Showing posts with label nick cave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nick cave. Show all posts

Sunday, February 18, 2024

humility and curiosity in support a meaningful life

 






The first is humility. Humility amounts to an understanding 
that the world is not divided into good and bad people, 
but rather it is made up of all manner of individuals, 
each broken in their own way, each caught up in the common
 human struggle and each having the capacity to do both terrible
 and beautiful things. 

If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, 
we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others’ shortcomings
 and the world appears less dissonant, 
less isolating, less threatening.

The other quality is curiosity. If we look with curiosity at people
 who do not share our values, they become interesting rather than threatening. 

As I’ve grown older I’ve learnt that the world and the people in it
 are surprisingly interesting, and that the more you look and listen,
 the more interesting they become. Cultivating a questioning mind, 
of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship
 with the world. Having a conversation with someone I may disagree
 with is, I have come to find, a great,
 life embracing pleasure.



~ Nick Cave
with thanks to The Marginalian 
by Maria Popova



Monday, September 21, 2009

Up those stone steps I climb

...
Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day's return
Into its great shadowed vault I go
Hail the Pentecostal morn
...

The reading is from Luke 24
Where Christ returns to his loved ones
I look at the stone apostles
Think that it's alright for some
...

And I wish that I was made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define
A beauty impossible to believe
...

A beauty impossible to endure
The blood imparted in little sips
The smell of you still on my hands
As I bring the cup up to my lips
...

No God up in the sky
No devil beneath the sea
Could do the job that you did, baby
Of bringing me to my knees
...

Outside I sit on the stone steps
With nothing much to do
Forlorn and exhausted, baby
By the absence of you
...

~ Nick Cave

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

It's up in the morning and on the downs

.





It's up in the morning and on the downs
Little white clouds like gambolling lambs
And I am breathless over you

And the red-breasted robin beats his wings
His throat it trembles when he sings
For he is helpless before you

The happy hooded bluebells bow
And bend their heads all a-down
Heavied by the early morning dew

At the whispering stream, at the bubbling brook
The fishes leap up to take a look
For they are breathless over you

Still your hands
And still your heart
Still your face comes shining through
And all the morning glows anew

Still your mind
Still your soul
For still, the fare of love is true
And I am breathless without you

The wind circles among the trees
And it bangs about the new-made leaves
For it is breathless without you

The fox chases the rabbit round
The rabbit hides beneath the ground
For he is defenseless without you

The sky of daytime dies away
And all the earthly things they stop to play
For we are all breathless without you

I listen to my juddering bones
The blood in my veins and the wind in my lungs
And I am breathless without you

Still your hands
And still your heart
For still your face comes shining through
And all the morning glows anew

Still your soul
Still your mind
Still, the fire of love is true
And I am breathless without you








~  Nick Cave
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