“The gift of becoming aware of the simple, astonishing beauty of anything, even as we recognize that it, and we along with it, will one day be no more. This moment of awareness holds everything.” – Douglas Christie I want to muse about the line “this moment of awareness holds everything” and how it spun me round in relationship between my sitting practice and the fierce reality of the present moment. I think the present moment gets shortchanged by lazy quips and sophomoric slogans – YOLO and all the rest. And sitting practice can be misunderstood just as easily… it …
Tag: Thomas Merton
Vitality Out of Emptiness with Fr. David Denny
The inner desertarises primarily from grief:the universal desert of lossthat grinds the soul to dustand bears within itthe threat of despairas well as hopefor transformationand compassion. – Fr. David Denny Fr. David Denny is a lifelong seeker whose commitment to the unfolding mystery of life has brought him to explore the deserts of place and soul. In 1975 Fr Dave entered the Spiritual Life Institute, a contemplative monastic community rooted in the Carmelite tradition. And in 2005, he left that community to co-found the Desert Foundation with Tessa Bielecki. A writer, a poet, retreat master and teacher, Fr. Dave now …
A Revelatory Elegy of Unknowing with Todd Davis (author of Coffin Honey)
Reading Todd Davis’s gorgeous poems, you can’t help but feel that the capacities of human vision, and also our appetite for exactly this way of seeing and naming have been mysteriously, precisely increased. – Jane Hirshfield The poems of Todd Davis sharpen a reader’s spirit and focus, on the bloodstained teeth breaking apart the day-to-day doldrums and on the mythic imagination necessary to bear witness to this daunting moment in our species, on our planet. Todd Davis and I spoke back in 2019 about his book Native Species and he has read his poems in the last two years on …