Awakening to the Name of Magnificence

In tough instances, carry one thing stunning in your coronary heart!
~ Blaise Pascal

Awakening to the Name of Magnificence

Expensive Subscriber First Identify,

As I try like most of us to discover a technique to navigate the tough instances we’re in, preserving a way of groundedness whereas growing readability of actions, and compassion for all who’re struggling, I discover myself in want for each day encounters with magnificence.
As I mirror on my consciousness of this want, I’m reminded of a e book by Irish poet and thinker, John O’Donohue, that I learn a few years in the past. The gorgeous title of the e book is Magnificence: The Invisible Embrace- Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope.

Isn’t it precisely what we’d like proper now?

I may quote many excerpts from the e book, however I’ll choose just some which have significantly resonated with me. The e book was first revealed in 2004 so a few of these writings sound fairly prophetic right now.

The Cry of Our Occasions:
To Awaken Magnificence

The human soul is hungry for magnificence; we search it all over the place – in panorama, music, artwork, garments, furnishings, gardeing, companionship, love, faith, and in ourselves… Once we expertise the Lovely, there’s a sense of homecoming. A few of our most fantastic recollections are of lovely locations the place we felt instantly at dwelling. We really feel most alive within the presence of the Lovely for it meets the wants or our soul… Within the expertise of magnificence we awaken and give up in the identical act. Magnificence brings a way of completion and sureness. With none of the standard calculations, we are able to slip into the Lovely with the identical ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; one thing historical inside us already trusts that this embrace will maintain us.
These instances are riven with anxiousness and uncertainty, given the present world disaster. Within the hearts of individuals some pure ease has been damaged. It’s astounding how this has reached deep into the center. Our belief sooner or later has misplaced its innocence. We all know now that something can occur, from one minute to the following. The standard constructions of shelter are shaking, their foundations revealed to be not stone however sand. We’re instantly thrown again on ourselves. Politics, faith, economics and the establishments of household and neighborhood, all have turn into abruptly uncertain. At first, it sounds fully naïve to recommend that now is likely to be the time to invoke and awaken magnificence. But that is precisely what this e book explores. Why? As a result of there’s nowhere else to show and we’re determined; moreover, it’s as a result of we’ve so disastrously uncared for the Lovely that we now discover ourselves in such horrible disaster.

The World Disaster
and the Violation of Magnificence

In a way, all up to date crises may be diminished to a disaster concerning the nature of magnificence. This attitude gives us new prospects. In parched terrains new wells are to be found. Once we deal with problem when it comes to the decision to magnificence, new invites come alive. Maybe, for the primary time, we acquire a transparent view of how a lot ugliness we endure and permit. The media generate limitless photographs of mediocrity and ugliness in talk-shows, tapestries of smothered language and frenetic gratification. The media have gotten the worldwide mirror and these reveals are likely to enshrine the ugly as the conventional customary. Magnificence is generally forgotten and made to look naïve and romantic. The blindness of property improvement created rooms, buildings and suburbs which lack grace and thriller. Socially, this influences the environment within the office, the schoolroom, the boardroom and the neighborhood. It additionally ends in such degradation of the atmosphere that we’re turning an increasing number of of this stunning earth right into a wasteland. A lot of the stress and vacancy that haunts us may be traced again to our lack of consideration to magnificence. Internally, the thoughts turns into coarse and boring if it stays unvisited by photographs and ideas which maintain the radiance of magnificence.

Once we awaken to the decision of magnificence, we turn into conscious of recent methods of being on this planet. We have been created to be creators. At its deepest coronary heart, creativity is supposed to serve and evoke magnificence. When this want and capability come alive, new wells spring up in parched floor; problem turns into invitation and somewhat than striving in opposition to the grain of our nature, we fall into rhythm with its deepest urgency and keenness. This time is now ripe for magnificence to shock and liberate us. Magnificence is a free spirit and won’t be trapped throughout the grid of intentionality. Within the gentle of magnificence, the methods of the ego soften like an online in opposition to a candle…

The surprise of the Lovely is its potential to shock us. With swift, sheer grace, it is sort of a divine breath that blows the center open. Proof against our methods, it may take us after we least anticipate it. As a result of our current behavior of thoughts is ruled by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we’re much less and fewer often obtainable to the exuberance of magnificence…

Magnificence isn’t just a name to progress, it’s a reworking presence whereby we unfold in direction of progress virtually earlier than we understand it. Our deepest self-knowledge unfolds as we’re embraced by Magnificence.

Complement the e book with this wonderful interview of O’Donohue, shortly earlier than his loss of life: The Internal Panorama of Magnificence with Krista Tippett of The On Being Mission.

Or with the Strolling in Magnificence Navajo prayer,

Or the observe of Meditating on Magnificence and Nature by Mark Coleman, my instructor and founding father of Awake Within the Wild,

Or an upcoming Local weather Teaching Alliance occasion with Professor Peter Hawkins on “Magnificence in Management and Teaching: and its function in Reworking Human Consciousness” – additionally the title of his newest e book.

I’d love to listen to the place you discover magnificence in your life. Please write again to share your practices.

Warmly,

Anne-Marie
February 12, 2025
(Yesterday, from co2.earth, 426.62 ppm of atmospheric CO2, final yr 424.82, secure stage 350)

Let the sweetness we love be what we do.
There are a whole lot of technique to kneel and kiss the bottom.
~ Rumi

Some Upcoming Occasions of Curiosity

The Local weather Teaching Alliance Neighborhood Competition is beginning early subsequent month with two fabulous occasions each held on March 5.

For more information and registration, merely click on on the occasion banners beneath.

For all Neighborhood Competition occasions, go to this web page of the Local weather Teaching Alliance web site.