People who are gifts and the present fully lived

 
I haven't written for a little over a week. I feel as if I have abandoned my thinking process for what?.. daily life? busyness? laziness? Am not sure. But I have been pondering and I have been reading so maybe I can share some bits and pieces.

First of all, I was speaking about Geraldine and Iris in my last posting and wanted you to see them but alas I did not have accessible photos of them. But here are three other wonderful people from
l'Arche  who have changed my life. There at the top is Arthur. Arthur and I are the same age and I am profoundly aware of how different our lives have been. But my life would not have been nearly so good had he not been a part of it. In the middle is Craig who was definitely a one-off human being. There was no one else quite like him and again, he was a gift to all whose lives he touched. And finally, there is Jean Vanier the founder of l'Arche without whom none of us would have met or been so enriched by the very special friendships that are part of that particular community living. I will try and find photos of the Geraldine and Iris and post them too.

Another photo, taken just the other day at the lake on the boardwalk. I was struck by the striding forth of the man. Was he just walking? Was he exercising? Was he noticing how beautiful it was? Was he present to what he was experiencing? Those questions fit in a bit with a couple of  books I am now reading. There were a couple of quotes that struck me as thought-provoking here. The first quote is from someone I have mentioned before, the Buddhist thich nhat hanh:  
The heart of Buddhist practice is to generate our own presence in such a way that we can touch deeply the life that is here and now and available in every moment. We have to be here for ourselves; we have to be here for the people we love; we have to be here for life with all its wonders.

The second quote is from Caryll Houselander, a spiritual writer from the 1940's: 

If we are afraid to know ourselves for what we are, it is because we have not the least idea of what that is. It is because we have not the least idea of the miracle of life-giving love that we are.