only the lowest servant of the kingdom, is worthy to become its ruler

Water is the softest and most yielding substance.

Yet nothing is better than water,

for overcoming the hard and rigid,

because nothing can compete with it.

Everyone knows that the soft and yielding

overcomes the rigid and hard,

but few can put this knowledge into practice.

Therefore the Master says:

"Only he who is the lowest servant of the kingdom,

is worthy to become its ruler.

He who is willing to tackle the most unpleasant tasks,

is the best ruler in the world."

True sayings seem contradictory.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

lingering in happiness

.

.

After rain after many days without rain,

it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,

and the dampness there, married now to gravity,

falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground

.

where it will disappear - but not, of course, vanish

except to our eyes.  The roots of the oaks will have their share,

and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;

a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;

.

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,

will feel themselves being touched.

.

~ Mary Oliver

from Why I wake early

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If only for once it were still

If only for once it were still.

If the not quite right and the why this

could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,

and the static my senses make -

if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought

I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,

even for the brevity of a smile,

to offer you 

to all that lives,

in gladness.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life, I,7

the great longing

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea.

We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together

 is deep and strong and strange.  Nay, it is deeper than my sister's depth

 and stronger than my brother's strength,

 and stranger than the strangeness of my madness.

Aeons upon aeons have passed since the first grey dawn made us

 visible to one another; and though we have seen the birth and the fullness

 and the death of many world, we are still eager and young.

We are  young and eager and yet we are mateless and unvisited, 

and though we lie in unbroken half embrace, we are uncomforted. 

 And what comfort is there for controlled desire and unspent passion?  

Whence shall come the flaming god to warm my sister's bed?  

And what she-torrent shall quench my brother's fire? 

And who is the woman that shall command my heart?

In the stillness of the night my sister murmurs in her sleep

 the fire-god's unknown name, and my brother call 

afar upon the cool and distant goddess. 

 But upon whom I call in my sleep I know not

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. 

 We three are one in loneliness, and the love 

that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from Poems, Parables and Drawings

drawing by the author

for a time of change

The mind of time is hard to read.

We can never predict what it will bring,

Nor even from all that is already gone

Can we say what form it finally takes;

For time gathers its moments secretly.

Often we only know it's time to change

When a force has built inside the heart

That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul

Or the love where we once belonged

Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere

Until we stand before a threshold we know

We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step

Into the unknown that beckons us;

Trust that a richer life awaits us there,

That we will lose nothing

But what has already died;

Feel the deeper knowing in us sure

Of all that is about to be born beyond

The pale frames where we stayed confined,

Not realizing how such vacant endurance

Was bleaching our soul's desire.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

the remains

.

.

I empty myself of the names of others.

I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside

the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family

album and look at myself as a boy.

.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

.

~ Mark Strand

with thanks to melancholynotes

.

a man receives only what he is ready to receive

.

.

A man receives only what he is ready to receive,

whether physically or intellectually or morally,

as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from a journal entry, 1860

art by Roderick Maclver

from Thoreau and the Art of Life

.

.

pure no-thing

.

God is pure no-thing,

concealed in now and here:

the less you reach for him,

the more he will appear.

.

~ Angelus Silesius

.

.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river

.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river -

Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing;

In this way we learn how water can die into air.

When, after heavy rain, the stormclouds disperse,

Is it not that they've wept themselves clear to the end?

If you want to know a miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,

Look: the shining glass grows green in spring.

It's the rose's unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see -

In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.

~ Ghalib (1797-1869)

so many skins

A human being has so many skins inside, 

covering the depths of the heart. 

 

We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! 

Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,

as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, 

cover the soul. 

 

Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. 

 

 

 

~ Meister Eckhart

ecstasy: Czechoslovakia, 1933

.

The actress was only seventeen

and so the director arranged

to have her pricked lightly with pins

at the needed moments.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

I write these words to delay

What can I do with these thoughts,

given me as a dog is given her flock?

Or perhaps it is the reverse -

my life the unruly sheep, being herded.

At night,

all lie down on the mountain grasses,

while mirror sheep, a mirror guard-dog

follow one another through rock outcrops,

across narrow streams.  The drink and graze by starlight.

This morning, waking to unaccustomed calmness,

I write these words to stay in that silent, unfevered existence,

to delay the other words that are waiting.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

his name is God-with-them

.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...

Here God lives among men.

He will make his home among them; 

they shall be his people and he will be their God;

his name is God-with-them.

He will wipe away all tears from their eyes;

there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. 

 The world of the past has gone.

Then the One sitting on the throne spoke:

Now I am making the whole of creation new...

.

~ Revelations 21: 1-5

.

the longing for beauty

For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.

Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. 

It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world 

and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.  

And there it is ahead of all as...the Beloved ...toward which all things move, 

since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being.

~ Pseudo-Dionysius

from The Divine Names

to finding again

.

.

Everything else must have changed

must be different

by the time you appear

more than ever the same

.

taking me by surprise

in my difference

my age

long after I had come 

to the end 

of believing in you

to the end of hope

.

which was not even 

the first of the changes

.

when I imagined 

that I was forgetting you

you did not even need memory

to remain there

letting the years vanish

the miles depart

.

nothing surprising in that

.

even longing

does not need memory

to know what to reach for 

.

and nothing surprises you

who were always there

wherever it was

.

beyond belief

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

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