I used to hurry everywhere, and leaped over the running creeks.
There wasn’t time enough for all the wonderful things I could think of to do in a single day.
Patience comes to the bones
before it takes roots in the heart as another good idea.
I say this as I stand in the woods and study the patterns of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters that now, late summer, have also caught the fever,
and hardly move from one eternity to another.
Mary Oliver, Patience
The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows. When we emerge from our offices, rooms and houses, we enter our natural element. We are children of the earth: people to whom the outdoors is home. Nothing can separate us from the vigor and vibrancy of this inheritance. In contract to our frenetic, saturated lives, the earth offers a calming stillness. Movement and growth in nature takes its time. The patience of nature enjoys the ease of trust and hope. There is something in our clay nature that needs to continually experience this ancient, outer ease of the world. It helps us remember who we are and why we are here.
John O’Donohue
It is hard to be fully present to another person, focusing completely on them and their needs, withour our own concerns, desires and needs getting in the way. We practice so that we can be really present, fully aware of the other, losing ourselves in a certain sense, so that the other can feel completely understood and appreciated.
No matter how quiet we are, the muskrats stay hidden.
Maybe they sense the tense hum of consciousness, the buzz from two human beings who in silence cannot help but be aware of each other, and so of themselves.
Annie Dilliard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Busyness pervades every aspect of modern life, often presented as a virtue or even a benchmark which demonstrates that we are succesful. In this poem, Mary Oliver reminds us that it comes to us from outside – it is “offered” to us. We can have a lot to do each day. However, busyness or “speeding up” comes from our relationship to what we have to do. We do not have to accept it but can protect ourselves from it by creating space. It does not have to be as extreme as the Chines poets . It can be quite simply some quiet time each day, or some time in nature.
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
Mary Oliver, The Old Poets of China
In the process of focusing on our breathing and watching our thoughts come and go, we learn that they don’t have to react to every thought that comes into our minds, that just because the mind is jumping around and agitated at times doesn’t mean we have to jump with it. With practice, we become more comfortable with silence and sitting still.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts;
it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things,
which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
Pema Chodron
