Friday, December 25, 2020

mysteriously








Mysteriously, Wonderfully,
I bid Farewell to what Goes,
I Greet what Comes;
for what comes cannot be denied,
and what goes cannot be detained.




~ Chuang-Tzu
from The Complete Works of Zhuangzi
translated by Burton Watson
photo by ansel adams


already given



 
 
 
 
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

 
 
 
 
~ Wendell Berry
 
 
 

Thursday, December 24, 2020

if you want









If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light, and
sing . . .



~ St. John of the Cross
Daniel Ladinsky translation
Love Poems from God


life within life



 
 
 
 
You who sleep in my breast are not met with words, 
but in the emergence of life within life 
and of wisdom within wisdom.   
With You there is no longer any dialogue, 
any contest, any opposition.  
You are found in communion! 
Thou in me and I in Thee,  
Thou in them and they in me: 
dispossession within dispossession, 
dispassion within dispassion, 
emptiness within emptiness, 
freedom within freedom. 
 I am alone.  
Thou are alone. 
 The Father and I are One.
 
 
 
~ Thomas Merton
from Dialogues with Silence
sketch by the author
 

 
Your brightness is my darkness.  
I know nothing of You and, by myself, 
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. 
 If I imagine You, I am mistaken.  
If I understand You, I am deluded.  
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.
 
 
prayer written by Merton in 1941 
before midnight mass at Christmas 
 
 
 

exteriorly “all right”

 
 
 
 





 
 
The heart of man  can be full of so much pain, 
even when things are exteriorly “all right”.
 
 It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking
 that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation 
of most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all.
 
 No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilizers
 that even religious explanations sometimes offer.
 Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown
 and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. 
 
No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. 
But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, 
things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer:
 but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait,
 and do what you can and help other people. 
 
Often it is in helping someone else 
we find the best way to bear our own trouble.




-- Thomas Merton
from his Christmas letter, 1966
art by Picasso
 
 
 

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

a community


.
 
 
 
It's possible that the next Buddha 
will not take the form of an individual. 
 
The next Buddha may take the form of a community,
a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, 
a community practicing mindful living. 
 
This may be the most important thing we can do
 for the survival of the earth.
 
 
 
 
Thich Nhat Hahn
 
 
 
 

proverb







You must become brother and sister
to each and every thing
so that they flow through you
dissolving every difference
between what belongs to you and others.

No star, no leaf shall fall -
you fall with them -
to rise again
in every new beginning.



~ Hermann Hesse 
 translated by Ludwig Max Fisher, PhD
photo by Eliot Porter


 

let this weather of feeling pass



 
 

 
 
In your clay body, things are coming to expression 
and to light that were never known before, 
presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.
 
  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being," 
  we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay." 
 
 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.
  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography
 but to the clay our of which you are formed.  
 
At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, 
like a dark mist over a landscape.   
This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you. 
 
 It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling. 
 It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion
 belongs more to your clay than to your mind. 
 
 It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;
 it is on its way elsewhere.
 
 Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient,
 sisters and brothers of the one clay. 
 In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous. 
 To truly be and become yourself,  
you need the ancient radiance of others.
 
 
 
 
~ John O'Donohue
 
 
 
 
.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

creating an identity or a child went forth







There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received
 with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became.
 
And that object became part of him 
for the day or a certain part of the day....
or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
 
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning glories, 
and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird.
 
And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter,
 and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, 
and the noisy brood of the barnyard 
or by the mire of the pond side.. 
and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there.. 
and the beautiful curious liquid.. 
and the water-plants with their grateful flat heads..
 all became part of him.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him....
winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, 
and of the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple trees covered with blossoms, 
and the fruit afterward.... and wood berries..
 and the commonest weeds by the road;
 
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse
 of the tavern whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school.. 
and the friendly boys that passed.. and the quarrelsome boys.. 
and the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls.. and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents..he that had propelled the fatherstuff at night, 
and fathered him.. and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him....
 they gave this child more of themselves than that,
 
They gave him afterward every day....
 they and of them became part of him.




~ Walt Whitman
excerpt from There was a Child Went Forth
art by Klimt


the parable of the sower

 
 
 


 
 
A sower went forth to sow.
Some of his seeds fell upon stony places.
Centuries passed; millennia.
And the seeds remained.
And the stones crumbled and became good soil,
and the seeds brought forth fruit.
 
"Wait a minute," said one listener.
"You can't play fast and loose that way with the natural facts.
The seeds would die long before the soil could receive them."
 
"Why would they die?"
 
"Because they can't hold out in stony places,
for thousands of years."
 
"But, my dear, what kind of seeds do you think we're 
talking about?"
 
 
 
 
 
Stephen Mitchell
from Parables and Portraits
 
 
 
  

Friday, December 18, 2020

uncertainties about identity



Image result for the past art


 


The past is all of one texture—whether feigned or suffered
— whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed
 in that small theatre of the brain which we keep
 brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down,
 and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed 
in the remainder of the body. 
 There is no distinction on the face of our experiences;
 one is vivid indeed, and one dull, and one pleasant, 
and another agonising to remember;
 but which of them is what we call true, 
and which a dream, there is not one hair to prove. 
 
 The past stands on a precarious footing; 
another straw split in the field of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it.

...

the past, ... is lost for ever: our old days and deeds, our old selves, too,
and the very world in which these scenes were acted, all brought down to the
 same faint residuum as a last night's dream, to some incontinuous images,
and an echo in the chambers of the brain.  Not an hour, not a mood, 
not a glance of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring.  And 
yet conceive us robbed of it, conceive that little thread of memory that
we trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge; and in what naked nullity
should we be left! For we only guide ourselves, and only know ourselves,
by these air painted pictures of the past.





~  Robert Louis Stevenson
 from A Chapter on Dreams,
The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson 
art by Arthur Boyd





we came to lose our leaves






As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow 
and to distinguish it from depression. 

It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, 
and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.

One day while studying a [William Butler] Yeats poem 
I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. 
I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, 
music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, 
and events of one's own life.

There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty 
then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.

We can exchange sparks of light with another's eyes 
when we meet our lover on the dance floor at someone else's wedding. 
Our brains then go about warmed and fiery, and with one note 
they can explode into cello concertos and can imagine the giant blinking 
at the top of the bean stalk... His barbarous fingers scratching his head.

There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. 
Driving around, I will waste more time.




~ Robert Bly




leap in the dark





.
There is always some accident in the best things,
whether thoughts or expressions or deeds.  
The memorable thought, the happy expression, 
the admirable deed are only partly ours. 
 
The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood;
 also we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or done a good thing.
 
 We must walk consciously only partway toward our goal,
 and then leap in the dark to our success.




~ Henry David Thoreau
from his journal, March 11, 1858
photo by Robert Goulet





Wednesday, December 16, 2020

just below our fear







There are words in us
that don't know how
to get to the surface.
Words hidden in our marrow
afraid to show themselves
concerned the world will end
if they are uttered.
Words that cross 
the river of pain
that wish to tell the world
how much love is hidden
just below our fear.
And some of these words
sometimes find their way
to live among us
in the trust to hear them,
words that spin our compass
anger and loneliness redirected
by insight and forgiveness,
words like mercy and compassion,
words we never trusted to exist.
Words hide in the strangest places,
under stones, in clouds,
in a moment of a friend's kindness,
in a moment to your generosity;
in poems beginning their first line
climbing happily into the heart singing
how close the moon comes 
when we trust the night.
Words even hide in other words.
 Mercy hides in the hesitant pause,
questioning how much can be trusted
to the tongue, to the pen.
Invoking their true voice
rise to the surface
to sing their original song.




 ~ Stephen Levine
from Becoming Kuan Yin



look into its depths and see its roots

 
 
 


 
 
The Buddhist attitude is to take care of anger.
We don't suppress it.
We don't run away from it.
We just breathe and hold our anger
in our arms with utmost tenderness....
Then the anger is no longer alone,
it is with your mindfulness.
Anger is like a closed flower in the morning.
As the sun shines on the flower, 
the flower will bloom,
because the sunlight penetrated deep into the flower.
 
Mindfulness is like that.
 If you keep breathing...
mindfulness particles will infiltrate the anger.
When sunshine penetrates a flower, the flower cannot resist.
It is bound to open itself and reveal its heart to the sun.
If you keep breathing on your anger,
shining your compassion and understanding on it,
your anger will soon crack and you will be
able to look into its depths and see its roots.
 
 
 
~ Thich Nhat Hanh