another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius. 

 

 

 

 

~ Billy Collins

 

mysteriously

Mysteriously, Wonderfully,

I bid Farewell to what Goes,

I Greet what Comes;

for what comes cannot be denied,

and what goes cannot be detained.

~ Chuang-Tzu

from The Complete Works of Zhuangzi

translated by Burton Watson
photo by ansel adams

already given

 

 

 

 

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

 

 

 

if you want

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light, and
sing . . .



~ St. John of the Cross
Daniel Ladinsky translation
Love Poems from God

life within life

 

 

 

 

You who sleep in my breast are not met with words, 

but in the emergence of life within life 

and of wisdom within wisdom.   

With You there is no longer any dialogue, 

any contest, any opposition.  

You are found in communion! 

Thou in me and I in Thee,  

Thou in them and they in me: 

dispossession within dispossession, 

dispassion within dispassion, 

emptiness within emptiness, 

freedom within freedom. 

 I am alone.  

Thou are alone. 

 The Father and I are One.

 

 

 

~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

sketch by the author

 

 

Your brightness is my darkness.  

I know nothing of You and, by myself, 

I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. 

 If I imagine You, I am mistaken.  

If I understand You, I am deluded.  

If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.

The darkness is enough.

 

 

prayer written by Merton in 1941 

before midnight mass at Christmas 

 

 

 

exteriorly “all right”

 

 

 

 

 

 
The heart of man  can be full of so much pain, 

even when things are exteriorly “all right”.

 

 It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking

 that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation 

of most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all.

 

 No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilizers

 that even religious explanations sometimes offer.

 Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown

 and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. 

 

No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. 

But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, 

things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer:

 but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait,

 and do what you can and help other people. 

 

Often it is in helping someone else 

we find the best way to bear our own trouble.

-- Thomas Merton
from his Christmas letter, 1966

art by Picasso

 

 

 

a community

.

 

 

 

It's possible that the next Buddha 

will not take the form of an individual. 

 

The next Buddha may take the form of a community,

a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, 

a community practicing mindful living. 

 

This may be the most important thing we can do

 for the survival of the earth.

 

 

 

 

Thich Nhat Hahn

 

 

 

 

proverb

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

between what belongs to you and others.

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

~ Hermann Hesse 

 translated by Ludwig Max Fisher, PhD

photo by Eliot Porter

 

let this weather of feeling pass

 

 

 

 

In your clay body, things are coming to expression 

and to light that were never known before, 

presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.

 

  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being," 

  we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay." 

 

 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.

  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography

 but to the clay our of which you are formed.  

 

At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, 

like a dark mist over a landscape.   

This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you. 

 

 It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling. 

 It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion

 belongs more to your clay than to your mind. 

 

 It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;

 it is on its way elsewhere.

 

 Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient,

 sisters and brothers of the one clay. 

 In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous. 

 To truly be and become yourself,  

you need the ancient radiance of others.

 

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue

 

 

 

 

.

creating an identity or a child went forth

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received

 with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became.

 

And that object became part of him 

for the day or a certain part of the day....

or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

 

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning glories, 

and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird.

 

And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter,

 and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, 

and the noisy brood of the barnyard 

or by the mire of the pond side.. 

and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there.. 

and the beautiful curious liquid.. 

and the water-plants with their grateful flat heads..

 all became part of him.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him....

winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, 

and of the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple trees covered with blossoms, 

and the fruit afterward.... and wood berries..

 and the commonest weeds by the road;

 

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse

 of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school.. 

and the friendly boys that passed.. and the quarrelsome boys.. 

and the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls.. and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents..he that had propelled the fatherstuff at night, 

and fathered him.. and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him....

 they gave this child more of themselves than that,

 

They gave him afterward every day....

 they and of them became part of him.

~ Walt Whitman

excerpt from There was a Child Went Forth

art by Klimt

the parable of the sower

 

 

 

 

 

A sower went forth to sow.

Some of his seeds fell upon stony places.

Centuries passed; millennia.

And the seeds remained.

And the stones crumbled and became good soil,

and the seeds brought forth fruit.

 

"Wait a minute," said one listener.

"You can't play fast and loose that way with the natural facts.

The seeds would die long before the soil could receive them."

 

"Why would they die?"

 

"Because they can't hold out in stony places,

for thousands of years."

 

"But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we're 

talking about?"

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Mitchell

from Parables and Portraits

 

 

 

  

uncertainties about identity

 

The past is all of one texture—whether feigned or suffered

— whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed

 in that small theatre of the brain which we keep

 brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down,

 and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed 

in the remainder of the body. 

 There is no distinction on the face of our experiences;

 one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, 

and another agonising to remember;

 but which of them is what we call true, 

and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. 

 

 The past stands on a precarious footing; 

another straw split in the field of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it.

...

the past, ... is lost for ever: our old days and deeds, our old selves, too,
and the very world in which these scenes were acted, all brought down to the
 same faint residuum as a last night's dream, to some incontinuous images,
and an echo in the chambers of the brain.  Not an hour, not a mood, 
not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring.  And 
yet conceive us robbed of it, conceive that little thread of memory that
we trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge; and in what naked nullity
should we be left! For we only guide ourselves, and only know ourselves,
by these air painted pictures of the past.

~  Robert Louis Stevenson

 from A Chapter on Dreams,
The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson 
art by Arthur Boyd

we came to lose our leaves

As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow 

and to distinguish it from depression. 

It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, 

and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.

One day while studying a [William Butler] Yeats poem 

I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. 

I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, 

music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, 

and events of one's own life.

There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty 

then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.

We can exchange sparks of light with another's eyes 

when we meet our lover on the dance floor at someone else's wedding. 

Our brains then go about warmed and fiery, and with one note 

they can explode into cello concertos and can imagine the giant blinking 

at the top of the bean stalk... His barbarous fingers scratching his head.

There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. 

Driving around, I will waste more time.

~ Robert Bly

leap in the dark

.

There is always some accident in the best things,

whether thoughts or expressions or deeds.  

The memorable thought, the happy expression, 

the admirable deed are only partly ours. 

 

The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood;

 also we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or done a good thing.

 

 We must walk consciously only partway toward our goal,

 and then leap in the dark to our success.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, March 11, 1858

photo by Robert Goulet

just below our fear

There are words in us

that don't know how

to get to the surface.

Words hidden in our marrow

afraid to show themselves

concerned the world will end

if they are uttered.

Words that cross 

the river of pain

that wish to tell the world

how much love is hidden

just below our fear.

And some of these words

sometimes find their way

to live among us

in the trust to hear them,

words that spin our compass

anger and loneliness redirected

by insight and forgiveness,

words like mercy and compassion,

words we never trusted to exist.

Words hide in the strangest places,

under stones, in clouds,

in a moment of a friend's kindness,

in a moment to your generosity;

in poems beginning their first line

climbing happily into the heart singing

how close the moon comes 

when we trust the night.

Words even hide in other words.

 Mercy hides in the hesitant pause,

questioning how much can be trusted

to the tongue, to the pen.

Invoking their true voice

rise to the surface

to sing their original song.

 ~ Stephen Levine

from Becoming Kuan Yin