Week 7 | catch the heart off guard

Curiosity.

Discovery.

Deepening.

It’s what secretly guides me, feeds me.

So I will let your curiosity, and this post about the first part of our stirring journey through Ireland, sit beside the words of others I discovered along the way.

I invite you to feast, to deepen into beauty for beauty’s sake.

 

The Dark Hedges

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious. – Edna O’Brien

 

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky.

– William Butler Yeats

 

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

 

 

 

 

Giant’s Causeway

I need the sea because it teaches me. – Pablo Neruda

 

The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows. – John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

 

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth. – Rachel Carson

 

 

 

Grianan of Aileach

Is there anything we know more intimately than the fleetingness of time, the transience of each and every moment? – Rebecca Goldstein

 

 

If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. – Ranier Maria Rilke

 

 

It is a happy talent to know how to play. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

Glenveagh National Park

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. – Rachel Carson

 

 

 

Don’t you know that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own? – P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins

 

 

When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry, Take a cherry
Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder
Mine are sweeter, For the eater
When the dews fall. And you’ll be fairies all.

– Robert Graves, Cherry-Time

 

 

Soft moss a downy pillow makes, and green leaves spread a tent,
Where Faerie fold may rest and sleep until their night is spent.
The bluebird sings a lullaby, the firefly gives a light,
The twinkling stars are candles bright, Sleep, Faeries all, Good Night.

– Elizabeth Dillingham

 

 

 

Hills as green as emeralds, cover the countryside,
Lakes as blue as sapphires are Ireland’s special pride,
And rivers that shine like silver make Ireland look so fair,
But the friendliness of her people is the richest treasure there.

– Bea Sager

 

 

And we drive

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

– John O’Donohue

 

 

Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.

– Frederic Edward Weatherly

 

 

 

 

 

Slieve League

The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. – James Joyce, Ulysses

 

 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

– John O’Donohue

 

 

But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind,
there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling. . .let us go.

– Robert Service

 

 

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. – Rumi

 

 

Achill Island

every experience is unrepeatable – Italo Calvino

 

 

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am. – Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy,
or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only
impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience,
patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One
should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a
gift from the sea.

– Anne Morrow Lindbergh