What a great rainy day to stay in and read. I'm halfway finished a charming book How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Flower. It is very rural and Florida in mood and tempo. Just right to appreciate being able to stay in on a cool New Jersey spring day.
Fearful that when I finished it I would not have another book in hand I made a quick trip to the public library and checked out The Saints' Guide to Happiness by Robert Ellsberg. I saw it mentioned somewhere on the web. Just to make sure rainy days and Tuesdays don't get me down I skimmed through the chapter, Listening to Sit Still.
This I like: "Quiet places are becoming ever more scarce. But it is not enough to escape the noise of the world. There is still the matter of our own inner noise. Even when it is quiet outdoors, we are filled with the internal voices and alarms, reminding us what needs to be done, what we have done poorly, what has been done to us in the past. These voices incessantly distract us from the time and place--here and now-- where we actually exist. ....... Yet if we are constantly living in the past or preparing to live in the future, how can we be sure that we are ever truly alive?"
The chapter notes that finding this contentment with the present has been sought and worked at by saints, philosophers (Pascal) and Eastern religions like Zen Buddhists.
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