The Restory Retreat Centre

Morrie Schwartz dancing Your life is not about you.                                                             Zen saying I’m usually 10 to 20 years late. If a book is on The New York Times bestsellers list in 1998, I’ll probably read it in 2015. Well, sometimes I get to it a little earlier, but Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is a very good example. Published in 1997 I only read it last week. Retired sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease and his former student Mitch Albom had these conversations on Tuesdays in the months before his death. They covered a variety of subjects relating to the fundamentals of life. It was as if his imminent death made the wise Morrie see things even clearer than before. From one such a conversation Albom shares...

A few years ago I discovered this wabi-sabi photo in a magazine ad. Or rather, a photo that is such a good example of the essense of this approach to life.  As is the case with many important things, I cannot remember exactly how I got to know wabi-sabi. I think Matilda told me about an article that she came across. Nevertheless, we discovered a name and a whole philosophy for the way we thought about and looked at life and things. Wabi-sabi, being Japanese in origin, is difficult to define exactly. It consists of two words (obviously!) that at first had meanings separate from each other. These meanings changed over centuries so that we now have wabi – which says humble and simple - and sabi – saying rusty and weathered. This gradually flowed into one stream to form a single mind-set with roots closely associated with the Japanese tea ceremony. In fourteenth century Japan the upper classes developed elaborate, ostentatious style tearooms and rituals where they sho...