wild elegance

Beauty invites us towards profound elegance of soul.
 It reminds us that we are heirs to elegance and nobility of spirit 
and encourages us to awaken the divinity within us.  
We are no longer trapped in mental frames of self-reduction or self-denunciation.

Instead, we feel the desire to celebrate, to give ourselves over 
to the dance of joy and delight.   The overwhelming beauty 
which is God pervades the texture of our soul, transforming all smallness, 
limitation and self-division.  The mystics speak of the excitement of such unity. 
 This is how Marguerite Porete describes it: 

 'Such a Soul, says Love swims in the sea of joy, that is in the sea of delights,
 flowing and running out of the Divinity.  And so she feels no joy,
 for she is joy itself.  She swims and flows in Joy...
 for she dwells in Joy and Joy dwells in her.'   

When we acknowledge the wild beauty of God, we begin to glimpse
 the potential holiness of our neglected wildness.  As humans,
 citizens and believers, we have become domesticated beyond belief.  
We have fallen out of rhythm with our natural wildness.  
What we now call 'being wild' is often misshapen, destructive and violent.
  The natural wildness as the fluency of the soul at one with beauty is foreign to us.  

The call of the wild is a call to the elemental levels of the soul,
 the places of intuition, kinship, swiftness, fluency and the consolation 
of the lonesome that is not lonely.  Our fear of our own wildness 
derives in part from our fear of the formless; but the wild is not the formless
 - it holds immense refinement and, indeed, clarity. 
 The wild has a profound simplicity that carries none of the false burdens 
of brokenness or self-conflict; it flows naturally as one,
 elegant and seamless.  

~ John O'Donohue

from The Invisible Embrace, Beauty

our eyes are turned backward

With all its eyes the natural world looks out

into the Open.  Only our eyes are turned

backward, and surround plant, animal, child

like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.

We know what is really out there only from 

the animal's gaze;  for we take the very young

child and force it around, so that it sees

objects - not the Open, which is so

deep in animals' faces.  Free from death.

We, only, can see death; the free animal

has its decline in back of it, forever,

and God in front, and when it moves, it moves

already in eternity, like a fountain.

Never, not for a single day, do we have

before us that pure space into which flowers

endlessly open.  Always there is World

and never Nowhere without the No: that pure

unseparated element which one breathes

without desire and endlessly knows.  A child

may wander there for hours, through the timeless

stillness, may get lost in it and be 

shaken back.  Or someone dies and is it.

For, nearing death, one doesn't see death; but stares

beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.

Lovers, if the beloved were not there

blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel...

As if by some mistake, it opens for them

behind each other... But neither can move past

the other, and it changes back to World.

Forever turned toward objects, we see in them

the mere reflection of the realm of freedom,

which we have dimmed.  Or when some animal

mutely, serenely, looks us through and through.

That is what fate means: to be opposite,

to be opposite and nothing else, forever.

If the animal moving toward us so securely
in a different direction had our kind of 
consciousness -, it would wrench us around and drag us
along its path.  But it feels its life as boundless,
unfathomable, and without regard
to its own condition: pure, like its outward gaze.
And where we see the future, it sees all time
and itself within all time, forever healed.

Yet in the alert, warm animal there lies
the pain and burden of an enormous sadness.
For it too feels the presence of what often 
overwhelms us: a memory, as if 
the element we keep pressing toward was once
more intimate, more true, and our communion
infinitely tender.  Here all is distance;
there it was breath.  After that first home,
the second seems ambiguous and drafty.

Oh bliss of the tiny creature which remains
forever inside the womb that was its shelter;
joy of the gnat which, still within, leaps up
even at its marriage: for everything is womb.
And look at the half-assurance of the bird,
which knows both inner and outer, from its source,
as if it were the soul of an Etruscan,
flown out of a dead man received inside a space,
but with his reclining image as the lid.
And how bewildered is any womb-born creature
that has to fly.  As if terrified and fleeing
from itself, it zigzags through the air, the way 
a crack runs through a teacup.  So the bat
quivers across the porcelain of evening.

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,
turned toward the world of objects, never outward.
It fills us.  We arrange it.  It breaks down.
We rearrange it, then break down ourselves.
Who has twisted us around like this , so that 
no matter what we do, we are in the posture
of someone going away?  Just as, upon
the farthest hill, which shows him his whole valley
one last time, he turns, stops, lingers -,
so we live here, forever taking leave.




~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Eighth Elegy 
from Duino Elegies
photo by shreve stockton

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