Schuster Family Medicine and Osteopathic Care

08/24/2025

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path...

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention...

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpts from the blessing, 'For Presence,' found in Benedictus (Europe) /
To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare Cottage, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

08/09/2025

At the heart of things is a secret law of balance and when our approach is respectful, sensitive and worthy, gifts of healing, challenge and creativity open to us. A gracious approach is the key that unlocks the treasure of encounter. The way we are present to each other is frequently superficial. In many areas of our lives the rich potential of friendship and love remains out of our reach because we push towards 'connection.' When we deaden our own depths, we cannot strike a resonance in those we meet or in the work we do.

A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us to be truly present where we are. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty of things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace. Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

07/24/2025

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/24/nx-s1-5477662/diet-exercise-obesity-nutrition

One explanation for the rise in obesity in industrialized countries is that people burn fewer calories than people in countries where obesity is rare. A major study finds that's not the case.

07/19/2025

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. Too often we squander the invitations extended to us because our looking has become repetitive and blind. The mystery and beauty is all around us but we never manage to see it. When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates. We begin to glimpse things that no-one speaks about, that the outer world seems to ignore.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://www.johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

07/06/2025

Many things to think on in Pico Iyer’s words…many questions to be asked…

Amidst climate change, runaway technologies and tumultuous politics, how can we stay calm and sustain hope? How do we uncover a good life, with reasons for c...

07/05/2025

Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice. This voice distrusts the status quo. It sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images things tend to assume. It underlines the secret crevices where the surface has become strained. It advises distance and opens up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning of a situation might emerge. The inner voice makes any complicity uneasy. Its intention is to keep the heart clean and clear. This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person's qualities. Yet so much depends on that small voice. The truth of its whisper marks the line between honor and egoism, kindness and chaos. In extreme situations, which have been emptied of all shelter and tenderness, that small voice whispers from somewhere beyond and encourages the heart to hold out for dignity, respect, beauty and love.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Iona Abbey, Isle of Iona, Scotland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

06/17/2025

A MIND SHAPED BY MOORLAND

Moorland
and mist
have taught me
to savour
the experience
of a ghosted,
step by step,
almost arriving
on a summit
that is no summit
at all,
just a sloping
never ending,
coming to know,
holding you up
above any smaller
sense of self.

That sudden tear
in the clouds
a gift
given for a moment,
a touching of all
other moments
and all distances,
the land and the rivers
and the patchwork
of fields
spreading it seems,
from the very centre
of my body,

close-in
intimate,
and
yet
always
beyond me

glorious
to the ends
of the earth.

…

Revised Version:
A MIND SHAPED BY MOORLAND
In : THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte & Many River Press.

…

I stood in this very place, where this photo was taken, just yesterday, looking across to the Langdale Pikes, on a glorious summer's day.

A Mind Shaped by Moorland arose from coming to realise how much time I had spent over the years, on the often trackless tops of the Fells and Moors of the British Isles, firstly in my youth in the North of England and then in Ireland, Wales and Scotland, where they may carry different names but entirely the same enormous essence of invitational incomprehension.

The places we go, and the way we go as we go, shape our identities in profound ways: finding a way across the trackless has always been a part of my life physically and metaphorically. Even the way we hold the conversation in finding our way through what only seems like an average day, sets our future horizons in ways we cannot commonly comprehend. DW

…

Langdale Fells
Photo © David Whyte
Cumbria.
June 25th 2022

06/13/2025

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the blessing, 'The Inner History of a Day,' found in the books: Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Kerry, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

06/07/2025

THE ART OF DEVELOPING A BEAUTIFUL MIND

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness. Beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more, we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralyzed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions.

©JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the unpublished collection of John O'Donohue. The title and description John wrote in late 2007 for a public event in 2008. https://johnodonohue.com/about

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

05/09/2025

There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition, there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara,
25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

05/03/2025

There is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul. In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualize the mind as a tower of windows. Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await your gaze. Through these different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity. Complacency, habit, and blindness often prevent you from feeling your life. So much depends on the frame of vision -- the window through which you look.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara,
25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

04/27/2025

Something to make us smile. “Whatever we do, wherever we go, we go there together!”

Mitra I. Arthur | April 22, 2025"I had a dream…" is the repeated refrain from Mama Rose in Gypsy. Well, "I had a dream" that one day we'd see this show at th...