Posts on Contemplative themes
"To be a contemplative is to learn to trust deep time and to learn how to rest there and not be wrapped up in chronological time. Because what you’ve learned, especially by my age, is that all of it passes away. The things that you’re so impassioned about when you’re 22 or 42 don’t even mean anything anymore, and yet, you got so angry about it or so invested in it. So, this word “contemplation,” it’s a different form of consciousness. It’s a different form of time."
Richard Rohr
A word for 2019 from all my talking to trees
We see trees. What more do we need? Maira Kalman Here is 2019. The new beginning is a special time of the year. Darker days are good news for nerds and introverts allowing us maximum time to read and journal. I’ve been mooching about with spider diagrams and wanting to grasp every attractive […]
Reflecting on 2018
Christmas in Ireland this year was a grey and murky affair, with Atlantic soft weather pouring in from the west. As I write this we are in the twilight zone between years, so after the festivities were over it was time for reflecting on 2018 and thinking about what word to choose for 2019. […]
On a chilly pier at dawn
I wonder at times why we don’t get up and out for every dawn. When you are camping or sleeping in a tiny VW van at western the edge of Ireland, every sound tells you, the day is here! Get out of bed now! It starts with crows flying from their roost across […]
The staycation; land, sea and me.
I’ve taken a break from this blog for a staycation; interwoven with salt water, forest bathing and butterfly spotting. It was hot in Ireland. I often sat under an umbrella, unable to put even one toe onto the baking sand. All the windows and doors had to be open wide, day and night. Everything […]
The light and the shade
Q. How many Irish Mammies does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Sure don’t mind me I’ll be grand in the dark. Irish joke So the snow eventually thawed, although for days it was banked up on both sides of the escape route. I didn’t venture down to the […]
Broken
First things first. In Ireland the first day of February besides being St Brigid’s day is also the first day of Irish spring. OK, meteorologically speaking we are still in winter, but psychologically, because it’s our tradition, we’re happy to go with it. It’s not the only thing we’re totally delusional about. But […]
On another threshold
“Well, I think that the threshold — if you go back to the etymology of the word “threshold,” it comes from “threshing,” which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness. And I […]
Even in summer there is darkness at times
The summer light has it’s moments. This year summer in Ireland has been a beauty. Sometimes later in the evening there are long shadows of delightful darkness. Darkness and light. As my year’s leave moves into the final quarter I need to decide whether to return to my busy day job or settle […]
Unfurling in their own time
I hear myself saying- I don’t know what I’m doing. And there’s a freedom in that. I say it, often in the most inappropriate places, only to discover that I’m talking to myself. This phrase soothes me, puts me back on the ground, drags up my humility. Humility which is sometimes in the clutches […]
