The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

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Do you remember the night Abraham first saw

The stars? He cried to Saturn: "You are my Lord!"

How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,

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He cried, ""You are my Lord!" How destroyed he was

When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:

We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

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We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.

We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel

The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

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And no one can convince us that mud is not 

Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.

We are ready to spend the rest of our life

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Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.

We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.

We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

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My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping

Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,

Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

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~ Robert Bly

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a turtle's pace

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Consider the turtle.  A whole summer - June, July, and August -

 is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in.  

 

Perchance you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, 

meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction;

 but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle's pace.

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~ Henry David Thoreau

from a journal entry, 1856

art by Roderick Maclver

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water lily

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My whole life is mine, but whoever says so

will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky

are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,

I never close myself with refusal-

in the rhythm of my daily soul

I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,

making the dreams of night real:

into my body at the bottom of the water

I attract the beyonds of mirrors...

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~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

translated by A. Poulin 

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you, darkness

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world, 

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you. 

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself, 

how easily it gathers them! -

powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me. 

I have faith in nights. 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke


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nurture the darkness of your soul

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Nurture the darkness of your soul

until you become whole.

Can you do this and not fail?

Can you focus your life-breath until you become

supple as a newborn child?

While you cleanse your inner vision

will you be found without fault?

Can you love people and lead them

without forcing your will on them?

When Heaven gives and takes away

can you be content with the outcome?

When you understand all things

can you step back from your own understanding?

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Giving birth and nourishing,

making without possessing,

expecting nothing in return.

To grow, yet not to control:

This is the mysterious virtue.

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~ Tao Te Ching

translation by j. h. mcdonald

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vulnerability

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Sensitivity implies being vulnerable. 

One is sensitive to one's reactions, to one's hurts, one's beleaguered existence: 

that is, one is sensitive about oneself and in this vulnerable state there is really self-interest 

and therefore the capability of being hurt, of becoming neurotic. 

 

It is a form of resistance which is essentially concentrated on the self. 

 

The strength of vulnerability is not self-centred. 

It is like the young spring leaf that can withstand strong winds and flourish. 

This vulnerability is incapable of being hurt, whatever the circumstances. 

Vulnerability is without centre as the self. 

It has an extraordinary strength, vitality and beauty.

 

 

 

J. Krishnamurti

from Letters to the Schools Vol. 2

photo by albert koetsier

 

 

 

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bees

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In every instant, two gates. One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.

Mostly we go through neither.

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Mostly we nod to our neighbor,

lean down to pick up the paper,

go back into the house.

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But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?

Or did you think it the sound

of distant bees,

making only the thick honey of this good life?

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~ Jane Hirshfield

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to prose

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Whatever you may say

whatever you pretend

you do not begin or end

when the stories do

the ones that you repeat

later starting again

or when the days that you tell

all those that never

themselves said a word

have long been utterly still

and yet you were there 

when they were 

you were heard

commenting in the unmetered

service of understanding

your description

remains current for some time

after the face has gone

even if not written down

but you are different

from what you recount

and although we know 

only scattered fragments of you

glimpses of birds in bushes

gestures in car windows 

of which we forget

at once almost everything 

you define us

we are the ones who need you

we can no longer tell

whether we believe

anything without you

or whether we can hear

all that you are not

O web of answer

sea of forgetting is it true

that you remember

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~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

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Whatever we say

we know there is another

language under this one

 

a word of it is always there on the tip of you

unsayable and early

O you for whom 

all languages have been named

who have none of your own

 

naked sleeper in the cave 

where you were born

dreamer without words

who first tasted 

a verb of the world

you who speak as though

you could see

 

you have not forgotten

the serpent your ancestor

its fluttering inarticulate flame

or expectation

on the way to you

 

 

 

~ W. S. Merwin

from Present Company

The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

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The woodpecker keeps returning

to drill the house wall.

Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:

he has found in the house

a resonant billboard to post his intentions,

his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,

the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

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~ Jane Hirshfield

from after

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The world rests

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The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb-time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.

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~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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for a new home

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May this house shelter your life.

When you come in home here,

May all the weight of the world

Fall from your shoulders.

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May your heart be tranquil here,

Blessed by peace the world can not give.

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May this home be a lucky place,

Where the graces your life desires

Always find the pathway to your door.

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May nothing destructive

Ever cross your threshold.

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May this be a safe place

Full of understanding and acceptance,

Where you can be as you are,

Without the need of any mask

Of pretense or image.

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May this home be a place of discovery,

Where the possibilities that sleep

In the clay of your soul can emerge

To deepen and refine your vision

For all that is yet to come to birth.

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~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

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hidden but always present

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The Tao is like an empty container:

it can never be emptied and can never be filled.

Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.

It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,

shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.

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It is hidden but always present.

I don't know who gave birth to it.

It is older than the concept of God.

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~ Tao Te Ching

translation by j. h. mcdonald

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Who has been lived all these years

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This which seeks is That which is sought; 

That which is sought is This which seeks.

There is no seeker, and no thing sought.

The functioning of "seeking" in whole-mind 

is conceptualized by split-mind as Seeker and Sought.

From the beginning not a thing is. 

~ Hui Neng

This which I am is That (which I am not),

That which I am not is This (which I am).

There is neither This or That.

I neither am nor am not 

(there is neither an I which is nor an I which is not)

There is neither whole-mind nor split-mind.

There is nothing to function, and no functioning.

There is no absence and no presence.

There still remains spontaneous immediacy?

It, also, neither is nor is not.

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Now do you understand that there is not a thing to be understood?

Who has understood,  What has not understood?

Who has been lived all these years,  What has suffered?

~ Wei Wu Wei

from All Else is Bondage

As you once found me

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As you once found me,

I was small, so small

yet blooms appeared

Just be quiet within yourself.

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I was a nameless and small

and longed  so deeply

until you said that I am too big

for any name:

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For, it seems,  I am one

with myth, with May, and with the sea,

and like the living fragrance of the wine

that strengthens the soul ...

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Rainer Maria Rilke 

from The Early Poems

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