the inner landscape of beauty

~ John O'Donohue

two drinking songs

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1.

I built my hut near where people live

and yet I hear no traffic noise or sound of wheels.

Could you tell me what is happening?

An aloneness gathers around the soul that is alone.

I pick chrysanthemums underneath the east hedge,

the mountains to the south are clear.

The mountain air at sunset is so wonderful,

and the birds coming home, one after the other.

In all these details there are secret truths;

but when I try to shift to language, it all slops away.

2.

Such a strong color on the late chrysanthemums!

The stalk sways stoutly, flower wet with dew, open.

Wandering drunk in this beauty, who cares about my sorrows.

I have left excitement behind, and what is not done.

Alone, I take a drink.

The bottle tilts by itself when the cup is empty.

When the sun goes down, all bustle stops,

and the birds on their return call from the leaves.

I walk around my study shouting and proud

because I can take up this life again.

~ Tao Yuan-Ming

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being lonely

So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy.  But loneliness always remains; it is ever there, under cover.  But as it frightens me, and as I do not know what the inward nature of this loneliness is, therefore I want to find something to which to cling.  So I think that through something, through a person, I will be happy.  So our mind is always concerned with finding something.  Through furniture, through a house, through books, through people, through ideas, through rituals, though symbols, we hope to get something, to find happiness.  And so the things, the people, the ideas, become extraordinarily important, because through them we hope we shall find it.  So we begin to be dependent on them.

But with it all there is still this thing not understood, not resolved; the anxiety, the fear, is still there....Is it not very important that I should understand this loneliness, this ache, this pain of extraordinary emptiness?  Because if I understand that, perhaps I shall not use anything to find happiness, I shall not use God as a means to acquire peace, or a ritual in order to have more sensations, exaltations, inspirations. 

If I knew the content of loneliness, then I would not be afraid of it. But because I have an idea of what it might be, I run away from it.  The very running away creates the fear, not the looking at it. To look at it, to be with it, facing it, then I am capable of loving it, of looking into it.  Because all other processes away from that loneliness are deviation, escapes, distractions.  If the mind can live with it, then perhaps through that the mind will find that state which is alone, a mind that is not lonely but completely alone, not dependent, not seeking to find through something.

It is necessary to be alone, to know that aloneness which is not induced by circumstances, that aloneness which is not isolation, that aloneness which is creativeness, when the mind is no longer seeking either happiness, virtue, or creating resistance, It is the mind which is alone that can find - not the mind which has been contaminated, made corrupt, by its own experiences.  So perhaps loneliness, of which we are all aware, if we know how to look at it, may open the door to reality.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in London, 7 April 1953
art by Picasso

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the beauty we love

~ Gary Schmidt, Piano

 https://youtu.be/bUhZrg7GQ2Q

the crucible of crisis

As unlikely as it may seem, the contemplative moment can be found at the very center of such ontological crises . . . during the Middle Passage in the holds of slave ships . . . auction blocks . . . and the . . . hush arbors [where slaves worshiped in secret]. Each event is experienced by individuals stunned into multiple realities by shock, journey, and displacement. . . . In the words of Howard Thurman, “when all hope for release in the world seems unrealistic and groundless, the heart turns to a way of escape beyond the present order.”  For captured Africans, there was no safety except in common cause and the development of internal and spiritual fortitude. . . .

The only sound that would carry Africans over the bitter waters was the moan. Moans flowed through each wracked body and drew each soul toward the center of contemplation. . . . One imagines the Spirit moaning as it hovered over the deep during the Genesis account of creation [Genesis 1:2]. Here, the moan stitches horror and survival instincts into a creation narrative. . . . On the slave ships, the moan became the language of stolen strangers, the sound of unspeakable fears, the precursor to joy yet unknown. The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis.

~ Barbara A. Holmes 

from Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church

 

compassion and kinship

Fr. Gregory Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, is an acknowledged expert on gangs, intervention and re-entry and today serves on the U.S. Attorney General's Defending Childhood Task Force. 
 

Born in Los Angeles, one of eight children, Fr. Greg worked in the family-owned dairy, loading milk trucks to earn his high school tuition. An enduring memory of that youthful time is when "...these weathered old truckers would come up to me, put their arms around me and point at my father in the distance, on the loading dock, and say, 'Your dad is a great man.'" Lessons from that first job apply at Homeboy Industries today where employees come to change for themselves and their children. Homeboy Industries traces its roots to "Jobs For A Future" (JFF), created in 1988 by Boyle at Dolores Mission. To address the escalating problems of gang-involved youth, he and the community developed an elementary school, day care program and sought legitimate employment for young people. Boyle serves on the National Gang Center Advisory Board (Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). He is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Loyola Law School Center for Juvenile Law and Policy and previously served on the California Commission on Juvenile Justice, Crime and Delinquency Prevention. The National Child Labor Committee recognized Fr. Greg with the first Nancy M. Daly Advocacy Award for Service to Children and Youth on January 30, 2012. Homeboy Industries, now located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, is recognized as a national and international model for youth seeking to move beyond gangs and achieve a life of hope. 

homeboy-industries.org