A Monday meander: Considering wholeness

A morning at the museum.

Given that the shared understanding of truth has been central to language, religion and society, when we ignore small lies, we inflict damage on the larger truth.

This is not holiness we’re talking about, but wholeness and integrity.

~ Gina Barreca

Because every exchange is always a relationship, to get the most while giving the least is unjust, unethical, antisocial, abusive, perhaps ‘evil.’ Yet predatory commerce (“the free market” as it is euphemistically called) operates regularly on the principle of ‘get the most and pay the least.’

~ James Hillman

As the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work. There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections – as one is now said to work “for a living” or “to support a family” – but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love.

~ Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace

Hands on

Praying hands.

People often said that eyes showed a person’s soul, but I’d always thought it was hands that spoke the truth

~ Veronica Rossi, Rebel Spy

Our troubled world today needs hands — helping, giving, loving, and caring hands — we need a lot of them, not fingers — pointing fingers — there are too many of them.

~ Andawn F

A Wednesday morning

This morning, in her glory.

I wake up, open my eyes, and a world appears. It is a familiar world – more so than usual in these days of semi-lockdown – but even more familiar is the experience of ‘self’ – of being me – that glides into consciousness at more-or-less the same time. This experience of selfhood is so mundane that its appearance goes by entirely unnoticed, unless actively paid attention to. We take our selves for granted, but we shouldn’t.

~ Anil Seth, Catching Sight of Yourself

Beauty kick-starts our attention. The real sublime. To behold it is almost scary because we suddenly have a longing to stand for something. Beauty not as generic but specific, troubling in what it may call forth in us.

~ Martin Shaw, How to Recapture Your Imagination

A Monday meander: With the boys

At the Point on a rainy day.

No child ever receives a box of colored crayons and says, “What’s the point? I can’t draw.” Nor does she reject a jar of modeling dough because sculpture is too complicated. If you give him a guitar, he gets sounds out of it without fuss. If you ask her to sing, she doesn’t refuse to because she doesn’t know the words or because she hasn’t got a perfect voice: she simply takes a breath, opens her mouth and belts it out!

~ Fabiana Fondevila, Where Wonder Lives

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

~ Albert Camus

A Monday meander: Holding my place

A garland on the aging prayer flag.

When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery, you return to rhythm with yourself. When you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you. Moments of beauty begin to braid your days.

~ John O’Donohue, Beauty

The expected and the unexpected

Exploring the inner world of a zinnia.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

~ Confucious

When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

~ John Lennon