I cannot play the flute, but there is something enchanting and beautiful when we watch the sun rise and bid farewell to the stars. Several years ago, just after dawn I watched several deer grazing on a golf course. It was too early for anyone else to be up and nothing else moved in the softness of the early morning.
When I am alone at
Dawn, I feel alive. The wind,
The stars are my friend.
I play the flute as I watch
The rising sun. I’m serene.
Sufi poetry carries with it powerful messages of peace and living with each other as an ethical, humane, and human project. I find poetry is a way to slow down in a hectic world that sometimes overwhelms.
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.
As far as you can avoid it, do not give grief to anyone. Never inflict your rage on another. If you hope for eternal rest, feel the pain yourself; but don’t hurt others.
To wisely live your life, you don’t need to know much
Just remember two main rules for the beginning:
You better starve, than eat whatever
And better be alone, than with whoever.
How sad, a heart that
does not know how to love, that
does not know what it is to be drunk with love.
If you are not in love, how can you enjoy
the blinding light of the sun,
the soft light of the moon?
Realise this: one day your soul
will…
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The world we experience is the only world we can experience. We can describe that world to some extent, but event that is fluid.
“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.” Paulo Coelho
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The picture and the poem come to life together. It is in pauses we find refreshment. We clear our minds and hearts of certainty and welcome what we do not understand and possibly cannot fully understand into our lives. It is in those moments that our hearts melt as we turn silently towards the sun.
“Shades of Gray in Winter”
Painting by Susan Fowler
From dailypaintersofcolorado.com
new streams cut and curve
diving down through the snowpack
escaping the slopes with the help of the sun
cold and barren ideas will eventually thaw
find their flowing descent from high mountains of mind
to the ponds and the pools where they join
other waters absconded from glaciers of ancient beliefs
swirling eddies reconstitute certainties
muddle and deconstruct dogmatic doctrines
no longer cast frozen in rarefied air
now in potable mixtures free radical concepts
available here within low-lying reach of the everyman
this is where thinking can have its refreshment
slake thirst for clear unpresumed knowledge
if only the thinker will kneel unassuming
make cup of his penitent palms and then drink
Each morning we are born again. That is a lovely thought and a great reminder that life is always a process of self-renewal. We get to celebrate it and what it offers in this moment.
Each morning we are born again.
What we do today is what matters most.
Jack Kornfield
From https://soulgatherings.files.wordpress.com/
What did you do today?
THE END
Denise Levertov wrote this lovely poem that reminds me that there is something invisible that keeps us on track. I cannot see it, but I feel the thread and, when I listen quietly, I hear the call. The thread is part of who I am and is not some thing that catches me, but is some thing I become aware of over time.
I explore the world as I hold that invisible thread, hear it, and feel it. It is my pathway into the world that reminds me legacies are not created, but recalled by others.
I cannot plan this path. I walk it, sometimes alone and at other times fully in the company of others. Even when I am alone, am I? Are there those who I cannot see that walk with me with their hands gently placed on my shoulders guiding my journey.
Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me—a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven’t tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.
Yes, our hearts can fly when we follow our dreams. This is a wonderful quote from a great children’s story.
Sketch of the day no 569 in my moleskine art journal: Sylvia the Swan says “so come with me where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things and your heart will fly on wings, forever I’m Never Never Land” a quote from Peter Pan
The little owl has it right. This is what Aristotle might have called phronesis, practical wisdom. It is knowing we wear and comes naturally.
Here is a little humour at the end of the day. I spent yesterday flying and today driving, so it good to smile and laugh..
I don’t what captured my eye most: the image, the poem, or the excerpt from Pablo Neruda. Perhaps it is the way they fit together into one. When two people are meant for each other, there is an entwining that is magical.
We are skyscrapers in the wind
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
