Wednesday, September 30, 2020

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
 
 
 

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

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




Monday, September 28, 2020

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



Friday, September 25, 2020

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





Thursday, September 24, 2020

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



Wednesday, September 23, 2020

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




Tuesday, September 22, 2020

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



 
 
 

Monday, September 21, 2020

where without whom

 

 

 

 

 

 There is not

a single soul among the trees.


and I

 don't know where I've gone.



~ Octavio Paz



 

 

Sunday, September 20, 2020

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.



Friday, September 18, 2020

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




Wednesday, September 16, 2020

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



Tuesday, September 15, 2020

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)



exhausted





When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.




~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us
art by van gogh