Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Contemplation’ Category

Sep 24

Undoing and Singularity

“Hold still. Be quiet. Listen.”― Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

“What if resting, all by itself, is the real act of holiness? What if honoring the gift of our only life in this gorgeous world means taking time every week to slow down? To sleep? To breathe? The natural world has never needed us more than it needs us  now, but we can’t be of much use to it if we remain in a perpetual state of exhaustion and despair.”― Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

From fast and furious
To slow and savor
Stop, reset the pace
Cadence and ease
Undoing, mere being
Singularity, simple delight
Overthinking to senses ablaze
Curiosity and wandering
Awe and wonder
Woven in this very day
Put it down

“There are worse things, I think, than leaving a task undone. The oak forests of the world would not exist if squirrels did not lose track of acorns.”― Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Mar 11

Width and Depth

“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”― H. L. Mencken

“Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.”― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

Revelation rather than rules
Peace rather than pursuit
Slow over speed
Direction rather than precision
Pause rather than push
Settling rather than spiraling
Space and margins
Contemplation and reflection
Grace and gratitude
Width and depth
Fresh legs, clear eyes, quiet spirit, soul awakening
Leisure is not a luxury rather a necessity, daily
Rest, root, re-enter

“… the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.”― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

Feb 24

Time Opened Up

“Let us remember within us the quiver-touch of the sun” – John O’Donohue

“The Greeks believed that time had secret structure. There was the moment of Epiphany when time suddenly opened and something was revealed in luminous clarity. There was the moment of krisis when time got entangled and directions became confused and contradictory. There was also the moment of kairos; this was the propitious moment. Time opened up in kindness and promise. All the energies cohered to offer a fecund occasion of initiative, creativity, and promise. Part of the art of living wisely is to learn to recognize and attend to such profound openings in one’s life.”― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Slow entry.
When rushed, pause.
When looking back too long, turn your eyes to the road before
When looking ahead too long, look up at the sky
To anchor in today
Root in the present
Quiver-touch of the sun
Do not forgo joy to circumstances, to someday, to the past, to the future
Peace, delight, ease this day
Slow entry, steady pace, slow exit
Middle places filled with laughter, kindness,  promise
Awaiting our participation, care, attention

“THE INNER HISTORY OF A DAY No one knew the name of this day; Born quietly from deepest night, It hid its face in light, Demanded nothing for itself, Opened out to offer each of us A field of brightness that traveled ahead, Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps And the light of thought to show the way. The mind of the day draws no attention; It dwells within the silence with elegance”― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Nov 20

Listen, Trust, Allow

“If we’re not at peace, we are in an ego state.”― Doreen Virtue

“I was pushing, striving, and controlling, instead of listening, trusting, and allowing.”― Rebecca Campbell, Light is the New Black

To not …

Fix
Control
React
Overcompensate
Rush
Jump
Overthink
Assume
Overdo

To …

Observe
Ask
Listen
Reflect
Respond
Trust
Open
Allow
Invite
Embrace

In not doing it all, we learn what is ours to do and not do.
Be present for this day fully, allowing it to do its work in you.
More being, less doing.
Easy, light, awake with joy.

“Next time you are faced with a decision ask yourself the simple question: Which solution lights me up?”― Rebecca Campbell, Light is the New Black

Aug 31

Float and Glide

“It requires gentle hands but also strong intentions.”― Tembi Locke, From Scratch

“When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.” – Saint Francis de Sales

In the softening
Smoothing
Stilling
Rounding
Opening
Listening
Observing
Wandering
Pausing
Inviting
Welcoming
Receiving
Thanking
Anchoring
Centering
Settling
Sensing
Noise wanes
World quiets
Awe, wonder, ease enter
Go here
Float then glide

“Every force within us either grows in vigor and expands, or it grows more languid and diminishes. This is true above all of love. This is the only way that we don’t take back our love: by allowing it to grow every day.”― Mary Francis, A Time of Renewal

Nov 18

1 Comment

A River Moving in You

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”― Rumi

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

Downshift
Slow down
Feel the weight of time
The gravity of presence
The current of the river
In both joy and sorrow
Often woven together
Lean on joy, hope, love
Laughter and tears, more laughter please
You can hold it all
And put it down
Idle, accelerate, coast
Inquire, observe, hear
Remember to wonder and seek awe
Found in beauty
In other
In self
In ordinary days
Given freely and abundantly by God
A peace that passes understanding
Awaiting your awakening and attendance
Tend to joy
A river moving in you

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”― Jonathan Swift

Feb 26

A Listening, One Inch at a Time

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

“A LISTENING: Going through Lent is a listening. When we listen to the word, we hear where we are so blatantly unliving. If we listen to the word, and hallow it into our lives, we hear how we can so abundantly live again.” – Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem

Listening and hearing.
Watching and seeing.
Witnessing and awe.
A journey rather than race.
Being over doing.
Sabbath. Lent. Dailyness. Sacred.
Baffled to employment of the mind.
To wonder, wander, seek, ponder.
An essay not a math problem to be solved.
A question to be lived, often unanswered, the seeking continues.
Abundantly living each day, again and again.
One inch at a time.
What will this day reveal to you?
Listen.

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”― Wendell Berry

Jan 22

What to Leave Out

“In music, silence is more important than sound.” – Miles Davis

“Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.”― Miles Davis

Our innate reaction to challenges is to figure out what to do.
Action is important to trigger change, shift behavior, make progress.
Often, the right action is not in doing and adding but in silence and subtracting.
Creating space to hear anew, see with fresh eyes.
To see what’s in right in front of us that we keep stepping over, going around, avoiding, bypassing.
In search of the “answer,” the “easy button,” that’s out there somewhere, in some day if and when this and that happens.
Many answers lie within, most require time and all require quiet to rise to the surface. Some never come at all, remaining a mystery, an unknowing.
Discerning what is in my control (me), what is not (others) and what just is.
We can then respond insightfully rather than react habitually.
Quiet your internal chatter, tune out external noise, inquire and observe, listen with an open heart and arms.
The sound of silence at work.

“I always listen to what I can leave out.”― Miles Davis

Sep 9

Slowly Born

“No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pause, gaze, witness.
Below the surface.
At your feet.
Within reach.
Observe the details, the layers.
Patterns, themes, threads.
Known, unknown.
Understood, misunderstood
The story of your life.
Sentences, chapters, the arc of the story.
Unfolding, opening, transforming.
Not done yet.
The story continues.
Slowly born.

“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.” – Jim Morrison

Aug 29

Embrace the Bloom

“Coincidences are God’s way of getting our attention.”― Frederick Buechner

“The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.” ― Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Invite your shimmering self out to play, to remain
Release what was, should have been or what might be
Enter the flow of bud to bloom, everything in between
Awake, aware, in tune to this day, what it will bring with fresh eyes
Embrace the bloom, the mystery and certainty.

“Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.”― Caroline Myss

« Older Entries