You are here: Home / Archives for quiet

Lightly Child, Lightly.

May 31, 2018 by 13 Comments

In silence which is active, the Inner Light begins to glow – a tiny spark. For the flame to be kindled and to grow, subtle argument and the clamour of our emotions must be stilled

The word born of silence must be received in silence.

~ Pierre Lacout, Quaker Faith & Practise (2.12) in Twelve Quakers and Worship

Notes:

  • Photo: Patty Maher. Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
  • 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.”

 

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Morning

May 20, 2018 by 28 Comments

Holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down. We offer it to ourselves when we work, rest, meditate, bike, read. When we hike by ourselves, we hear a silence still pristine with crunching leaves and birdsong…During congregational silences, in meditation rooms or halls, in prison cells and meeting rooms, in silent confession at church, all these screwed-up people like us, with tangled lives and minds, find their hearts opening through quiet focus. In unfolding, we are enfolded, and there is a melding of spirits, a melding of times, eternal, yesterday morning, the now, the ancient, even as we meet beneath a digital clock on the wall, flipping its numbers keeping ordinary time in all that timelessness.

~ Anne Lamott, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy

Notes: Quote – Thank you Make Believe Boutique. Photo: Franziska Korries (via Newthom)

Filed Under: Inspire, Nature, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Riding Metro North. With Four.

May 9, 2018 by 30 Comments

5:40 am train.

Full.  How can this be possible?

I stand in the vestibule, irritated, and then remember that the 5:40 am train is a Peak train, and further remember that I’m paying a Peak Fare rate to Stand. Irritated.

I set my bag down on the muddy floor, irritated, and wait, hoping for someone to get off at the one and only stop on the express train to Grand Central.

I see a commuter to my right zipping up his backpack. I grab my briefcase, block the aisle (and the commuter who is waiting on the other side of the vestibule) and grab the open seat.  Commuter code: You snooze, you lose. Smiling. I’ve become a New Yorker.

I pull down the bench, a handicapped seat which flips up.  There’s an awkward shifting of knees and legs to avoid all contact. There will be no man-touching.

Two men across from me. Two men to my right. And me.

  • Sleeping. Reading. Reading. Sleeping. Reading.
  • iPhone. iPhone. iPhone. Not visible. iPhone.
  • Earbuds. Earbuds. None. None. None.
  • Sneakers. Loafers. Lace up. Sneakers. Lace up.
  • Baseball cap. Balding. Full head of hair. Hoodie. Balding.
  • Backpack. None.  Backpack. Backpack. Briefcase.
  • No watch. No watch. Wristwatch. Unknown. Smartwatch.
  • T-shirt. Business casual. Suit. Jeans. Suit.
  • Nails (grimy). Nail biter. Manicured. Unknown. Nail biter.

The train car is silent but for the rocking of the car on rails.

We pull into Grand Central and exit without an acknowledgement of the other.

4 head right. I head left.

I walk alone, down the tunnels, with the sound of my footfall on concrete and with Patricia Hampl (again).

“There may be no more solitary location in America than a New York subway—take a look at the faces of those commuters, their heads bent to their open books like monks at their breviaries, little glowing screens casting an otherworldly aura onto their intent faces. They are elsewhere. They are alone. Alone with words as much as any writer at a notebook or screen.”

Notes:

Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Lightly Child, Lightly.

April 26, 2018 by 38 Comments

If you are very very quiet

you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

~ Raul Gutierrez, from “Lies I’ve told my three year old recently”

Notes:

  • Photo Source. Poem source: See more
  • 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.”

 

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Morning

April 22, 2018 by 10 Comments

Theirs was then and remains even more today the stranger passion, the one little understood—or even comprehended as passion. Not erotic life, but the pleasure of the mind filling like the lower chamber of an hourglass with the slow-moving grains of a perfect day—sky, carnations, walking, reading, writing, Toasted Cheese, the presence of another who wishes to be so still, so silent too… It is possible to feel the fact of being alive as it breathes in, breathes out. It’s a life. It’s the life.

~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Published April 17, 2018)

Image: (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

Filed Under: Art, Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nirvana (-ish)

April 21, 2018 by 27 Comments

pelican

This morning. (And not Fake News, mostly.)

Sleep in till 7:45 am. Wow. Let’s do that again, and again, and again.

Read the morning papers. Read a few chapters of Patricia Hampl’s new book: The Art of the Wasted Day. And commit to workin’ on this Art today.

A heaping breakfast. Two-egg ham and cheese omelette. Bacon. Pork sausage links. Fresh cut fruit. Fresh baked pastries. And that would be plural on the pastries x 2. These same pastries were dipped in home made strawberry jam.

A short walk to the beach. Me and my breakfast hangover land heavily on the beach chair.

81º F.  Partly sunny. (Feels like 92 F.)  Warm winds @ 7 mph from the NE.

Miles of soft sand in both directions.

The Atlantic laps the shoreline.

Wispy clouds provide intermittent relief from the sun.

Out in the distance, hulking ocean freighters and their giant steel containers carry their cargo to ports away.

Pelicans, with their massive wing spans and beaks, cruise three feet off the ocean top, and plummet, splashing in search of breakfast. And they come again, and again and again — feeding. I look closely for a wing flap wondering how the maintain their locomotion. Can’t see it. Miracle. All of it.

Paragliders float up high, held aloft by giant multicolored rainbow parachutes.  Muffled sounds of jet skis in the distance.

Families and beach goers begin to arrive. Hundreds and hundreds fill the shoreline quietly and peacefully milling, settling, reading, playing, sleeping… children pull out their plastic shovels and pails out of Mom’s beach bag and start building castles…

My toes auger into the soft sand, dark and cool a few inches down.

And, oh yea, there’s a little of something else.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday Morning

April 21, 2018 by 13 Comments

clouds

Still looking for bliss in nothing at all, the cloudy mind moving over existence, outside time.

~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Published April 17, 2018)

Notes:

  • Post Inspired by Patricia Hampl: “Daydreaming doesn’t make things up. It sees things. Claims things, twirls them around, takes a good look. Possesses them. Embraces them. Makes something of them. Makes sense. Or music. How restful it is, how full of motion. My first paradox. I couldn’t care less what it’s called. It’s pure pleasure. Infinite delight…This is what is called the life of the mind. It’s what I want to do. It’s where I want to be. Right here.” (Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day)
  • Photo by Mikael Aldo (via see more)
  • Related Posts: Patricia Hampl

 

Filed Under: Art, Inspire, Life, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Morning

April 15, 2018 by 20 Comments

 

From the stillness around you a high glassy sound descends, like first light. Each new sound seems to breathe — emerging from and receding back into the stillness — and the glint of bells, like desert plants, here and there. Almost imperceptibly the music swells and continues falling in pitch. From somewhere above — like a gleam of metal, like sunlight emerging from behind a ridgeline — comes the sound of flutes. You are in a strange landscape. You don’t know how to read the weather or the light. You are unsure how long you will be here, or how challenging the journey may be. “This is beautiful,” you think. “But will anything ever happen?”

You resist. Yet the sound draws you in. You resolve to suspend your impatience, to listen as carefully as you can, as if watching a sunrise. You notice your breathing becoming slower. Falling, still falling…The music continues floating upward, growing more and more distant, until at last it dissolves into a deep and resonant stillness.

~ John Luther Adams, from “What It’s Like to Hear the Desert in Music” in   The New York Times, March 23, 2018)

Photo: saoud with Desert

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Lightly Child, Lightly

April 5, 2018 by 21 Comments

patty-maher-first-it-whispers

i enjoy mornings that you wake up to silence

and no one is asking anything of you,

you’re under no pressure to exist…

~ imransuleiman

Notes:

  • Photo: Patty Maher, First it Whispers
  • 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.”
Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday Morning

March 31, 2018 by 13 Comments

Come to my quietness
I shall cover you with it,
like a white sheet that has blown all day in the sun,
like a mountain lake filled with spring,
it shall slip over you…

~ Diane Di Prima

Notes: Photo & Poem sources unknown

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Next Page»
%d bloggers like this: