witness

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their wealth naked and their pride unabashed?

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and and instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life -- while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

unawakened gifts

Those who are willing to stand out and take the risk of following their gifts place a mirror to our unawakened gifts. To know they are there, day in day out, at the frontiers of their own limitations and vision, probing further into new possibility, enduring at lonely thresholds in the hope of discovery, to know they are willing to risk everything is both disturbing and comforting.

In a small town near us there was a lovely writer and musician who lived a rather bohemian life; he was given sometimes to the drink but he had a beautiful, awakened mind.  He was a kind of 'undercover mystic' and many people, especially young people, came to talk to him when they felt their minds troubling them... I once asked him how he had managed to live alone on that edge.  He said: 'I was a very young man when I first felt the burn of that old mystical flame within me. I realized immediately what an adventure and danger it would be and that there was no going back. On that day I made a bargain with myself, the bargain was; no matter what came I would always remain best friends with myself.  I am old now but I never broke that bargain.'

~ John O'Donohue

from The Invisible Embrace, Beauty

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness?

~ George Herbert

 

doubts and loves

From the place where we are right 

Flowers will never grow 

In the spring. 

The place where we are right 

Is hard and trampled 

Like a yard. 

But doubts and loves 

Dig up the world 

Like a mole, a plow. 

And a whisper will be heard in the place 

Where the ruined 

House once stood. 

~ Yehudi Amichai

(from: The Selected Poetry of Yehudi Amichai, 

translation by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)

photo by Eliot Porter.

wherever we taste

.

A wife loves her husband not for his own sake, 
dear, but because the Self lives in him.

The husband loves his wife not for her own sake, 
dear, but because the Self lives in her.

Children are loved not for their own sake, 
but because the Self lives in them.

Everything is loved not for its own sake, 
but because the Self lives in it.

This Self has to be realized.

Hear about this Self.

As a lump of salt thrown in water dissolves 

and cannot be taken out again,

 though wherever we taste, the water it is salty,

 even so, beloved,

 the separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness,

 infinite and immortal. 

 Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body,

 which is made up of the elements;

 when this physical identification dissolves,

 there can be no more separate self.

~ from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

.

music and survival

~ Alice Herz-Sommer

At age 110, Alice Herz-Sommer the world’s oldest pianist and oldest holocaust survivor, retains an unshakeable faith in the beauty of life and humanity, not unlike an awestruck child. She maintains that even the bad is beautiful, for it is part of life. To this day, Alice lives alone in her North London home, and practices the piano each day for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. People from everywhere come to listen outside of her building. She is the ‘lady in number six’. To claim that music is and has always been her salvation would be an understatement, in Alice’s own words:

“I felt that this is the only thing which helps me to have hope… a sort of religion, actually.

Music is God."

"I knew that even in this very difficult situation, there are beautiful moments... even the bad is beautiful."

 [ also known as Alice Sommer (26 November 1903 – 23 February 2014), was a Prague-born Jewish pianist, music teacher, and supercentenarian who survived Theresienstadt concentration camp. She lived for 40 years in Israel, before migrating to London in 1986, where she resided until her death, and at the age of 110 was the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor until Yisrael Kristal was recognized as such. Kristal was also a Holocaust survivor, and was born two months before Herz-Sommer ]

~ from Wikipedia