The wind stills for a moment
and
the whole world is silent as a prayer.
~ Pam Houston, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
Photo: Alex William Helin with Still at Lake Buttermere in North West England
Sunday Morning
May 5, 2019 by 10 Comments
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)
Sunday Morning
September 24, 2017 by 15 Comments
Junipers in the forests outside Warsaw.
I didn’t know that junipers like sand.
They stand, huddled, like secret, silent figures in hoods.
They walk behind us. I turn to look.
They stop in their tracks, like monks.
~ Anna Kamienska, from A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook, trans. Clare Cavanagh from Poetry Magazine, May 1, 2012
Photo: Marek7 with Forest in Kampinos National Park in on the north-west outskirts of Warsaw
Sunday Morning
July 23, 2017 by 19 Comments
Except for Aunt Maria. Unlike her father, my grandfather, she belonged not among the Enlightenment’s disciples, but with the deeply religious, the deeply silent. I know she read serious works on theology, I would guess that she knew how to pray (an ability far rarer than it seems), but she was a quiet person, like all in my family…Aunt Maria’s silence, it seems to me, grew from her religion—I sensed her conviction that things linked to faith must be left unexpressed, that they’re lost when spoken, they become banalities. I admired her for being different, for the deep devotion that she wouldn’t, couldn’t share with us—she was the opposite of those pious hypocrites who place their religious fervor on public display…Maria kept silent for different reasons. Perhaps those who pray truly and deeply inevitably watch their words around others.
~ Adam Zagajewski, Slight Exaggeration: An Essay (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 4, 2017)
Notes: Image – Farm Hands, via Mennyfox55
I imagine what it must be like to…stay still in the night
June 14, 2017 by 14 Comments
There are no birds or anything, or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.
~ Ada Limón, “Mowing,” from Bright Dead Things: Poems
Photo: (via Hidden Sanctuary)
Miracle? All of it.
May 2, 2016 by 28 Comments
Sound of wings. Let’s just say: Wow!
Notes:
- Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out
- Post title inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Related Posts: Miracle? All of it.
Be silent. Listen. Let it overflow.
October 6, 2015 by 10 Comments
Notes:
- Post title: By Albert Camus from Notebooks (1942-1951) (via to escape from the commonplace of existence)
- Photograph: A flowering Pale Pink Poppy by Voigtf64
Turn it.
September 15, 2015 by 22 Comments
There is a tendency in the West to be convinced of the badness of human nature… It is essential that we be convinced of the goodness of human nature, and we must act as though people are good. We have no reason to think that they are bad. […]
I noticed in New York, where the traffic is so bad and the air is so bad … you get into a taxi and very frequently the poor taxi driver is just beside himself with irritation. And one day I got into one and the driver began talking a blue streak, accusing absolutely everyone of being wrong. You know he was full of irritation about everything, and I simply remained quiet. I did not answer his questions, I did not enter into a conversation, and very shortly the driver began changing his ideas and simply through my being silent he began, before I got out of the car, saying rather nice things about the world around him.
~ John Cage, in Richard Kostelanetz’s Conversing with Cage
Notes:
- Credits: Quote Source: Brain Pickings. Photo: Tucson Sentinel
- Inspired by a post by Steve Layman:
“So I decided to start bowing to everyone who crossed my path. Just a little teeny bow of my head. Just enough to remind myself not to be a jerk, since no matter who I’m talking to, whether it’s a child, or a principal, or a gas station attendant, or a frenemy, or Craig, it’s GOD I’m talking to. And as I bow, I say Namaste, God in me recognizes and honors God in you. I just think Namaste in my head, like the way Orthodox Jews wear a yarmulke to remind themselves that they are living under the hand of God. Or how Muslims pray five times a day to remind themselves of whom they serve. The world and the people in it are so beautiful when you are awake. And so the bowing and the silent Nameste is just a little practice to remind myself what’s real. What an amazing life I’m leading and what a gift the people I meet are to me. I know all of this might sound a little nuts, but I have decided that I am just over worrying about that. Robin P. Williams said, “You’re only given a spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” And maybe the world needs some crazy love. So I am embracing my spark of madness. Fanning it, even. And I’m bowing. And something’s happening because of it. It’s working. I’m starting to see God everywhere.
~ Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life
Serve
February 19, 2013 by 37 Comments
“We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.”
Sources: Image – iraffiruse via clausleesemann. Quote: Yahoo Voices
Live & Learn 