The Restory Retreat Centre

  Questions About A Marriage   The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation   Music With much love. George & Matilda 

AND FOR NO REASON Photo by Ralie du Preez And For no reason I start skipping like a child. And For no reason I turn into a leaf That is carried so high I kiss the Sun's mouth And dissolve. And For no reason A thousand birds Choose my head for a conference table, Start passing their Cups of wine And their wild songbooks all around. And For every reason in existence I begin to eternally, To eternally laugh and love! When I turn into a leaf And start dancing, I run to kiss our beautiful Friend And I dissolve in the Truth That I Am. ("The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky) After my previous post, Caught in the amber , I had a very stimulating discussion with a friend who sent me the above poem as a response. The carefree lilt in Hafiz's poetic voice is exactly what I yearn for, but I must admit that more often than not, I am forever seeking answers to the many whys and wherefores that life present us with. Call it design, ...

Late Summer morning in Wakkerstroom Photo by Matilda “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."                                                                                         Rainer Maria Rilke

My soul has expensive taste, sometimes. This confuses me as I strongly believe, in trying to live consciously, that simplicity is an important principle to steer by. This goes hand in hand with incorporating periods of silence, living creatively and being nourished by what Nature offers us. We all know, of course, that if simplicity in food implies that it be fresh, organic and not chemically tampered with, it is not come by cheaply or easily. Quite the contrary! And that might explain things. Living with simplicity does not mean living a deprived or lowly life.      I once bought a book because it was beautiful. What made the purchase extraordinary is that it was newly published and I paid the full price for it in a book store that is generally overpriced. I hardly ever allow myself such luxuries, always veering towards second-hand book stores or at best the tables beneath the  SPECIAL OFFER!   poster. I'll convince myself that the plain skirt at the wint...

Georges de la Tour - Magdalen with the smoking flame c. 1640 This morning I read this daily meditation by Richard Rohr: Before you open the Gospels, ask each time, What is the question that Jesus is trying to answer? Then say, Lord, put in my heart those questions. Make me ask the right questions. Jesus answers people who are asking the right questions. If the Gospel is not an answer to the world anymore, it’s perhaps because the world is not asking the right questions. The world is saying, How can I be making $40,000 by the time I’m forty? Our country is obsessed with that question. Yet Jesus says it’s a false question. He in fact says it’s an utter lie, and it’s all going to pass away. Unless you move deeper into asking his questions, you will always get the wrong answer – especially wrong because it will look religious. Put into my heart the right questions Lord. And please, have patience, for I think I tend to ask the false ones. The ones that’s all about me. I h...