ecstasy: Czechoslovakia, 1933

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The actress was only seventeen

and so the director arranged

to have her pricked lightly with pins

at the needed moments.

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~ Jane Hirshfield

I write these words to delay

What can I do with these thoughts,

given me as a dog is given her flock?

Or perhaps it is the reverse -

my life the unruly sheep, being herded.

At night,

all lie down on the mountain grasses,

while mirror sheep, a mirror guard-dog

follow one another through rock outcrops,

across narrow streams.  The drink and graze by starlight.

This morning, waking to unaccustomed calmness,

I write these words to stay in that silent, unfevered existence,

to delay the other words that are waiting.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

his name is God-with-them

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Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...

Here God lives among men.

He will make his home among them; 

they shall be his people and he will be their God;

his name is God-with-them.

He will wipe away all tears from their eyes;

there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. 

 The world of the past has gone.

Then the One sitting on the throne spoke:

Now I am making the whole of creation new...

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~ Revelations 21: 1-5

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the longing for beauty

For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.

Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. 

It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world 

and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.  

And there it is ahead of all as...the Beloved ...toward which all things move, 

since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being.

~ Pseudo-Dionysius

from The Divine Names

to finding again

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Everything else must have changed

must be different

by the time you appear

more than ever the same

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taking me by surprise

in my difference

my age

long after I had come 

to the end 

of believing in you

to the end of hope

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which was not even 

the first of the changes

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when I imagined 

that I was forgetting you

you did not even need memory

to remain there

letting the years vanish

the miles depart

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nothing surprising in that

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even longing

does not need memory

to know what to reach for 

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and nothing surprises you

who were always there

wherever it was

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beyond belief

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~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

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secret places

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Lovers find secret places inside this violent world

where they make transactions with beauty.

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Reason says, Nonsense.

I have walked and measured the walls here.

There are no places like that.

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Love says, There are.

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Reason set up a market and begins doing business.

Love has more hidden work.

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Hallaj steps away from the pulpit

and climbs the stairs of the gallows.

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Lovers feel a truth inside themselves

that rational people keep denying.

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It is reasonable to say, Surrender is just an idea

that keeps people from living their lives.

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Love responds, No.

This thinking is what is dangerous.

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Using language obscures what Shams came to give.

out of low word-clouds into burning silence.

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~ Rumi

from The Big Red Book

translations by Coleman Barks

the adamantine perfection of desire

Nothing more strong 

than to be helpless before desire.

No reason,

the simplified heart whispers,

the argument over,

only This.

No longer choosing anything but assent.

Its bowl scraped clean to the bottom,

the skull-bone cup no longer horrifies,

but, rimmed in silver, shines.

A spotted dog follows a bitch in heat.

Gray geese flying past us, crying.

The living cannot help but love the world.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Each Happiness Ringed by Lions

beauty is integral to being

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Part of what it means to be, 

is to be beautiful.  

Beauty is not super-added to things: it is one of the springs of their reality.  

It is not that which effects a luscious response in perceivers;

 it is the interior geometry of things, making them perceptible as forms.

~ Francesca Aran Murphy

photo by albert koetsier 

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wonderment and a delicious trouble

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This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight.  For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen;  and this is the Soul's feel for it, every Soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love - just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply , and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.  These Lovers, then, lovers of the beauty outside of sense, must be made to declare themselves.

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~ Plotinus

from the Enneads 

woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

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beautiful beyond being

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That, beautiful beyond being, is said to be Beauty - for

It gives beauty from itself in a manner appropriate to each,

It causes the consonance and splendour of all,

It flashes forth upon all, after the manner of light , the

Beauty producing gifts of its flowing ray,

It calls to itself,

When it is called beauty.

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~ Pseudo-Dionysius

from The Divine Names

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to being late

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Again again you are

the right time after all

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not according to 

however we planned it

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unforeseen and yet

only too well known

mislaid horizon

where we come to ourselves

as though we had been expected

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you are where it appears now

and will stay from now on 

in its own good time

it was you we came to 

in the first place

hearing voices around us

before we knew what they said

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but you always surprise us 

it is you that we 

hurry to

while you go on waiting

to the end of space

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and when we get to you

we stop and listen

trying to hear whether

you are still there

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~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

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remember

You who worry with travel plans,

read again the place in the Qur'an

where Moses is taking the Jewish nation out of slavery.

You so frantic to have more money,

recall what they abandoned to wander in the wilderness.

You who feel hurt by some neglect,

remember the pavilions and houses they left behind.

You that lead the community through difficulties,

read about the abundant fountains

they walked away from to have freedom.

You who dress in clothes that appear to have elegant meaning,

you with so much charm,

remember how your face will decay to dirt.

You with lots of property, read again,

They left their gardens and the quietly running streams.

You who smile at a funerals going by,

you that love language, measure the wind in stanzas,

and recall the exodus, the wandering forty-year sacrifice.

Remember Egypt.

~ Rumi

from The Big Red Book

translations by Coleman Barks

like a holy face held in my dark hands

Lord, the great cities are lost and rotting.

Their time is running out...

The people there live harsh and heavy,

crowded together, weary of their own routines.

Beyond them waits and breathes your earth,

but where they are it cannot reach them.

Their children waste their days

on doorsteps, always in the same shadow.

They don't know that somewhere 

wind is blowing through a field of flowers.

The young girls have only strangers to parade before,

and no one sees them truly;

so, chilled,

they close.

And in back rooms they live out the nagging years 

of disappointed motherhood.  Their dying is long

and hard to finish:  hard to surrender

what you never received.

Their exit has no grace or mystery.

It's a little death, hanging dry and measly

like a fruit inside them that never ripened.

III, 4/5

God, give us each our own death,

the dying that proceeds 

from each of our lives:

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the way we loved,

the meanings we made,

our need.

III, 6

For we are only the rind and the leaf.

The great death, that each of us carries inside,

is the fruit.

Everything enfolds it.

III,7

I thank you, deep power

that works me ever more lightly

in ways I can't make out.

The day's labor grows simple now,

and like a holy face

held in my dark hands.

I, 62

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpts from The Book of Poverty and Death

translation by anita barrows and joanna macy

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to help those who need it

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USA Red Cross: http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main&s_src=RSG00100E013&s_subsrc=ONR_MainDonateButton

Canada Red Cross: http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=2372&tid=032

United Kingdom Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal

Australia Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org.au/japan2011.htm

New Zealand Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org.nz/donate (Note: due to the recent quake in New Zealand, you will need to choose the Japan earthquake donation in the drop-down box).

German Red Cross: http://www.drk.de/weltweit/asien-nahost/japan-hilfe-nach-erdbeben.html

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http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/overview.cfm

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ask much

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Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.

Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse

tied to its tree while the strange noise

passes over its ears.

I who in extremity had always wanted less,

even of eating, of sleeping.

Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.

"Want more" -

a cure for longing I had not thought of.

But that is how it is with wells.

Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.

The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:

A cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.

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~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

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