When I read this, I was struck by the importance of the message for politicians. What does it mean to be rich? It is not about material wealth. I know people who have few material possessions and are happy to share what they have with me.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
A Great Proverb About Food
Live
Notes: Full poem here: a blind flaneur. Poem Source: quotes from books
Source: Live
David posted this wonderful Mary Oliver quote. We can embrace the world as a place that amazes us and not merely one we visit in passing. I love the paradox of simultaneously being bride and bridegroom embracing and being amazed.
When we live fully, we engage in a conversation full of questions that can never be fully answered, but that guide us in our journey. This life is not about a planned legacy, but one that emerges in the memories we leave for others.
Rumi on the law of attraction
Rumi wrote magnificent poetry that resonates through the ages. Patience is a virtue. When I sit in my place of patience, others, the world, and myself speak to me and I can listen.
Parker Palmer says the soul is like a wild animal. When I trample around and make noise, I scare it away and it is unable to come out of hiding. In a world that is already busy and noisy, I can not hear my heart speak to me, let alone the world and others
In mindful moments, I pause and what I chase after comes to me, relieving me of the stress and anxiety my chasing brings. There is attraction between what I wait for and I find with patience it wants me, as well.
When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me, and without pain.
From this I understand that
what I want also wants me,
is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret here
for anyone who can grasp it.
The Other Kingdoms
Mary Oliver writes such wonderful poetry, even when it looks like prose. I find a depth in the words and spaces that calls me to reflect upon the cultural and personal constraints that surround me. Certainly, I need those constraints. They guide me through the moment-to-moment actions of my daily life. I need those words that help me make sense of the most immediate world that I often take-for-granted.
What if I lived in the north? I would need those many words and an awareness of what the snow told me to survive. I read today that mother orangutans spend 7-8 years with each offspring. During that time, the mothers appear to teach the ways of life necessary for the offspring’s survival. I say appear, because we cannot communicate with them well enough to know with certainty. There is something mystical about that existence that cannot be fully grasped. So even in the orangutan world, there is a culture and communication that helps them negotiate their terrain instinctively.
I love the line “Their infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be.” Just like the lilies of the field, those other kingdoms exist in ways that allow the world that includes us to grow sweetly wild, when we are attentive and mindful to the world.
Consider the other kingdoms. The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals. Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be. Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.
Delight in the preciousness of every single moment
Source: Delight in the preciousness of every single moment
Pema Chodron reminds us that when we are given lemons make lemonade (in this case strawberries) and savour it by being fully present to the task. Thich Nhat Hanh describes sipping tea, doing dishes, and listening to another person while giving the task and person one’s fullest attention.
Leaders who remain attentive and sensitive to their actions and speech, as well as to their employees, invite followers into a safe space.
Every mom has a gallery
This will be a busy day. I am in Spokane to defend my research proposal and head home, hopfully to begin research shortly.
Kathy and I recently lost our mothers. They were much different ladies and their galleries would be so different. My mother would have a rosary, a religious image with prayer, and her prayer book. Kathy’s mom would have knickknacks she found on the farm, berry picking, or while camping. Her gallery might include small stones, pine and spruce cones, and shells.
Every mom has an art gallery or a collection box. The walls of the gallery could be a refrigerator or steel cupboard, or a pin-up cork board. Then again, the collection box could be a humble plastic bag or a small box, both of which have pride of place in her wardrobe or cupboard.
Every mom carefully preserves her own gallery and collection box. Why? Because they contain works of art and gifts from her children – cards for her birthday, mom’s day cards, doodles and squiggles, thank you notes or stick figure drawings. The collection boxes probably contain sea shells, pebbles from the road, hand-made earrings, a paper rocket, a sweet poem, an old photo and many, many such wonderful things.
These are rare treasures indeed that bring back snapshots of the children’s growing up years, and the crazy passage of time.
Where did that child go, who drew…
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Give Much, Much More Than We Take, says Hill
A great way to close the week off and head into Sabbath. I can feel myself sink into the images of filled with water, trees, and sky. When we are in the presence of someone or something, big and small, it is proper to be attentive and mindful. To be present and attentive demonstrates kindness and love for people and things that show themselves to us.
Kindness in words creates confidence
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness
Kindness in giving creates love. ~Lao Tzu
Who’s Confused? ~d nelson
Sitting quietly with a perfect
view of hilltop
I was looking for a sign
of confusion.
But no matter how hard
I looked there
was no sign
of Hill being confused.
sunset clouded hill
Stable as a mountain
firm as the earth
Hill confidently
conveyed that
it’s not the one
confused.
bridge across the Eel
In hundreds of millions of years
I’ve witnesses many beings come & go.
While most primates scurry
around digging things up,
hoarding to themselves,
disheveling the earth,
it’s refreshing to experience
expressions of a burgeoning wisdom
which conveys the oneness of all,
softly said ancient Hill.
biggest trees of the forest
See how tree’s do nothing
but give; beauty, oxygen,
shelter, food, and more.
Rivers & streams seem to rush
but look deeper and see
how they…
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When the Shoe Fits
The Trappist Monk Thomas Merton is better known for his spiritual prose, but he was an artist and poet, as well. Eastern philosophies, including Buddhism and Taoism, inspired his writing, including his poetry, and his theology.
When we are at ease with our actions and speech, we work with remarkable dexterity. We understand technology as tools, however the etymology includes techne which is art and craft and logos has to do with speaking, discourse, and the rules that guide that speaking. Craftspeople and artists take time, gather their thoughts (become full of thought), and speak with and through their tools in creating artifacts which in turn call us to gather our thoughts in their use.
Merton’s poem speaks of the ease and knowing one’s craft so well that conversations with and through tools feel right as the craftsperson experiences tools and creating intimately. The human and their tools form a mindful and caring relationship. John Dewey proposed that mind was a verb. We mind, care for, appreciate, and attend to our tools and they respond to this mindfulness.
From the Chinese of Chuang Tzu
Ch’ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
“For” and “against” are forgotten.
No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right. The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
Photo Challenge # 98: February 2, 2016
The picture drew me first. I read the caption, “Mate” and recognized its double-meaning. The poem is rich and speaks to the life-long committment we make to each other. Part way through the line, “The only geometry worth the commute
is the human heart,” catches my eye. It captures the give and take in strong relationships that exist because they can and have the right geometry.
“Mate” by Anne Worner CC BY-SA 2.0
In the inconstant ravages of midday
I drink of your succulent greys,
of your endless repetitions.
Winning accounts for only a fraction
of our experiences, we lose everyday.
I stand here challenging my failures,
the pawn of my genius watered down.
I will not be made palatable.
I will not be made to adhere.
The only geometry worth the commute
is the human heart. Those slovenly angles
really get me going, even now
in this wrangling heat, the muse seizes hold
shaking me free of my rumpled dress.
–
We were young once, too young
to appreciate the distress of bones
huddled beneath orgasmic flesh.
Too young to know the intimacy
imposed by silence. I love you
in ways both innocuous and forbidden.
I’d kill for you, an oath not undertaken lightly.
We only seem casual, ordinary
but on the inside we are…
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ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 