It’s Good to Pause…

I laughed out loud when I saw the quote above by the early 20th-century French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. His wise words can be used for all of the good things we seek at this time of year or want to prepare for receiving in 2023.

In this in-between week, we invite you to pause for a moment or two to consider the feeling or experience you most seek, then just be it for a while.

With the office closed this week, this is our last newsletter of 2022. We give thanks for your presence in our contemplative community, even if “only” via this newsletter. We believe every moment spent pausing to read an inspiring quote, notice and slow your breath, and lovingly gaze inward or at the beauty surrounding you does make a difference. Thank you for all the ways you honor a contemplative way of living.

May you find moments to treasure and savor in these final days of 2022. And may you sense the Holy One is with you as you cross the threshold into 2023.

Just Be

“You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.”

—Alice Walker

Savor the World

“There’s an ancient tension between wanting to savor the world as it is and wanting to improve on the world as given.” —Leon Kass

With all you do to make a difference in the world, perhaps this week is one for simply savoring what is.

At The End Of The Year

The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.

—(c) John O’Donohue To Bless The Space Between
We wish you a blessed and very happy new year!