The Inner History of a Day

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We seldom notice how each day is a holy place

Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

Transforming our broken fragments

Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

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Somewhere in us a dignity presides

That is more gracious than the smallness

That fuels us with fear and force,

A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

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So at the end of this day, we give thanks

For being betrothed to the unknown

And for the secret work

Through which the mind of the day

And wisdom of the soul become one.

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~ John O'Donohue

(excerpt from The Inner History of a Day)

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Love letters

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Every day, priests minutely examine the Law

And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

How to read the love letters sent by the wind

and rain, the snow and moon.

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~ Ikkyu

(Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology,

 trans. by Sonya Arutzen)

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from: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Ask the questions that have no answers. 

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. 

Say that your main crop is the forest 

that you did not plant, 

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested 

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 

Put your faith in the two inches of humus 

that will build under the trees 

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 

close, and hear the faint chattering 

of the songs that are to come. 

Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 

though you have considered all the facts. 

So long as women do not go cheap 

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 

a woman satisfied to bear a child? 

Will this disturb the sleep 

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields. 

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 

in her lap. Swear allegiance 

to what is highest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos 

can predict the motions of your mind, 

lose it. Leave it as a sign 

to mark the false trail, the way 

you didn't go.

Be like the fox 

who makes more tracks than necessary, 

some in the wrong direction. 

Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry

from Collected Poems

Look it Over

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I leave behind even

my walking stick.  My knife

is in my pocket, but that

I have forgot.  I bring

no car, no cell phone,

no computer, no camera,

no CD player, no fax, no

TV, not even a book. I go

into the woods.  I sit on

a log provided at no cost.

It is the earth I've come to,

the earth itself, sadly

abused by the stupidity

only humans are capable of

but, as ever, itself. Free.

A bargain!  Get it while it lasts.

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~ Wendell Berry

(Leavings)

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As a caterpillar

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As a caterpillar, having come to the end of 

one blade of grass, draws itself together and 

reaches out for the next, so the Self, having 

come to the end of one life and dispelled 

all ignorance, gathers in his faculties and 

reaches out from the old body to a new.

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~ The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

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Always in the distance

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Always in the distance

the sound of cars is passing

on the road, that simplest form

going only two ways,

both ways away.  And I 

have been there in that going.

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But now I rest and am 

apart, a part of the form

of the woods always arriving

from all directions home,

this cell of wild sound,

the hush of the trees, singers

hidden among the leaves -

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a form whose history is old,

needful, unknown, and bright

as the history of the stars

that tremble in the sky at night

like leaves of a great tree.

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~ Wendell Berry

(A Timbered Choir)

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The world of machines

The world of machines is running

Beyond the world of trees

Where only a leaf is turning

In a small high breeze.

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~ Wendell Berry

(A Timbered Choir)

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photo by: Kathleen Connally
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the smallest word

Of all that God has shown me

I can speak just the smallest word,

Not more than a honey bee

Takes on his foot

From an overspilling jar.

~ Mechtild of Magdeburg

in every moment

True love in every moment praises God.

Longing love brings a sorrow sweet to the pure.

Seeking love belongs to itself alone.

Understanding love gives itself equally to all.

Enlightened love is mingled with the sadness of the world.

But selfless love bears an effortless fruit,

Working so quietly even the body cannot say how it comes and goes.

~ Mechtild of Magdeburg

They come singly

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They come singly, the little streams,

Out of their solitude.  They bear

In their rough fall a spate of gleams

That glance and dance in morning air.

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They com singly, and coming go

Ever downward toward the river

Into whose dark abiding flow

They come, now quieted, together.

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In dark they mingle and are made

At one with light in highest flood

Embodied and inhabited,

The budded branch as red as blood.

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~ Wendell Berry 

(Given)

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Things will go where they're supposed to go

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Things will go where they're supposed to go 

if you just let them take their natural course. 

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt 

when it's time for them to be hurt. 

Life is like that. 

I know I sound like I'm preaching from a podium, 

but it's about time for you to learn to live like this. 

You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. 

If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, 

you have to open up a little more 

and let yourself go with life's natural flow.

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~ Haruki Murakami

(Norwegian Wood)

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reblogged from:  http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com/

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at night

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at night,

deep in the mountains,

I breathe...

everything is still,

all thoughts emptied

into the night.

my robe has become

a garment of frost.

suddenly, above the

highest peak,

the full moon appears.

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~ Ryokan

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Eating Together

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In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow-covered road

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

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~ Li-Young Lee

(Rose)

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The Hammock

When I lay my head in my mother's lap

I think how day hides the stars,

the way I lay hidden once, waiting

inside my mother's singing to herself. And I remember 

how she carried me on her back

between home and the kindergarten,

once each morning and once each afternoon.

I don't know what my mother's thinking.

When my son lays his head in my lap, I wonder:

Do his father's kisses keep his father's worries

from becoming his? I think, Dear God, and remember

there are stars we haven't heard from yet:

They have so far to arrive. Amen,

I think, and I feel almost comforted.

I've no idea what my child is thinking.

Between two unknowns, I live my life.

Between my mother's hopes, older than I am

by coming before me, and my child's wishes, older than I am

by outliving me. And what's it like?

Is it a door, and good-bye on either side?

A window, and eternity on either side?

Yes, and a little singing between two great rests.

~ Li-Young Lee

(Book of My Nights)

We were standing by the road

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IV.

We were standing by the road,

seven of us and a small boy.

We had just rescued a yellow swallowtail

disabled on the pavement when a car

approached too fast.  I turned to make sure

of the boy, and my old border collie

Nell, too slow coming across,

was hit, broken all to pieces, and died

at once, while the car sped on.

And I cried, not thinking what

I meant, "God damn!" And I wish

all automobiles in Hell,

where perhaps they already are.

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V.

Nell's small grave, opening

at the garden's edge to receive her

out of this world's sight forever,

reopens many graves.  Digging,

the old man grieves for his old dog

with all the grief he knows,

which seems again to be approaching

enough, though he knows there is more.

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VI.

How simple to be dead! - the only

simplification there is, in fact, Thoreau

to the contrary notwithstanding.

Nell lay in her grave utterly still

under the falling earth, the world

all astir above, a million leaves

alive in the wind, and what do we know?

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~ Wendell Berry

(Leavings, Sabbaths, 2005)

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