About blooming and softening

Are blooming and softening related? Does one follow from the other or the other from the one? You would almost think so.

Year after year after year we surrounded house and garden with endless attention and love, and just when everything shines and shines like never before, has reached a state of ‘off’, gardener Jan proposes to exchange some clean lines in the orchard for a looser, smoother, ‘softer’ layout. And not because he ‘feel like it’, but because the garden itself indicated it: a number of apple and pear trees had had their day; was ready to make room for shrubs with edible flowers and flowering grass.

And so it is as if the outside world reflects what has been happening inside me for the past 15 years. Unnoticed, straight lines gave way to a more playful, softer, more agile layout. Or no, it is more nuanced. The straight and the curved line, the box and the spaciousness, the predictability and the adventure: little by little my heart dared to welcome the ‘and, and’ instead of the either or or.

As Benedict stated, so it also works: ‘As one progresses in monastic life and in faith, the heart expands’.

Not demands, but gifts

However different the manifestation, the foundation of every proven spiritual discipline, from the East as much as from the West, revolves around the same recognition: sure, holiness dwells in our hearts, but between us and that heart is our ego. And unless we hand over the reins of that to outside “sacristies,” rituals or disciplines, that heart will be the dwelling place not only of our sacred, but also of our unholy. And thus a battleground.

Lees verder »

Drying the laundry

Without a clothesline, hanging the laundry contemplatively becomes a bit difficult. So it’s great that Aaron recently put down some poles with lines in a

Lees verder »