the unfinished work

 

~ Abraham Lincoln, Andrea Scheidler

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

 

 

an irresistible momentum

What am I in the eyes of most people — 

a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — 

somebody who has no position in society and will never have; 

in short, the lowest of the low.

 

All right, then — 

even if that were absolutely true, 

then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, 

such a nobody, has in his heart. 

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, 

based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. 

Though I am often in the depths of misery, 

there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. 

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, 

in the dirtiest corners. 

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

leaning forward

 

 

 

 

If drawn as a cartoon figure,

you would be leaning always forward, feet blurred

with the multiple lines that convey both momentum and hurry.

 

Your god is surely Hermes:

messenger, inventor,

who likes to watch the traveler passing the crossroads

in any direction.

Your nemesis? The calm existence of things as they are.

 

When I speak as here,

in the second person, you are quietly present.

You are present in presents as well, which are given to.

 

Being means and not end, you are mostly modest,

obedient as railroad track to what comes or does not.

 

Yet your work requires

both transience and transformation:

night changes to day, snow to rain, the shoulder of the living pig to meat.

 

When attached to verbs, you sometimes change them

to adjectives, adverbs, nouns,

a trick I imagine

would bring enormous pleasure,

were you capable of pleasure, You are not.

 

You live below the ground of humor, hubris, grievance, grief.

Whatever has been given you,

you carry, indifferent as a planet to your own fate.

 

Yet it is you,

polite retainer of time and place, who bring us to ours,

who do not leave the house of the body

from the moment of birth until your low-voiced murmur, "dust to dust."

 

And so we say, "today," "tomorrow."

But from yesterday, like us, you have vanished.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

art by Salvador Dali

 

 

 

embodying the light

 

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn’t reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn’t waste anything.
this is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.




~   Lao Tzu
translated by Stephen Mitchell

the struggle

 

 

 

 

 

We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, 

condemned by the gods to shoulder his rock 

sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever. 

 

The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. 

He cherishes every roughness and every ounce of it.

 He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the Mysterious Other. 

He evens dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. 

 

Life is unimaginable without it, looming always above him

 like a huge gray moon. He doesn’t realize that at any moment 

he is permitted to step aside, let the rock hurtle to the bottom, 

and go home. 

 

Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.




~  Stephen Mitchell

art by Van Gogh

no desire for security

Surely, the mind has abandoned itself and its moorings only when

 there is no desire for security. A mind that is seeking security

can never know what love is. Self-abandonment is not the state

 of the devotee before his idol or his mental image. Self-abandonment

 can come about only when you do not cultivate it,

 and when there is self-knowing.

When the mind has understood the significance of knowledge,

 only then is there self-knowing, and self-knowing implies self-abandonment. 

You have ceased to rest on any experience as a center from which to observe,

 to judge, to weigh; therefore, the mind has already plunged into the movement

 of self-abandonment. In that abandonment there is sensitivity. 

But the mind which is enclosed in its habits of eating, of thinking,

 in its habit of never looking at anything - such a mind obviously cannot

 be sensitive, cannot be loving. 

In the very abandonment of its own limitations, the mind becomes sensitive

 and therefore innocent. And only the innocent mind knows what love is

 not the calculating mind, not the mind that has divided love

 into the carnal and the spiritual. In that state there is passion and, 

without passion, reality will not come near you. It is only the enfeebled mind

 that invites reality; it is only the dull, grasping mind that pursues truth, 

God. But the mind that knows passion in love

 to such a mind the nameless comes.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Collected Works, Vol. XI,251

with thanks to J. Krishnamurti Online

illustration by glen wexler 

no longer any shore

I do not cease swimming in the seas of love,

rising with the wave, then descending;

now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it;

love bears me away where there is no longer any shore.

~ Al Hallaj

from Diwan al-Hallaj

tribute to John O'Donohue

leadership

 

The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist.

The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.

Next comes the one who is feared.

The worst one is the leader that is despised.

If you don't trust the people,

they will become untrustworthy.

The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.

When she has accomplished her task,

the people say, "Amazing:

we did it, all by ourselves!"

 

 

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

the back of the world

.

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? 

It is that we have only known the back of the world. 

We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal.

That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. 

That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. 

Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? 

If we could only get round in front—

~ G. K. Chesterton, 1908

from The Man Who Was Thursday

the spirit within the earth

.

It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.

I, I am the spirit within the earth.

The feet of the earth are my feet;

The legs of the earth are my legs.

The strength of the earth is my strength;

The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts;

The voice of the earth is my voice.

The feather of the earth is my feather;

All that belongs to the earth belongs to me;

All that surrounds the earth surrounds me.

I, I am the sacred works of the earth.

It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.

~ Navajo origin legend

Song of the Earth Spirit

art by van gogh

when I detect a beauty

.

 

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, 

I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, 

of the inexpressible privacy of life - how silent and unambitious it is.  

The beauty there in mosses will have to be considered from the holiest, quietest nook.

 

My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they have woolen feet.  

In all our lives we live under the hill, and if we are not gone we live there still. 

....

To be calm, to be serene!  

There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind;

there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch.  So is it with us.  

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, 

not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, 

so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal 

and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.  

 

I awoke into a music which no one by me heard.

Whom shall I thank for it?  I feel my Maker blessing me.

To the sane man the world is a musical instrument.

The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

taken from a journal entry, June 22,1851

 

completely empty

Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do.

 Say “I am now with myself,” and just sit with yourself. 

After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored. 

This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that

 if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that, 

it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so? 

It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought,

 for emotion and for life. If you watch your life carefully you will discover 

quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; 

instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, 

we live by reflection, by reaction… We are completely empty, 

we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life

which is actually fed in from the outside; we are used to things happening 

which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply

 by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.

~ Archbishop Anthony Bloom

from Beginning to Pray

without cause or calculation

 

 

 

A lover doesn't figure the odds.

He figures he came clean from God

as a gift without a reason,

he gives without cause

or calculation or limit.

 

A conventionally religious person

behaves a certain way

to achieve salvation.

 

A lover gambles everything, the self,

the circle around the zero! He or she

cuts and throws it all away.

 

This is beyond

any religion.

 

Lovers do not require from God any proof,

or any text, nor do they knock on a door

to make sure this is the right street.

 

They run,

and they run.

 

 

 

 

~ Rumi

translation: Coleman Barks, 

from: Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion

 

fable - everyone was everything

 

 

 

Ages of fire and of air
Youth of water
From green to yellow
From yellow to red
From dream to watching
From desire to act
It was only one step and you took it so lightly
Insects were living jewels
The heat rested by the side of the pond
Rain was a willow with unpinned hair
A tree grew in the palm of your hand
And that tree laughed sang prophesied
Its divinations filled the air with wings
There were simple miracles called birds
Everything was for everyone
Everyone was everything
There was only one huge word with no back to it
A word like a sun
One day it broke into tiny pieces
They were the words of the language we now speak
Pieces that will never come together
Broken mirrors where the world sees itself shattered

 

 

 

 
 ~  Octavio Paz

 with thanks to whiskey river

 

 

 

where without whom

 

 

 

 

 

 There is not

a single soul among the trees.

and I

 don't know where I've gone.

~ Octavio Paz

 

 

binding the torn threads

 

 

Ruth Bader as a child.

The war has left a bloody trail and many deep wounds not too easily healed.

 Many people have been left with scars that take a long time to pass away. 

We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to

 in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps.

 

 Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people

 hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions.

 

 Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said:

 “Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.”

No one can feel free from danger and destruction until 

the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again.

 We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, 

will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association. 

 

There can be a happy world and there will be once again, 

when men create a strong bond towards one another,

 a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance.

 

 

 

 

 ~  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 comments written as a 13 year old child

with thanks to Brainpickings

mindfulness - taking care of anger

 

 

 

 

 

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

the culture of the day

The cities only care for what is theirs

and uproot all that's in their path.

They crush the creatures like hollow sticks

and burn up nations like kindling.

Their people serve the culture of the day,

losing all balance and moderation,

calling their aimlessness progress,

driving recklessly where they once drove slow,

and with all that metal and glass

making such a racket.

It's as if they were under a spell:

they can no longer be themselves.

Money keeps growing, takes all their strength,

and empties them like a scouring wind,

while they wait for wine and poisonous passions

to spur them to fruitless occupations.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

III,31, The Book of Poverty and Death
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
photo by robert frank

eyes are blind

“‘People where you live,”

 the little prince said,

 “grow five thousand roses in one garden… 

yet they don’t find what they’re looking for…”

“They don’t find it,” I answered.

“And yet what they’re looking for could be found 

in a single rose, or a little water…”

“Of course,” I answered.

And the little prince added,

 “But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.’”

~  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

from The Little Prince

born in Lyon in 1900. He was rather a poor student, and he failed his entrance exam to the naval academy, but he joined the French army in 1921, and that's where he flew his first plane. He left the military five years later and began flying airmail routes into the Sahara Desert, eventually becoming the director of a remote airfield in Rio de Oro. Living conditions were Spartan, but he said, "I have never loved my house more than when I lived in the desert." He wrote his first novel, Southern Mail (1929), in the Sahara and never lost his love for the desert.

In 1929, he moved to South America to fly the mail through the Andes, and he later returned to carry the post between Casablanca and Port-étienne. He worked as a test pilot and a journalist throughout the 1930s, and survived several plane crashes. He also got married in 1931, to Consuelo Gómez Carrillo. She wrote of him in her memoir, "He wasn't like other people, but like a child or an angel who has fallen down from the sky."

He rejoined the French army upon the outbreak of World War II, but when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, he fled to the United States, hoping to serve the U.S. forces as a fighter pilot. He was turned down because of his age, and, homesick and discouraged, he began his best-known book, The Little Prince (1943). The following year, he returned to North Africa to fly a warplane for France. He took off on a mission on July 31, 1944, and was never heard from again.

when we are weak

 

 

 

When we are weak, we are

strong.  When our eyes close

on the world, then somewhere

within us the bush

burns.  When we are poor

and aware of the inadequacy

of our table, it is to that 

uninvited the guest comes.

 

 

 

 

~ R. S. Thomas

art by Picasso

when they sleep

 

 

All people are children when they sleep.

there's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.

 
-- God, teach me the language of sleep.

 

 

 

 

~ Rolf Jacobsen

from Night Music - Selected Poems

translation by Robert Hedin 

photo - children of the boat people

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

ask anything

"Ask anything,"

My Lord said to me.

And my mind and heart thought deeply 

for a second,

then replied with just one word,

"When?"

God's arms then opened up and I entered Myself.

I entered Myself when I entered

Christ.

And having learned compassion I

allowed my soul

to stay.

~ Saint Thomas Aquinas

 from for lovers of god everywhere -

Poems of the Christian Mystics 

the half-finished heaven

Cowardice breaks off on its path.

Anguish breaks off on its path.

The vulture breaks off in its flight.

The eager light runs into the open,

even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,

red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything starts to look around.

We go out in the sun by hundreds.

Every person is a half-open door

leading to a room for everyone.

The endless field under us.

Water glitters between the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from Half-Finished Heaven

translated by robert bly

art by rolf harris

happiness writes white

I am a piece of chalk

scrawling words on an empty blackboard.

I am a banner of smoke

that crosses the blue air and doesn't dissolve.

I don't believe that only sorrow

and misery can be written.

Happiness, too, can be precise:

Doctor, there's a keen throbbing

on the left side of my chest

where my ribs are wrenched by joy.

Wings flutter in my shoulders

and blood courses through my body

like waves cresting on a choppy sea.

Look: the eyes blur with tears

and the tears clear.

My head is like skylight.

My heart is like dawn.

~ Edward Hirsch

from Special Orders

thanks to knopf  poetry

broken

In my loneliness

I break and burn

twigs for the snapping fire -

hoping the smoke at least won't leave.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translation by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

for what binds us

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they've been set down --

and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There's a name for it on horses, 

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle,

small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other 

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black cord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

~ Jane Hirshfield

(Of Gravity & Angels)