every cell

.Every creature has a religion. Every

foot is a shrine where

a secret candle

burns.

.

Every cell in us worships

God.

.

Every arrow in the bow of desire

has rushed out in hope

of nearing

Him.

.

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

.

the inner landscape of beauty

 

~ John O'Donohue

ten thousand flowers

 

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu Men Hui-k’ai

from The Enlightened Heart:

 An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

 by Stephen Mitchell

the first peace

 

The first peace, which is the most important, 

is that which comes within the souls of people 

when they realize their relationship, their oneness

 with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize 

at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, 

and that its center is really everywhere, 

it is within each of us.

This grand show is eternal.

 It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; 

a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, 

eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents

 and islands, each in its turn, 

as the round earth rolls.

~ John Muir

self or non-self

 

 

 

 

 

  The biological identity of most organisms can’t be pried apart from the life

 of their microbial symbiotes. The word 'ecology’ has its roots in the Greek word oikos, meaning 'house’,

 'household’, or 'dwelling place’. Our bodies, like those of all other organisms, are dwelling places.

Life is nested biomes all the way down.

We can’t be defined on anatomical grounds because our bodies are shared with microbes,

 and consist of more microbial cells than our own - cows can’t eat grass,

 for example, but their microbial populations can, and cows’ bodies have evolved

 to house the microbes that sustain them.

Neither can we be defined developmentally, as the organism that proceeds from the fertilization

 of an animal egg, because we depend, like all mammals, on our symbiotic partners

 to direct parts of our development programs.

Nor is it possible to define us genetically, as bodies made up of cells that share an identical genome

 —many symbiotic microbial partners are inherited from our mothers alongside our own DNA,

 and at points in our evolution art history, microbial associates have permanently

 insinuated themselves into the cells of their hosts: our mitochondria have their own genome,

 as do plants’ chloroplasts, and at least 8 per cent of the human genome originated in viruses

 (we can even swap cells with other humans when we grow into 'chimeras’,

 formed when mothers and fetuses exchange cells or genetic material in utero).

Nor can our immune systems be taken as a measure of individuality, 

although our immune cells are often thought of as answering this question for us

 by distinguishing self from 'non-self’.

Immune systems are as concerned with managing our relationships with our resident microbes

 as fighting off external attackers, and appear to have evolved to enable colonization

 by microbes rather than prevent it. 

 

~ Merlin Sheldrake
from Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, 

Change Our Minds, And Shape Our Futures

 with thanks to love is a place

 

 

 

 

when in doubt

 

When in doubt,

Wear faux leopard.

When in doubt,

Err on the side of generosity.

When in doubt,

Greet everyone as you would the Buddha.

When in doubt,

Collect blessings from those who own nothing.

When in doubt,

Absorb biographies to avoid life’s major mistakes.

When in doubt,

Make life’s major mistakes.

When in doubt,

Pay attention to the vendor shouting ‘Diooooos,’

Even when you find out he was only shouting, ‘Gaaaaas.’

When in doubt,

Carry a handkerchief and a fan.

When in doubt,

Thank everyone. Twice.

When in doubt,

Heed the clouds.

When in doubt,

Sleep on it.

When in doubt,

Treat all sentient and insentient beings as kin.

When in doubt,

Forgive us our myopia

As we forgive those who are myopic against us.

When in doubt,

Unreel your grief to a tree.

When in doubt,

Remember this.

We are all on a

Caucus-race.

There is no start.

No finish.

Everyone wins.

~ Sandra Cisneros

from  Woman Without Shame

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