gratefulness

 

 

 

 
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast

 

 

 

simple living frees us from within

 

 

 

 

Simple living is not about elegant frugality.

 It is not really about deprivation of whatever is useful and helpful for our life.

 It is not about harsh rules and stringent regulations. To live simply, 

one has to consider all of these and they may be included to some degree,

 but simple living is about freedom. It’s about a freedom to choose space

 rather than clutter, to choose open and generous living 

rather than a secure and sheltered way.

Freedom is about choices: Freedom to choose less rather than more.

 It’s about choosing time for people and ideas and self-growth

 rather than for maintenance and guarding and possessing and cleaning.

 Simple living is about moving through life rather lightly,

 delighting in the plain and the subtle. It is about poetry and dance,

 song and art, music and grace. It is about optimism and humor, 

gratitude and appreciation. It is about embracing life with wide-open arms.

 It’s about living and giving with no strings attached. . . .

Simple living is as close as the land on which we stand.

 It is as far-reaching as the universe that makes us gasp.

 

 Simple living is a relaxed grasp on money, things, and even friends.

 Simplicity cherishes ideas and relationships. 

They are treasured more because simplicity doesn’t cling

 nor try to possess things or people or relationships. 

 

Simplicity frees us within, but it frees others, too. . . . 

Simple living is a statement of presence. 

The real me. This simplicity makes us welcome among the wealthy and the poor alike. . . .

We will not be happy living selfishly in a small world. 

We must live in awareness and in association with the whole real world. 

Our universe. Our cosmos. Our environment. Our earth. Our air.

 Our water supply. Our country. Our neighbor. Our car. Our homes. 

All are part of simple living.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Sister Jose Hobday

from Simple Living: The Path to Joy and Freedom

 

 

Sister Jose Hobday was A Seneca elder, a prominent Roman Catholic leader,

 and a Franciscan sister who adheres fully to St. Francis’s radical ideal of holy poverty. . . .

 She is also a mystic and contemplative; she is an earth warrior and elder guide

 on the wisdom path; and above all, she is an impassioned servant of the poor, 

especially poor Native Americans.

 

Sister José lived in the maximum simplicity of voluntary poverty

 in a tiny house in Gallup, New Mexico, surrounded on all sides

 by Indian reservations and pueblos.

 

As people once flocked to Julian of Norwich’s cell or to Dorothy Day’s Hospitality House, 

so people came to Sister José’s warm hearth for spiritual guidance

 and material help, and no one leaving without assistance.

 

~ notes by Mary Ford-Grabowsky

 

 

 

a brave and startling truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet 

Traveling through casual space 

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns 

To a destination where all signs tell us 

It is possible and imperative that we learn 

A brave and startling truth 

And when we come to it 

To the day of peacemaking 

When we release our fingers 

From fists of hostility 

And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet 

Whose hands can strike with such abandon 

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living 

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness 

That the haughty neck is happy to bow 

And the proud back is glad to bend 

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction 

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

When we come to it 

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body 

Created on this earth, of this earth 

Have the power to fashion for this earth 

A climate where every man and every woman 

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety 

Without crippling fear 

When we come to it 

We must confess that we are the possible 

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world 

That is when, and only when 

We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou

from Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry

shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

 from Red Suitcase

come forth

 

 

 

 

I dreamed of my father when he was old.

We went to see some horses  in a field;

they were sorrels, as red almost as blood,

the light gold on their shoulders and haunches.

Though they came to us, all a-tremble

with curiosity and snorty with caution,

they had never known bridle or harness.

My father walked among them, admiring,

for he was a knower of horses, and these were fine.

 

He leaned on a cane and dragged his feet

along the ground in hurried little steps

so that I called to him to take care, take care,

as the horses stamped and frolicked around him.

But while I warned, he seized the mane

of the nearest one. "It'll be all right,"

he said, and then from his broken stance

he leapt astride, and sat lithe and straight

and strong in the sun's unshadowed excellence.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

beasts bounding through time

 

 

 

 

 
Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory

moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly

 

 

 

 

 ~  Charles Bukowski, 

from You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

 with thanks to whiskey river

 

 

beautiful

 

 

 

 

 ~ Keb' Mo'

 

 

 

my home

 

 

 

Keb' Mo' 

 

 

 

lost

Stand still.

The trees ahead and the bushes beside you 

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

 

I have made this place around you,

If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

~ David Wagoner

from Collected Poems 1956-1976

photo by Eliot Porter

with thanks to mystic meandering

common ground and 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

 with thanks to being silently drawn

 

supple cord

My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Naimi Shihab Nye
from A MAZE ME

where hate won't grow

 

 

I'm not interested in

Who suffered the most.

I'm interested in

People getting over it.

 

Once when my father was a boy

A stone hit him on the head.

Hair would never grow there.

Our fingers found the tender spot

and its riddle: the boy who has fallen

stands up. A bucket of pears

in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.

The pears are not crying.

Later his friend who threw the stone

says he was aiming at a bird.

And my father starts growing wings.

 

Each carries a tender spot:

something our lives forgot to give us.

A man builds a house and says,

"I am native now."

A woman speaks to a tree in place

of her son. And olives come.

A child's poem says,

"I don't like wars,

they end up with monuments."

He's painting a bird with wings

wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

 

Why are we so monumentally slow?

Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:

big guns, little pills.

If you tilt your head just slightly

it's ridiculous.

 

There's a place in my brain

Where hate won't grow.

I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.

Something pokes us as we sleep.

 

It's late but everything comes next.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

(19 Varieties of Gazelle)

photo by  imso gabriel

 

 

walk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look.

 They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people

 doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part

 in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another)

and defending what is good. 

 

Heroes do not want power over others. 

 

Devoted though we must be to the conservation cause,

 I do not believe that any of us should give it all of our time or effort or heart.

 Give what you can, but do not burn yourselves out -- or break your hearts.

 Let us save at least half of our lives for the enjoyment of this wonderful world

 which still exists. Leave your dens, abandon your cars and walk

 out into the great mountains, the deserts, the forests, the seashores. 

Those treasures still belong to all of us. 

Enjoy them to the full, stretch your legs, 

expand your lungs, enliven your hearts -

 

 Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet!

 

 

 

 
 ~ Edward Abbey
Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos

 from an American Iconoclast

photo: fruiting body of a slime mold 

open your hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.






~ Rumi
Translation: Coleman Barks 

 

 

 

the way it is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford
from The Way it Is, 1998



William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem was written 26 days before he passed.
One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote, “In our time there has been no poet who revived human hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford. There has been no one who gave more courage to a journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life.”