postmodernpilgrim

"Being mindful is hard for us because we are always anxious about time.... Learning that we have enough---money, time, love---may be our most important lesson. Even when we eliminate the apparent obstacles of working and consuming too much, we still have trouble relaxing and enjoying the present moment. So the problem is not just the scarcity of time, it's our attitude toward time. That little voice always creeps in: You'd better hurry, you've got a lot to do, you're not getting enough done, time is running out. What does this mean in terms of feeling alive? Surely, if things keep on this way, when we come to die, we will discover that we have not lived." -Cecile Andrews from The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life What is preventing you from living in the moment?

In an article recently posted by NPR , I read that scientists recently unearthed musical instruments, flutes to be exact, dating almost 35,000 to 40,000 years ago in caves in southwestern Germany. The flutes are made of hollowed-out mammoth tusk and vulture wing bone. You can hear a simple song played on one of the flutes by clicking here . I find this idea fantastic, that in the earliest days of our species we sought to create music. As I was reading the article, I began thinking about the cave paintings in Altamira, Spain that date back roughly 14,000 years ago. This would mean that the flutes pre-date the paintings as one of the earliest forms of creative work that our species produced (tools and weapons notwithstanding). I began to reflect on my own experience of the arts and music and how both move me (with great emotional force at times). I can imagine that the sound created by the simple flutes were accompanied, as one of the archeologists proposes, by hand claps and chest ...

"Whoever joins God's liberation movement must be content to spend time in the wilderness, to live in tents and not know what the morrow brings." -Elizabeth O'Connor