Notes:
- Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out
- Related Posts: 5:00 PM Bell
Category: Quotes
T.G.I.F.: Be happy you’re here…
It’s been a long day
There is joy to be found in the most minuscule of choices, in the pockets of slowness concealed inside each ordinary day: ten minutes in the morning in which to write down our dreams, five minutes in the late afternoon in which to stand by a window and watch the changing colors of the sunset, another pause before bed for a brief moment of prayer. Such things do not demand an inordinate commitment. From outside, our lives may look much as they have always done. We alone will recognize the small, rejuvenating pleasures, the invisible sustenance: the difference between skimming a text and taking the time to read it slowly and in depth; between emailing our friend, and making time to sit with her and talk; between rushing through our days, and honoring “the space between,” allowing space to muse and brood and wonder and exult, to bask in our accomplishments.
~ Christian McEwen, World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down.
Notes:
- Art: Donatella Marraoni (Italy) – Enough is Enough via Your Eyes Blaze Out
- Related Posts: “It’s Been a Long Day“
- Related Posts: Christian McEwen
Lightly child, lightly.
I stop and close my eyes in order to feel rather than see. I allow the bright sunlight to shine on my face, warming it just enough to make my skin tingle. Then I start to listen. I detect the faint chirping of cardinals outside, barely audible above the clamor of hungry children and cats underfoot. The wind chimes hanging from the redbud tree in front of the house ring out from a gust of wind. They were a wedding gift, one that always touches a tender spot deep within me. It’s as if each note of the pentatonic scale connects with an invisible chamber of my heart, bringing me back to center. Then I start to hear new sounds. They are my own inner whispers, reminding me of what I want in this life. When I open my eyes, the present comes rushing back at me. I’m acutely aware of the sights, sounds, and scents swirling about at that moment yet I don’t feel defeated by them anymore. I was only gone a few seconds, but that brief amount of time gave me just enough pause to view my surroundings from a slightly different perspective. This time, I’m able to detect a blessing behind each of the messes.
Notes:
- Photo: Eric Rose. Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
- Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
The Blogging Team: You, me, us…
Blogging is not only a new technology of writing; it’s also a new way of reading. In Christian antiquity, reading was a social activity, not a wholly private one. The earliest recorded incident of silent reading is found in Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine relates with astonishment Ambrose’s habit of reading in silence, a practice he had never seen before: “When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.”…
In the world of Web 2.0, the ideal of the solitary reader is waning fast. Blogging is a kind of reading-together. It is the formation of a new kind of community of reading. No longer is reading an activity reserved for the private study, that carefully crafted space where thought is cultivated under conditions of silence, leisure, economic privilege. To read a blog is to participate in a collective reading process: on any given day, we all read the same post, the same thread of comments and responses. Such reading is far removed from solitude: the reading is understood primarily as a stimulus to conversation, criticism, discussion. Here, reading is not so much an end in itself as the means to a particular form of community. The very act of reading thus becomes a collective project…
~ Ben Myers, Blogging as a Technology of the Self
Notes:
- Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels for your wonderful blog. A daily stop for me.
- Photo: One Ordinary Night