To love the beauty of the world in a human being by Simon Weil

Love that gives itself to the spectacle of the heavens, the plains, the sea, the mountains or the silence of nature senses this love in a thousand faint sounds, breaths of wind and the warmth of the sun. Every human being feels it vaguely for at least a moment. It is an incomplete love, sorrowful, because it gives itself to something incapable of response, which is matter. People desire to transfer this love onto a being that is like it, capable of responding to love, of saying ‘yes,’ of yielding to it.

The feeling of beauty sometimes linked to the appearance of a human being makes this transfer possible at least in an illusory way. But it is the beauty of the world — the universal beauty — toward which our desire leads. This kind of transfer is expressed in all literature that encompasses love, from the most ancient and most used metaphors and similes of poetry to the subtle analysis of Proust. The desire to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the desire for the Incarnation. If we think it is something else,we are mistaken.The Incarnation alone can satisfy it.
Simon Weil, Waiting for God

Excerpt from"The Black Monk" by Anton Chekhov

Excerpt from"The Black Monk"
Anton Chekhov

What will happen to the garden when I die? In the condition in which you see it now, it would not be maintained for one month without me. The whole secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I love the work.Do you understand? I love it perhaps more than myself. Look at me; I do everything myself.I work from morning to night: I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting myself. I do it all myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and irritable till I am rude.

The whole secret lies in loving it-- that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease, with one's heart far away, afraid that something may have happened in the garden. But when I die, who will look after it? Who will work? The gardener? The labourers? Yes? But I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy in the garden is not a hare, not a cockchafer, and not the frost, but any outside person.

John O'donohue:Meditations for inspiration and reflection on Spirituality ,Yearning to belong,Beauty,Friendship ,love & Blessing

Music:
André Rieu-Un Amour D'été (A Summer Love)

From “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted”
John O'Donohue

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.

More often than not it is the inner beauty of heart and mind that illuminates the face. A smile can completely transform the face. Ultimately, it is the soul that makes the face beautiful. Each face is it's own landscape and is quietly vibrant with the invisible textures of memory, story, dream, need, want, and gift that make up the beauty of the individual life. This is also the grace that love brings into one's life. As the soul can render the face luminous so too can love turn up the hidden light within a person's life. Love changes the way we see ourselves and others. We feel beautiful when we are loved.
John o'donohue,Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

In everyone's life there is a great need for an Anam Cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of acquaintance fall away. You can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.

In the desolate and torn terrain of suffering, there is no beauty that reaches deeper than the beauty of the healing voice.The ability to care is the hallmark of the human, the touchstone of morality and the ground of holiness.
John O'Donohue,From The Anam Cara"The soul Friend".

Within us and around us there is an invisible world
John O'Donohue,From Eternal Echoes

Within us and around us there is an invisible world; this is where each of us comes from... When you cross over from the invisible into this physical world, you bring with you a sense of belonging to the invisible that you can never lose or finally cancel...

You know your real life is happening here. Yet your longing for the invisible is never stilled. There is always some magnet that draws your eyes to the horizon or invites you to explore behind things and seek out the concealed depths...

When you enter the world, you come to live on the threshold between the visible and the invisible.

This tension infuses your life with longing. Now you belong fully neither to the visible nor to the invisible. This is precisely what kindles and rekindles all your longing and your hunger to belong. You are both artist and pilgrim of the threshold.

Let us begin to learn how to bless one another
John O'Donohue
From "To bless the space between us"

The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else. Though suffering and chaos befall us, they can never quench that inner light of providence...

A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart. . . . When a blessing is invoked, it changes the atmosphere. Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness.

In the light and reverence of blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way. In a dead wall a new window opens, in dense darkness a path starts to glimmer, and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew.

There is a quiet light that shines in every heart...It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing.

Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.

We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing.

Caressed by the Wind - Tom Barabas

Lindsey Stirling performing"River Flows In You"

Thoughtful Paths by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Three things A child can teach by Paulo Coelho

A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be curious, to fight tirelessly for something.
Paulo Coelho