When I'm with you we stay up all night

When I'm with you
we stay up all night

When you're not here
I can't get to sleep

Thank god for these two insomnias
and the difference between them.

~ Rumi

A Blessing of Angels

May the angels in their beauty bless you.

May they turn toward you streams of blessing. 

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart

To come alive to the eternal within you,

To all the invitations that quietly surround you. 

May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds

Into sources of refreshment. 

May the Angel of the Imagination enable you

To stand on the true thresholds,

At ease with your ambivalence

And drawn in new directions

Through the glow of your contradictions. 

May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes

To the unseen suffering around you. 

May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places

Where your life is domesticated and safe,

Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm. 

May the Angel of Eros introduce you

To the beauty of your senses

To celebrate your inheritance

As a temple of the holy spirit. 

May the Angel of Justice disturb you

To take the side of the poor and the wronged. 

May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you

In worth and self-respect,

That you may live with the dignity

That presides in your soul. 

May the Angel of Death arrive only 

When your life is complete

And you have brought every given gift

To the threshold where its infinity can shine. 

May all the Angels be your sheltering

And joyful guardians.

~ John O'Donohue

The Gardener

...
No, my friends, I shall never be an
ascetic, whatever you may say.
I shall never be an ascetic if she
does not take the vow with me.
It is my firm resolve that if I
cannot find a shady shelter and a
companion for my penance, I shall
never become an ascetic.
...
No, my friends, I shall never leave
my hearth and home, and retire into
the forest's solitude, if rings no merry
laughter in its echoing shade and if
the end of no saffron mantle flutters
in the wind; if its silence is not
deepened by soft whispers.
I shall never be an ascetic.
...
~ Rabindranath Tagore


.

from the Tao Teh Ching

...

There was something
formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
...

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
...
It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.
...
The Tao is great.
The universe is great.
Earth is great
Man is great.
These are the four great powers.
...
Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.
...

~ Lao-tzu

from Don Quixote

...
"It seems to me," said Sancho, "that the knights who did all these things were driven to them... but... why should you go mad? What lady has rejected you?
"That is exactly it," replied Don Quixote, "that's just how beautifully I've worked it all out - because for a knight errant to go mad for good reason, how much is that worth? My idea is to become a lunatic for no reason at all."
...
~ Miguel de Cervantes

.

An Embarrassment

...

"Do you want to ask

the blessing?"

...

"No If you do,

go ahead."

...

He went ahead:

his prayer dressed up

...

in Sunday clothes

rose a few feet

...

and dropped with a soft

thump.

...

If a lonely soul

did ever cry out

...

in company its true

outcry to God,

...

it would be as though

at a sedate party

...

a man suddenly removed his clothes

...

and took his wife

passionately into his arms.

...

~ Wendell Berry

.

No man can be said to be perfectly happy

...

No man can be said to be perfectly happy 

that runs the risk of disappointment;

which is the case of every man 

that fears or hopes for anything.

...

~ Seneca

.

The body

...

The body

is a single creature, whole,

its life is one, never less than one, or more,

so is its world, and so 

are two bodies in their love for one another

one. In ignorance of this

we talk ourselves to death.

...

~ Wendell Berry

.

Give it Time

The river is of the earth

And it is free. It is rigorously

Embanked and bound,
And yet is free.  “To hell

With restraint,” it says.

“I have got to be going.”

It will grind out its dams.

It will go over or around them.

They will become pieces
 ...
~ Wendell Berry

On the Nature of Love

...

The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.

We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where

or with whom -- of that we are unaware.

But we have this faith -- that a lifetime's bliss

will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.

Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs

brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.

Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:

whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.

I call that person and cry: 'This life is blest!

For your sake such miles have I traversed!'

All those others who came close and moved off

in the darkness -- I don't know if they exist or not.

...

~ Rabindranath Tagore

.

Blank

...

She who did not come, wasn't she determined
 nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,

what would the heart have to create?
...
Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are

the center of all my labors and my loves.

If I've wept for you so much, it's because

I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

...

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

from Act III of 'Man and Superman'

...

Don Juan: When I was on earth, and made those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such way as this. The lady would say that she would countenance my advances, provided they were honourable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I desired her continual companionship, counsel, and conversation to the end of my days, and would take a most solemn oath to be always enraptured by them above all, that I would turn my back on all other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things ... that her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained intercourse with half my fellow creatures would narrow and warp me ... that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.

...

Ana: You mean that it was an immoral impulse.

...

Don Juan: Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it; but I cannot help it. 

...

~ George Bernard Shaw

.

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form

Why don't we just expand ourselves into our perfect form, our perfect being? We have perceptions and energies and inspiration. We have everything. We have a spiritual friend, we have the teaching. We have everything. What more do we want? We have everything in this whole universe. We have everything there. We have intelligence and understanding and the materials to understand. We have everything.


~ Chogyam Trungpa

from 'Fez'

...

They love the sound of a fountain splashing in the courtyard; on the coals of their braziers they sprinkle sandalwood and benzoin; they have a passion for sitting on a high spot of ground at twilight and watching the slow change of light, color and form in the landscape. Outside the ramparts are innumerable orchards, delightful little wildernesses of canebrake, where olive and fig trees abound. It is the custom of families to go out there on a late afternoon with their rugs, braziers and tea equipment. One discovers groups of such picnickers in the most secluded corners of the countryside, particularly on the northern slopes above the valley. Not long ago on one of my walks I came across a family spread out in the long grass. They were sitting quietly on their reed mats, but something in their collective attitude made me stop and observe them more closely. Then I saw that surrounding them at a radius of perhaps a hundred feet was a circle of bird cages, each supported by a stake driven into the ground. There were birds in all the cages and they were singing. The entire family sat there happily, listening. As urbanites in other places carry along their radios, they had brought their birds with them from the town, purely for entertainment. 

...

~ Paul Bowles

.

from 'It's a Wonderful Life'

...
George Bailey: Now, will you do something for me?
Zuzu Bailey: What?
George Bailey: Will you try and get some sleep?
Zuzu Bailey: I'm not sleepy. I want to look at my flower.
George Bailey: I know-I know, but you just go to sleep, and then you can dream about it, and it'll be a whole garden.
Zuzu Bailey: It will?
George Bailey: Uh-huh. 
...
~ Francis Goodrich and Allen Hackett

.