My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, coffee life, spirituality and asking deep questions.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
Wu-Men, translated from Chinese by Stephen Mitchell
this is the best season of your life.
The list of unnecessary things my mind can grab onto seems almost infinite. My imagination, dreams, and creativity are gifts when I work to make them reality. However, learning to let go of those that are unnecessary allows me to more fully enjoy this season of my life.
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
Thomas Merton
When I was younger my friends and I would ride our bicycles to Lake Loveland and fish. Our quest was for crappie and perch that gathered along the trunks of the trees in the water. If memory serves me we would use simple little jigs and it was pretty easy pickings. I have very good memories of those days. And amazingly we did not have smartphones to document it. Nor did mom send us a text message telling us dinner was ready. There seemed to be more silence back then. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Solitude is a state of hospitality, a welcoming of all that needs attention. Solitude offers a ground that is embracing and inclusive. Everything can be made welcome in the broad arms of solitude, even fear. For as long as humans have sought counsel with the sacred, much of it has happened in a space set apart from others. Here, in silence and nourishing aloneness, we can become receptive to the influence of soul…
Francis Weller
Even more so since Covid I intentionally seek out times and places for solitude. I also am now prone to shun away from large crowds, being more comfortable with one on one situations for coffee or lunch. I am more welcoming to those broad arms and hospitality of solitude.
… anyone who notices the world must want to save it.
Rebecca Baggett
“I will pray for you in the quiet hours.”
Steven Charleston
sunbeams of light
mws
over field of grass and snow
clouds drift on blue sea
Prayer is the art of presence. Where there is no wonder there is little depth of presence.
John O’Donohue
I stood in wonder this morning at the scene before me. A silence surrounded me. With almost no wind I became aware of the stillness, the beauty, and the penetrating cold. I felt alive. There was a voice inside reminding me that I was an integral part of this world. And, my presence in this world is to love all of creation, to be anchored in justice and compassion, to accept our interconnectedness with all things, to listen and observe our natural world as a teacher, and that living life, being present with all its ups and downs, is a spiritual experience. So, if prayer is the art of presence, then I wish to practice this art of presence until my heart beats for the final time! I guess you can say even that is a prayer.
If you enlarge this image of the frigid morning at Reservoir Ridge Natural Area you can faintly see the setting of the waning gibbous moon just to the right of center. Stay warm, be safe and pray.
The Great Work is spiritual at the core. Gus Speth, an environmental attorney, ecologist, and climate advocate, has summarized the problem brilliantly: “I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. . . . But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.
Victoria Loorz