminds us, the moment in which the mind acknowledges ‘This isn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I got’ is the point at which suffering disappears. We are here now, the future is always uncertain. Our practice is to stay grounded and be open to what arises in awareness
The practice of mindfulness is very simple.
You stop, you breathe, and you still your mind.
You come home to yourself so that you can enjoy the here and now in every moment
Thich Nhat Hahn, Silence
