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"Simplicity of life requires that we be honest about who and what we are. We live a simple life when we do not pretend to be something we are not.
Simplicity is honesty, but it is also detachment. Honesty enables me to discover the hard truth that simplicity of life is not frugality of life. It is life unencumbered, life free of the things we own so that they do not own us.
Simplicity is openness to the beauty of the present, whatever its shape, whatever its lack. It enables us to be conscious of where we are and to stop mourning where we are not.
Simplicity and serenity, simplicity and honesty, simplicity and openness, simplicity and acceptance are synonyms too long kept secret."
What is a simple life in a world and a society where having enough is never quite enough? What is the value of simplicity?
This is what becoming fully human is all about...
Joan Chittister, Benedictine sister, author - 2005
Friday, December 3, 2010
Life's a Symphony
Here’s something I came across from Anthony De Mello, he shares:
“Happiness is enoughness.” The secret is to be content with what comes our way, rejecting nothing and hankering for nothing. The great virtue of contentedness. To take things as they are and to imitate the birds in the sky and the lilies on the field.”
I am reminded of a friend who is down with terminal cancer. A fellow pilgrim who has been blogging (http://upekah.blogspot.com) - sharing the journey with others and perhaps, to keep one’s own hope alive, find daily strength, purpose to go on. When one carries such a dis-ease, which does not discriminate, one must be brave to walk the lonely path, struggling with having to heal oneself and remaining strong for the loved ones. Yes, life can be harsh and unfair… the quiet can be deafening...
Tony goes on to share, “A classical symphony. The perfect experience. A symphony has no purpose, no meaning. There is also no clinging to it and no hastening it. One does not wait till the end to enjoy it, but takes in every note, every chord as it comes and lets it go to welcome the next in uninterrupted flow. Any attempt to stop the performance, any “attachment” to a single note, will ruin the symphony…. The less the attachment, the greater the love.”
Sometimes in life, we fool ourselves to think that we have found the perfect note or keep on pushing ourselves to find that perfect note; not realizing that life, in all its richness offers us a variety of notes, which, at the end of it all, becomes a great symphony. A symphony, only if we drop all attachments, possessions, presuppositions, clinging, unforgiveness. The less the attachments, the more we love, the more we live life to the fullest, the more we live in the present, the more we are healed; savoring just the chord of today - not worrying about tomorrow's note.
We all have to end this life one day but right now, my friend may be the luckier person, by the grace of God, to savor every chord that comes along and hopefully be the symphony that will inspire others to listen so as to be able to play out their own - a symphony that I pray, will last a little while longer, by the merciful grace of God.
Tony goes on to say, "Yield to the currents of life...unencumbered by baggage." We must learn to travel light as this pilgrimage journey can be long and the gate narrow.
"How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
- Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Douay-Rheims Bible
“Happiness is enoughness.” The secret is to be content with what comes our way, rejecting nothing and hankering for nothing. The great virtue of contentedness. To take things as they are and to imitate the birds in the sky and the lilies on the field.”
I am reminded of a friend who is down with terminal cancer. A fellow pilgrim who has been blogging (http://upekah.blogspot.com) - sharing the journey with others and perhaps, to keep one’s own hope alive, find daily strength, purpose to go on. When one carries such a dis-ease, which does not discriminate, one must be brave to walk the lonely path, struggling with having to heal oneself and remaining strong for the loved ones. Yes, life can be harsh and unfair… the quiet can be deafening...
Tony goes on to share, “A classical symphony. The perfect experience. A symphony has no purpose, no meaning. There is also no clinging to it and no hastening it. One does not wait till the end to enjoy it, but takes in every note, every chord as it comes and lets it go to welcome the next in uninterrupted flow. Any attempt to stop the performance, any “attachment” to a single note, will ruin the symphony…. The less the attachment, the greater the love.”
Sometimes in life, we fool ourselves to think that we have found the perfect note or keep on pushing ourselves to find that perfect note; not realizing that life, in all its richness offers us a variety of notes, which, at the end of it all, becomes a great symphony. A symphony, only if we drop all attachments, possessions, presuppositions, clinging, unforgiveness. The less the attachments, the more we love, the more we live life to the fullest, the more we live in the present, the more we are healed; savoring just the chord of today - not worrying about tomorrow's note.
We all have to end this life one day but right now, my friend may be the luckier person, by the grace of God, to savor every chord that comes along and hopefully be the symphony that will inspire others to listen so as to be able to play out their own - a symphony that I pray, will last a little while longer, by the merciful grace of God.
Tony goes on to say, "Yield to the currents of life...unencumbered by baggage." We must learn to travel light as this pilgrimage journey can be long and the gate narrow.
"How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
- Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Douay-Rheims Bible
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