optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.

Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam

returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous

tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,

it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.

But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,

mitochondria, figs—all this resinous, unretractable earth.

 

 

~ Jane Hirshfield 

 

 

 

languages we have yet to learn

Mycorrhizal fungi form partnerships with plant roots. 

These partnerships connect neighboring plants 

through extensive networks in the soil. 

Much like social networks or neural networks,

 the fungal mycelia of mycorrhizas allow signals 

to be sent between trees in a forest. 

These networks are effectively an information highway,

 with recent studies demonstrating the exchange of nutritional resources,

 defence signals and allelochemicals.

New research by computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky

 at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory of the University

 of the West of England, suggests this ancient kingdom

 has an electrical “language” all of its own – far more complicated 

than anyone previously thought. According to the study,

 fungi might even use “words” to form “sentences”

 to communicate with neighbours.

Despite lacking a nervous system, fungi seem to transmit

 information using electrical impulses across

 thread-like filaments called hyphae. 

The filaments form a thin web called a mycelium 

that links fungal colonies within the soil. These networks

 are remarkably similar to animal nervous systems.

 By measuring the frequency and intensity of the impulses, 

it may be possible to unpick and understand the languages

 used to communicate within and between organisms

 across the kingdoms of life.

~ Amanda Carroll

inhabit the situation you happen to be in now

.

Caretake this moment.

Immerse yourself in its particulars.

Respond to this person, 

this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.

Stop giving yourself needless trouble.

It is time to really live; to fully inhabit 

the situation you happen to be in now.

You are not some disinterested bystander.

Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.

Ask yourself often, How may I

 perform this particular deed

such that it would be consistent with

 and acceptable to the divine will?

Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut 

and your room is dark you are not alone.

The will of nature is within you 

as your natural genius is within.

Listen to its importunings.

Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, 

the material is your own life.

No great thing is created suddenly.

There must be time.

Give your best and

 always be kind.

~ Epictetus 

a special kind of grace

 

The specific forms that love take in our lives arise and pass in time, 

for this is the way of form. Time is the great dissolver. 

But love itself is that which never comes and goes.

We never know what form love will choose to take in the future, 

for there is no love in the future. Love is only now.

 But it can take a cleansing of perception to see through the veil,

 behind the scenes where love is always at work…

 giving birth to one of its forms, one of its children,

 while recycling and dissolving another.

If we become too fused with a specific form we believe 

we need love to take—a particular person or way 

of finding purpose and meaning—our heart will inevitably

 break when love obliterates that form for something new, 

which it always will. This shattering is the great gift of form,

evidence not of error and mistake,

 but of wholeness and profound compassion.

This dissolution and reorganization is a special kind of grace

 that the conventional mind struggles to know.

 But the heart knows. The body knows.

~ Matt Licata

from A Healing Space

art by Michael Nelson Tjakamarra

known through love but not through thought

Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart.

Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes

Lives in the Self.  He is the source of love

And may be known through love but not through thought.

He is the goal of life.  Attain this goal!

...

In his robe are woven heaven and earth,

Mind and body.  Realize him as the One

Behind the many and stop all vain talk.

He is the bridge from death to deathless life.

Where all the nerves meet like spokes in a wheel,

There he dwells, the One behind the many.

Meditate upon him in the mantram.

May he guide us from death to deathless life!

...

The Lord of Love is before and behind.

He extends to the right and to the left.

He extends above; he extends below.

There is no one here but the Lord of Love.

He alone is; in truth, he alone is.

~ excerpt from The Mundaka Upanishad

translated by Eknath Easwaran

art by Jeff Metal

the simple joy

 

The time of judging

Who is drunk or sober,

Who is right and who is wrong

Who is closer to god, and who is farther away

All that is over

This caravan is led instead by a great delight,

The simple joy that sits with us now

That is the grace

~ Hafiz

how unique are humans really?

 

Photo from Air and Science Magazine

Primatologist Frans de Waal has spent his lifetime 

studying the lives of animals, especially our closest cousins, 

the chimpanzees. de Waal has observed their shifting alliances

 and the structure of their political ranks. He has seen bitter conflicts

 break out, only to be mended by peaceful, respected mediators.

 And he has witnessed chimpanzees grieve for, 

and attempt to comfort, their dead and dying.

But one of the most touching reflections in his new book, 

Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, 

is the story he tells of a female chimp who didn’t produce enough milk

 to feed her young. When de Waal taught her to feed her baby with a bottle

 instead, she repaid him with what most of us would recognize as gratitude

: holding both of de Waal’s hands and whimpering sadly if he tried to leave.

The book explores many stories of animal emotions from across

 the animal kingdom, and it might leave you wondering 

how unique humans really are.

Mama, the matriarch and oldest of the chimpanzee colony

 of the Royal Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, 

expressed affection towards behavioral biologist Jan van Hooff

 as she gave him her last hug before she died in 2016.

 Credit: Jan A R A M van Hooff

~ Frans de Waal

from Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions 

and What They Tell Us About Ourselves

with thanks to Science Friday

there is a grace approaching

There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.

 

 

 

~ Stephen Levine 

from Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace

 

 

 

the naked awareness of your self

.

... imagination and reason have taught you all they can 

and now you must learn to be wholly given 

to the simple spiritual awareness of your self and God....

he told his disciples, who were loath to give up his physical presence

 (just as you are loath to give up the speculative reflections of your subtle, clever faculties),

 that for their own good he would withdraw his physical presence from them, 

 He said to them, "It is necessary for you that I go,"

 meaning, "It is necessary  for you 

that I depart physically from you."  

St. Augustine, commenting on these words, says:

 "Were not the form of  his humanity withdrawn from our bodily eyes,

 love for him in his Godhead would never cleave to our spiritual eyes."  

And thus I say to you, at a certain point it is necessary

 to give up discursive meditation and learn to taste something of that deep,

 spiritual experience of God's love.

...  always and ever strive toward the naked awareness of your self, 

and continually offer your being to God as your most precious gift. 

 

 Inasmuch as this awareness really is naked, 

you will at first find it terribly painful to rest in it for any length of time

 because, ... your faculties will find no meat for themselves in it. 

 

 Let them fast awhile from their natural delight in knowing, 

It is well said that man naturally desires to know.  Yet at the same time,

 it is also true that no amount of natural or acquired knowledge 

will bring him to taste the spiritual experience of God,

 for this is a pure gift of grace. 

 

 And so I urge you: go after experience rather than knowledge. 

 On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you,

 but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. 

 

 Knowledge tends to breed conceit,

 but love builds.  

 

Knowledge is full of labor,

but love, full of rest.

~ from The Book of Privy Counseling

written anonymously in the fourteenth century 

art: from Arnhem Land

red brocade

The Arabs used to say,

When a stranger appears at your door,

feed him for three days

before asking who he is,

where he's come from,

where he's headed.

That way, he'll have strength

enough to answer.

Or, by then you'll be

such good friends

you don't care.

Let's go back to that.

Rice?  Pine nuts?

Here, take the red brocade pillow.

My child will serve water

to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!

I was not preparing to be busy.

That's the armor everyone put on

to pretend they had a purpose

in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.

Your plate is waiting.

We will snip fresh mint

into your tea.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from 19 Varieties of Gazelle

lute music

 

The Earth will be going on a long time

Before it finally freezes;

Men will be on it; they will take names,

Give their deeds reasons.

We will be here only

As chemical constituents—

A small franchise indeed.

Right now we have lives,

Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,

Like everybody had once—

Here at the year’s end, at the feast

Of birth, let us bring to each other

The gifts brought once west through deserts—

The precious metal of our mingled hair,

The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,

The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—

Let us celebrate the daily

Recurrent nativity of love,

The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,

While the earth rolls away under us

Into unknown snows and summers,

Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

~ Kenneth Rexroth

from Sacramental Acts

NASA photo

it's whisper can be heard

 

Grace is always present. You imagine it is somewhere high in the sky,

far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart.

Grace is the Self. . . .You are never out of its operation.

-~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

​

 Grace is a manifestation of the cosmic free will in operation. 

It can alter the course of events in a mysterious manner

 through its own unknown laws, which are superior to

 all natural laws, and can modify the latter by interaction.

It is the most powerful force in the universe.

It descends and acts only when it is invoked 

by total self- surrender. 

It acts from within, because God resides in the Heart

 of all beings. Its whisper can be heard only in a mind

 purified by self-surrender and prayer.

Rationalists laugh at it, and atheists scorn it, but it exists.

 It is a descent of God into the soul’s zone of awareness. 

It is a visitation of force unexpected and unpredictable.

 It is a voice spoken out of cosmic silence - 

It is ‘Cosmic Will which can perform 

authentic miracles under its own laws’.

~ D.C. Desai

 from Divine Grace Through Total Self-Surrender

art:  from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

with thanks to love is a place

till you yourself are a sail

The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally

that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash,

cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort

that might lead to madness. 

Instead you must allow the muddy river

to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness;

you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging

its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into

the realm of the real where subjects and objects act

and rest purely, without utterance.

 

.

The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail,

whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

~ Annie Dillard

excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

art by Olivia Maria Chevallier

 

 

 

 

prayer happens

 

Prayer is something that happens to you (Romans 8:26-27), 

much more than anything you privately do.

 It is an allowing of the Big Self 

more than an assertion of the small self.

 Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say,

 “Prayer happened, and I was there”

 more than “I prayed today.” 

All you know is that you are being led, 

being guided, being loved, being used,

 being prayed through—

and you are no longer in the driver’s seat.

God stops being an object of attention

 like any other object in the world,

 and becomes at some level your own “I am.” 

You start knowing through,

 with, and in Somebody Else.

Your little “I Am” becomes “We Are.”

Please trust me on this. 

It might be the most important thing I could tell you.

~ Richard Rohr

from The Naked Now

art by Debra Nangala McDonald

with thanks to love is a place

great and small

When we look at things in the light of Tao,

Nothing is best, nothing is worst.

Each thing, seen in its own light,

Stands out in its own way.

It can seem to be "better"

Than what is compared with it

On its own terms.

But seen in terms of the whole,

No one thing stands out as "better."

If you measure differences,

What is greater than something else is "great,"

Therefore there is nothing that is not "great";

What is smaller than something else is "small,"

Therefore there is nothing that is not "small,"

So the whole cosmos is a grain of rice,

And the tip of a hair

Is as big as a mountain -

Such is the relative view.

You can break down walls with battering rams,

But you cannot stop holes with them.

All things have different uses.

Fine horses can travel a hundred miles a day,

But they cannot catch mice

Like terriers or weasels:

All creatures have gifts of their own.

The white horned owl can catch fleas at midnight

And distinguish the tip of a hair,

But in bright day it stares, helpless,

And cannot even see a mountain.

All things have varying capacities.

Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong,

Order without disorder,

Does not understand the principles

Of heaven and earth.

He does not know how

Things hang together.

Can a man cling only to heaven

And know nothing of earth?

They are correlative: to know one

Is to know the other.

To refuse one

Is to refuse both.

Can a man cling to the positive

Without any negative

In contrast to which it is seen

To be positive?

If he claims to do so 

He is a rogue or a madman.

Thrones pass

From dynasty to dynasty,

Now in this way, now in that.

He who forces his way to power

Against the grain

I called tyrant and usurper.

He who moves with the stream of events

Is called a wise statesman.

Kui, the one-legged dragon,

Is jealous of the centipede.

The centipede is jealous of the snake.

The snake is jealous of the wind.

The wind is jealous of the eye.

The eye is jealous of the mind.

Kui said to the centipede:

"I manage my one leg with difficulty:

How can you manage a hundred?"

The centipede replied:

"I do not manage them.

They land all over the place

Like drops of spit."

The centipede said to the snake:

"With all my feet, I cannot move as fast

As you do with no feet at all.

How is this done?"

The snake replied:

"I have a natural glide

That can't be changed.  What do I need

With feet?"

The snake spoke to the wind:

"I ripple my backbone and move along

In a bodily way.  You, without bones,

Without muscles, without method,

Blow from the North Sea to the Southern Ocean.

How do you get there

With nothing?'

The wind replied:

"True, I rise up in the North Sea

And take myself without obstacle to the Southern Ocean.

But every eye that remarks me,

Every wing that uses me,

Is superior to me, even though 

I can uproot the biggest trees, or overturn

Big buildings.

The true conqueror is he

Who is not conquered

By the multitude of the small.

The mind is this conqueror -

But only the mind

 Of a wise man."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton