John Dewey wrote that we communicate those things we have in common when we live in community. The Rumi quote speaks to the human and humane nature of what that means. We often see the difference first. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida spoke about differance (there is no a in difference in French either) as being a place where we defer in the presence of difference. The word difference in French means both difference and deference. It is the place where we see the humanity in each of us as the core of human commonality. When we play with words, we come to some extraordinary places.
Beachcombing
Florence Krall wrote about ecotones, those spaces where tides move back and forth across the shoreline always changing them.
Living is an ecotone where we are undergoing continuous change. This poem uses the word exploration in describing the way the world’s fingers reach in and touch us continuously. What are mindful about, awake to, and aware of us the world makes those contacts on our souls?
Humans live in communities of sentient and non-sentient phenomena. Leading takes on a whole new meaning when we think of ourselves as always touching and being touched by this world. It continuously brings new surprises to the fragile ecotone our skin represents.
Today’s Quote
I believe it was Jefferson who said something along the lines of a person who acts and speaks rightly constitutes a majority. Margaret Mead spoke of the power of small groups to make changes. I wonder if we have lost some of this in the early 21st Century? I hope not.
Build up
Each moment is a building block building on what was previously there. There is only place and time we can be in and that is the present moment.
John Dewey in Art as Experience described the aesthetic quality of life. We live and express ourselves under the tension and strain we live. Expressing occurs under pressure. This is not negative. Rather, it is the reality of living life in the world, acting on the environment, being acted upon by the environment, and becoming who we are not as a preplanned package, but as a naturally being and becoming.
Being present is the only place and space to be. Being present is being awake to the world in this most immediate and intimate moment.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Dialogue Lost
Weekly Photo Challenge: Dialogue Lost.
Dialogue is a flow of language which requires listening. Listening is the often overlooked component of dialogue. Without listening, the flow is broken. It is not that we do not listen; however we listen to answer, to correct, to defend, etc. meaning the flow is broken. When we just listen, the silence speaks volumes and the flow remains in tact.
Listening is not limited to human-to-human listening. It extends outwards to other sentient beings and non-sentient phenomena. When I listen, the wind speaks as it rustles leaves, blows through leafless branches, and across the mountain’s sheer rock face. Even the wind, has nuanced voices telling me something and guiding me in life. The wind asks questions which call me to explore and seek the next question.
A Mindful Moment
The link is to a post that is both simple and deeply moving. Meditate comes from the root which means to measure. This measuring is not about applying a number and is about the qualities of what is being observed. In this case, a candle flame.
Prayer comes from the word meaning obey. We can only obey when we listen deeply and find those quiet moments where silence appears speaking to us in its fullness.
Enriching the Earth
I spent a few days with my brother on his farm. He is in a space where satellites and towers seem to miss his place. It was nice to chat, reminisce, and laugh. I was not dressed for the farm, but still helped as best as I could. My brother pointed out several times I was setting a new fashion standard with shorts and sandals. I was careful where I walked.
I introduced Wendell Berry’s writing to my brother. Although he is more high-tech, there are qualities about my brother that remind me of Wendell Berry. They are both relatively low tech and understand the need placed on them when they use technology i.e. a car and airplane to do their work and live their life.
Farmers experience the reality of shipping animals. My brother uses Temple Grandin‘s ideas about humane treatment of animals. Good farmers know they put into and take out of the world. In some ways, we have lost sight of the cycle that we are part of in the world. We are spectators and it is easy to criticize. The cycle of life and death is entangled.
When farmers harvest, they return the parts of the plants, the weeds, and the waste into the ecosystem enriching the Earth. Human treatment of the Earth reflects the character of a person. Humaneness extended to Earth, all sentient beings, and inanimate phenomena is an imperative in enriching the Earth.
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
I love Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse’s book The Journey to the East set the stage for Robert Greenleaf writing about servant leadership. The quote in the post is about the character that unfolds, revealed in living life, not as a planned, linear project, but a dynamic journey. We do not know what is about to happen and it is in the joy, sadness, exhilaration, and disappointment our humanity is revealed.
We live in a world which is can be paradoxically forgiving and unforgiving. It is the attitude of letting go which helps us overcome, moment-to-moment, the unforgiving part. It is in these challenges that the character lines are revealed in the continuous sculpting of our faces which appear over time.
The Art of Blessing the Day
I am taking a few days off from digital technologies. I am traveling to an area where the only Internet access is via dial-up. It is not that remote, but it is probably the imperfect alignment of satellites, mountains, and other geographic features.
Having said this, it is nice to take a break. I spend considerable time between social media and dissertation writing on computers. Sometimes the imperfections of the world and the universe act in ways that bring about a necessary change.
Marge Piercy’s poem suggests we bless everything we can. In the busyness and hurry of life, we run past much of life and forget blessing. I have a few days to count my blessings in quiet moments away from the hectic.
This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.
This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.
This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.
This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.
This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let’s not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.
The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends’
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.
But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.
Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.
Benediction by: R. Tagore
The link is to a wonderful poem by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. He reminded me that the best things in life require taking time and waiting for them to come to me. Patience and openness are important in life otherwise we rush past things that beckon us softly. Being mindful and still allows us to cultivate the patience and openness to hear people and things call us.
Teacher as Transformer 