Blue Heron Mindfulness

20/11/2023

You have enough, do enough, ARE enough. 🧡

16/09/2023

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1541264603/

04/06/2023

Great poems connect us at the soul. They give us a sense that the poet somehow knew where and how we would be when we find the poem, or the poem finds us!

For me, “The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry is such a poem. Every time I encounter it, I wonder how Berry could have known that I’d be seeking reassurance in this moment?

When despair grows in us, we can count ourselves lucky if we have easy access to wild nature. But for those of us who don’t, this poem, read with an active imagination, can "take us there.”

Normally, I can’t “lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water.” But given Berry’s gift of words, I can rest my soul in the beauty of this poem.

And at https://tinyurl.com/yx4of6ok, I can rest in the sound of Berry reading it...

[My 10 books are at tiny.cc/qocmuz AND http://tiny.cc/5rcmuz.]

04/06/2023

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.

This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Lough Inagh, Co Galway, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

18/04/2023

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.” ―William Blake

dragonfly photo by Caroline Pasby

04/11/2022

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the blessing, 'For One Who is Exhausted,' from John's books:
Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Lough Inagh
Connemara, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

05/09/2022

"Many of us consider growing up as a kind of increasing, and getting old as a kind of decreasing. When we say that humans go from ashes to ashes and from dust to dust, it doesn’t sound very joyful, because none of us wants to return to dust. It is our mind of discrimination that thinks this way, because we don’t know what dust really is. Every atom is a vast mystery. We still have not yet fully understood electrons and nuclei; for scientists, a speck of dust is very exciting. A particle of dust is a marvel."

Thich Nhat Hanh in 'The Other Shore'
(Taken from an extract published here: https://www.parallax.org/mindfulnessbell/article/the-other-shore/)

19/08/2022

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. Too often we squander the invitations extended to us because our looking has become repetitive and blind. The mystery and beauty is all around us but we never manage to see it. When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates. We begin to glimpse things that no-one speaks about, that the outer world seems to ignore.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Gleninagh Roses, Co Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

16/05/2022

A little Mary Oliver to start the week!

06/05/2022

05/05/2022

Cartoon: David Sipress 😃
Often when people start to practice , they hope to become calm and peaceful. Usually they are in for a big shock. Initially practice can reveal the opposite, bringing an unseen stream of evaluations and judgments into stark relief. As minutes pass, we may cycle between agitation and boredom. We hear a door slam and wish for quiet. ("I'm meditating—it should be quiet!") Our knees hurt, our back hurts, and we try to avoid the pain. (Maybe we need a better cushion?) We can't feel our breath and get frustrated. We notice our mind won't stop planning and we feel like a failure. ("I can't stop thinking!") Then maybe we notice how many judgments there are, and we feel proud of ourselves for noticing, then judge our pride.
We can begin to put aside our judgment. We can become mindful. When we are mindful, it is as if we can bow to our experience without judgment or expectation. “Mindfulness,” declared the Buddha, “is all helpful.”

Excerpt adapted from "The Wise Heart"