Saturday, May 13, 2023

what we need is here

 
 


 
 
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.



~ Wendell Berry



 

how surely gravity's law (II, 16)






How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.







~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
.



stages

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
 
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence,
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.
 
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
 
 
 
 
~ Hermann Hesse
translation by Richard and Clara Winston
 
 
 

 
 

Sunday, May 7, 2023

consciousness and matter

 
 
 
 
 
 

 ~ Rupert Spira




happiness


Happiness is a butterfly
which when pursued is always just beyond your grasp
but which if you will sit down quietly
 may light upon you.

...

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne





Friday, May 5, 2023

the soft overcomes the hard

 
 
 

 
 
 
 Nothing in the world is weaker than water
 but against the hard and the strong
  nothing outdoes it for nothing can change it
 the soft overcomes the hard
 the weak overcomes the strong
 this is something everyone knows
 but no one is able to practice.
 
 
 
 
 ~ Lao Tzu 
TaoTeChing
 translated by Red Pine



become clear with stillness

 
 
 
 
 

 


If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. 
If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly. 
But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements,
 if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, 
and if we allow ourselves to become absorbed in self-centered views,
 the surface of our waters becomes turbulent. 
Then we cannot be receptive to Tao.

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. 
True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude 
where we allow our minds to settle. 
 
Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. 
Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, 
and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.
 
 
 

 ~  Deng Ming-Dao
from 365 Tao, Daily Meditations
 with thanks to Heron Dance Art Journal
photo from
 (From http://www.rgbstock.com/bigphoto
/nHepDs6/Moon+Reflected+in+Water+3)
 
 

Thursday, May 4, 2023

into unity and belonging







... there is a mirror within the human mind. 
 This mirror collects every reflection. Human solitude is so unsolitary.
 Deep human solitude is a place of great affinity and of tension. 
When you come into your solitude, you come into companionship 
with everything and everyone. When you extend yourself frenetically outward, 
seeking refuge in your external image or role, you are going into exile.
 When you come patiently and silently home to yourself, 
you come into  unity and into belonging.



~ John O'Donohue
art by Shanna Strauss




a common bond










Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone
 into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, 
a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown,
 and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. 
 
You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, 
but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of  our essential loneliness, 
nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone ...

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, 
no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, 
a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, 
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, 
and learn to be at home.




~ Wendell Berry
 from The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge
 


what did we see today?






Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.
On other days, we are like a light that sweeps
Out over the husky soybean fields all night.

What did we see today?  Horses at the end 
Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,
Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.

Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno
Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent
And lose ourselves in the curved energy.

We know how many men live alone in their twenties,
And how many women are married to the wrong person,
And how many fathers and sons are strangers to each other.

It's all right if we keep forgetting the way home.
It's all right if we don't remember when we were born.
It's all right if we write the same poem over and over.

Robert, I don't know why you talk so confidently
About yourself in this way.  There are a lot of shady
Characters in this town, and you are one of them.




~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey




Friday, April 28, 2023

a broken open place









inside, still no moon.
but there is a broken
open place.
I am learning
to sing from there.


.
 Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer




grateful to the last

 
 

 
 
 
Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved-for all we know,
it is halved-by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present.
Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting 
them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be
remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving,
though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny,
or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell,
only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us
and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.
 
We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life.
As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome. 
I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. 
Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always
 coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, 
which is always present. Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming
of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded
and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn
welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying, I think,
is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful 
enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude
 is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.
 
 
 
 
~ Wendell Berry
from Andy Catlett
 
 
  

Sunday, April 23, 2023

individual shoots were younger








The individual shoots were younger, but these new growths from the past few centuries
 were not considered to be stand-alone trees but part of a larger whole..
 The root is certainly a more decisive factor than what is growing above ground.
  After all, it is the root that looks after the survival of an organism. 
It is the root that has withstood severe changes in climatic conditions. 
And it is the root that has regrown trunks time and time again.
 It is in the roots that centuries of experience are stored, 
and it is this experience that has allowed the tree's survival
 to the present day.



~ Peter Wohllenben
from The Hidden Life of Trees



... down deep, at the molecular heart of life,
we’re essentially identical to trees.


~ Carl Sagan

 

a little perspective

 
 
 
 
 
 

~ Carl Sagan
 
 
 

Friday, April 21, 2023

my wilderness


.
.

 
 
I looked up with a wild duck's eye into the trees 
waving as the wind rushed through them... 
Suddenly I felt alone on earth, 
as I do when lying on the damp ground in spring
 to see the bloodroot raising its leaf sheath through the mold.  
These moments are not rare.  
I can summon them whenever I feel the need to retire into the wilderness.  
For this is my wilderness, 
untouched by man, 
of infinite grace and harmony.
.
 
 
 
~ Harlan Hubbard
from "Payne Hollow - Life on the fringe of Society"
.