love many things

Vincent had been in love with and proposed to several women, all of whom rejected him. 

After so many failed relationships, Vincent eventually came to accept his fate.

"I believe that certainly it’s better to bring up children than to expend all one’s nervous energy in making paintings, but what can you do, I myself am now, at least I feel I am, too old to retrace my steps or to desire something else. This desire has left me, although the moral pain of it remains."

 

Perhaps as a consequence of his lack of lasting romantic involvements, an expanded idea of the concept of love developed which seems to be revealed to us in several of Vincent's letters to his brother Theo.

"Since the beginning of this love I have felt that unless I gave myself up to it entirely, without any restriction, with all my heart, there was no chance for me whatever, and even so my chance is slight. But what is it to me whether my chance is slight or great? I mean, must I consider this when I love? No, no reckoning; one loves because one loves. Then we keep our heads clear, and do not cloud our minds, nor do we hide our feelings, nor smother the fire and light, but simply say: Thank God, I love."

"Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored."

"Love a friend, love a wife, something, whatever you like, but one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence, and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more."

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done!"

"The best way to know God is to love many things."



 ~ Vincent Van Gogh
with thanks to Brain Pickings and www.vangoghmuseum



 
Vincent at age 19

 

the inner ground

The way to find the real "world" is not merely to measure 

and observe what is outside us, but to discover our own inner ground.  

For that is where the world is, first of all: in my deepest self... 

This "ground," this "world" where I am mysteriously present 

at once to my own self and to freedoms of all other men,

 is not a visible, objective and determined structure 

with fixed laws and demands.  

It is a living and self-creating mystery 

of which I am myself a part, 

to which I am myself my own unique door.

~Thomas Merton

from Merton's Palace of Nowhere 
 by
James Finley

other nations

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.

 Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, 

man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge 

and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. 

 

We patronize them for their incompleteness, 

for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.

 And therein we err, and greatly err. 

For the animal shall not be measured by man.

 In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, 

gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained,

 living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, 

they are not underlings; they are other nations, 

caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, 

fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston
from The Outermost House

the still point

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
At the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity.
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.




~ T.S. Eliot
from Burnt Norton, #1 of  "Four Quartets"

the mind that frees us or enslaves

It is the mind that frees us or enslaves.

Driven by the senses we become bound;

Master of the senses we become free.

Those who seek freedom must master their senses.

When the mind is detached from the senses

One reaches the summit of consciousness.

Mastery of the mind leads to wisdom.

Practice meditation.  Stop all vain talk.

The highest state is beyond reach of thought,

For it lies beyond all duality.

~ The Amritabindu Upanishad

kind

I hadn't noticed

till a death took me outside

and left me there

that grass lifts so quietly

to catch everything

we drop and we drop 

everything.

~ Leonard Nathan

wild rose

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,


suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only a shade,


and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.




~ Wendell Berry
photo by Bryan Griffith

I am not I

I am not I.

I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.

The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
The one who will remain standing when I die.






~ Juana Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

where?

Where are you searching for me, friend?

Look! Here am I right within you.

Not in temple, nor in mosque,

Not in Kaaba, nor Kailas,

But here right within you am I. 

~ Kabir

a path where they found no path

In the story of Sir Galahad, the knights agree to go on a quest, but thinking it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group, each

"entered into the forest, at one point or another, there where they saw it to be thickest, all in those places where they found no way or path."

Where there is a way or a path, it's someone else's way.  Each knight enters the forest at the most mysterious point and follows his own intuition. What each brings forth is what never before was on land or sea: the fulfillment of his unique potentialities, which are different from anybody else's...when the knight sees the trail of another, thinks he's getting there, and starts to follow the other's track, he goes astray entirely.


~ Joseph Campbell

irreplaceable "thisness"

Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus (1266-1303) taught extensively on the absolute uniqueness of each act of creation.  His doctrine of haecceity is derived from haec, the Latin word for "this." Duns Scotus said the absolute freedom of God allows God to create, or not to create, each creature. Its existence means God has positively chosen to create that creature, precisely as it is.

Each creature is thus not merely one member of a genus and species, but a unique aspect of the infinite Mystery of God.  God is continuously choosing each created thing specifically to exist, moment by moment. This teaching alone made Scotus a favorite of mystics and poets like  Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Merton, who considered themselves "Scotists" - as I do too.

 ~ Richard Rohr

from just this

 

The Inner History of a Day

.

No one knew the name of this day;

Born quietly from deepest night,

It hid its face in light,

Demanded nothing for itself,

Opened out to offer each of us

A field of brightness that traveled ahead,

Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps

And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;

It dwells within the silence with elegance

To create a space for all our words,

Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

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.

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.

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.

~ John O’Donohue,

 from:  To Bless the Space Between Us

.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

~ Janine Jansen
Tchaikovsky's violin concerto

performed and broadcast on April 19th, 2013. 

With Paavo Järvi conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra

 

 

Tchaikovsky (right) with violinist Iosif Kotek

 

 

the inner landscape of beauty

~ John O'Donohue

two drinking songs

.

1.

I built my hut near where people live

and yet I hear no traffic noise or sound of wheels.

Could you tell me what is happening?

An aloneness gathers around the soul that is alone.

I pick chrysanthemums underneath the east hedge,

the mountains to the south are clear.

The mountain air at sunset is so wonderful,

and the birds coming home, one after the other.

In all these details there are secret truths;

but when I try to shift to language, it all slops away.

2.

Such a strong color on the late chrysanthemums!

The stalk sways stoutly, flower wet with dew, open.

Wandering drunk in this beauty, who cares about my sorrows.

I have left excitement behind, and what is not done.

Alone, I take a drink.

The bottle tilts by itself when the cup is empty.

When the sun goes down, all bustle stops,

and the birds on their return call from the leaves.

I walk around my study shouting and proud

because I can take up this life again.

~ Tao Yuan-Ming

.