Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars
I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders
deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest
People are not wanting
to let me in
Door in the mountain
let me in
**
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
"Door in the Mountain" by Jean Valentine
Never ran this hard through the valley
never ate so many stars
I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders
deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest
People are not wanting
to let me in
Door in the mountain
let me in
**
"Without Tedium"
**
"In freedom, dear things
repeat without tedium."
Kay Ryan, "Every Painting by Chagall" from her collection THE BEST OF IT
**
"In freedom, dear things
repeat without tedium."
Kay Ryan, "Every Painting by Chagall" from her collection THE BEST OF IT
**
Monday, December 27, 2010
More from Karl Stern
**
"There is a German word, durchleiden, for which there is no good English translation. It means to experience and get to know something by suffering. To 'suffer a thing through' with your entire being, rather than to 'figure it out.'"
**
"There is a German word, durchleiden, for which there is no good English translation. It means to experience and get to know something by suffering. To 'suffer a thing through' with your entire being, rather than to 'figure it out.'"
**
Molten
**
"I have said that in entering the Church one does not have to give up any single positive value one has ever believed in. You think of yourself as a traitor to your past. You think you have to leave Goethe behind, or Tolstoy, or Gandhi, or Judaism, or whatever. But there is nothing that is good in all these things which you do not find again in the Church. Now it is ordered and synthetized. It is molten in Christ. Moreover, you do not have to accept anything which is repulsive to you in the Church, on a political or social plane. Nobody wants you to accept a totalitarian politican, or a priest who is obsessed by racial prejudice. All you have to accept is Christ and His Sacraments." Karl Stern, PILLAR OF FIRE
**
"I have said that in entering the Church one does not have to give up any single positive value one has ever believed in. You think of yourself as a traitor to your past. You think you have to leave Goethe behind, or Tolstoy, or Gandhi, or Judaism, or whatever. But there is nothing that is good in all these things which you do not find again in the Church. Now it is ordered and synthetized. It is molten in Christ. Moreover, you do not have to accept anything which is repulsive to you in the Church, on a political or social plane. Nobody wants you to accept a totalitarian politican, or a priest who is obsessed by racial prejudice. All you have to accept is Christ and His Sacraments." Karl Stern, PILLAR OF FIRE
**
Friday, December 10, 2010
Interior Landscape
**
"Public scrutiny filled him with horror, for the force of it came close to breaking through a seal that protected the secret refuge within himself, an inland sea of liquid, inarticulate forms that shaped and reshaped themselves into an eloquence of vast solitudes, deserts, hill, and horizons--a language both shocking and beloved for its sere beauty."
--from Michael D. O'Brien's ECLIPSE OF THE SUN
**
"Public scrutiny filled him with horror, for the force of it came close to breaking through a seal that protected the secret refuge within himself, an inland sea of liquid, inarticulate forms that shaped and reshaped themselves into an eloquence of vast solitudes, deserts, hill, and horizons--a language both shocking and beloved for its sere beauty."
--from Michael D. O'Brien's ECLIPSE OF THE SUN
**
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Poem by Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941)
**
Immanence
I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power:
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your straight garden plot I come to flower:
About your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love's appointed hour.
I come in little things,
Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts. I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood -
There doth My Godhead rest.
I come in little things,
Saith the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love's highway of humility to take.
Meekly I fit My stature to your need.
In beggar's part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead -
As man, to speak with man -
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan.
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.
**
Immanence
I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power:
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your straight garden plot I come to flower:
About your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love's appointed hour.
I come in little things,
Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts. I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood -
There doth My Godhead rest.
I come in little things,
Saith the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love's highway of humility to take.
Meekly I fit My stature to your need.
In beggar's part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead -
As man, to speak with man -
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan.
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.
**
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Family Anxiety (Holiday)
**
This is the time of year when various kinds of family anxiety may show up, especially regarding people who may be dear to us but whom we don't see often.
So much of this, I think, is because everyone feels it obligatory to maintain a steady stream of conversation, which would make anyone anxious--like being perpetually on stage.
What if upon arrival (or our guests' arrival) we could all exchange silence coupons?
If people could get used to being quiet together, cooking or reading the paper or taking walks, etc., appreciating each others' presence without having to speak much, everything would be so much easier.
I think of the way children can at times silently occupy a space together--parallel play--a very restful way of enjoying each others' company.
**
This is the time of year when various kinds of family anxiety may show up, especially regarding people who may be dear to us but whom we don't see often.
So much of this, I think, is because everyone feels it obligatory to maintain a steady stream of conversation, which would make anyone anxious--like being perpetually on stage.
What if upon arrival (or our guests' arrival) we could all exchange silence coupons?
If people could get used to being quiet together, cooking or reading the paper or taking walks, etc., appreciating each others' presence without having to speak much, everything would be so much easier.
I think of the way children can at times silently occupy a space together--parallel play--a very restful way of enjoying each others' company.
**
Friday, December 3, 2010
Subjectivity/Objectivity
**
"I believe that the opposite of subjectivity is not objectivity, but otherness...
...It is an openness to the other--as other--that frees us for creativity and originality in our response: the other who is somehow outside my social system or the the Absolute Other who gives me a reference point that relativizes all of my own. It is always an encounter with otherness that changes me. If I am not open to the beyond-me, I'm in trouble....
One could say that the central theme of the biblical revelation is to call people to encounters with otherness: the alien, the sinner, the Samaritan, the Gentile, the hidden and denied self, angels unaware...
The God who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind is not an answer giver or a problem solver. God does more than that. God frees Job and every believer from their hall of mirrors, their prison of self..."
Richard Rohr, JOB AND THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING
**
"I believe that the opposite of subjectivity is not objectivity, but otherness...
...It is an openness to the other--as other--that frees us for creativity and originality in our response: the other who is somehow outside my social system or the the Absolute Other who gives me a reference point that relativizes all of my own. It is always an encounter with otherness that changes me. If I am not open to the beyond-me, I'm in trouble....
One could say that the central theme of the biblical revelation is to call people to encounters with otherness: the alien, the sinner, the Samaritan, the Gentile, the hidden and denied self, angels unaware...
The God who speaks to Job out of the whirlwind is not an answer giver or a problem solver. God does more than that. God frees Job and every believer from their hall of mirrors, their prison of self..."
Richard Rohr, JOB AND THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING
**
Woops
**
"I'm certain...that a great many things I thought were weeds when I first started my journey have turned out to be my wheat. So many things I was sure were my greatest virtues--my best wheat--have turned out to be my demons and weeds. And if I had pulled them out too quickly...I would have lost some of my greatest gifts.
Conversely, much that I thought was my wheat, my true gifts, have turned out to be the source of my greatest and most denied faults. Only time and suffering sorted them out a bit. Thus Jesus courageously says, 'Let them both grow together until the harvest.' Quite amazing and quite untraditional teaching. Jesus does not see religion as the enforcement of law and order in the world, but much more as the school of the soul, the training ground for union."
Richard Rohr, JOB AND THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING
**
"I'm certain...that a great many things I thought were weeds when I first started my journey have turned out to be my wheat. So many things I was sure were my greatest virtues--my best wheat--have turned out to be my demons and weeds. And if I had pulled them out too quickly...I would have lost some of my greatest gifts.
Conversely, much that I thought was my wheat, my true gifts, have turned out to be the source of my greatest and most denied faults. Only time and suffering sorted them out a bit. Thus Jesus courageously says, 'Let them both grow together until the harvest.' Quite amazing and quite untraditional teaching. Jesus does not see religion as the enforcement of law and order in the world, but much more as the school of the soul, the training ground for union."
Richard Rohr, JOB AND THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING
**
Thursday, December 2, 2010
"It's Amazing We're Not More Amazed"
**
Gone
The world
is gone
like the exact
shape of a cloud
or the exact shape
of a hand waving
in the sunlight
from across
a crowded
train-station
parking-lot
to another hand
that waves back.
Come to think of it,
everything up to now
is gone.
And I have also
already left
even though
I still ride
the train
through the outskirts
of the city.
And I still sit
by the window,
the filthy
train-window
while what is left
of the demolished
buildings
go past
and the empty
billboards
and the transitory
architecture.
It’s amazing
we’re not
more amazed.
The world
is here
but then it’s gone
like a wave
traveling toward
other waves.
Or like
the delicate white
spaceships
of the Dogwood
that float
as if there were
no gravity,
as if there were
no moments
isolated from
any other
moments
anywhere.
Malena Morling
**
Gone
The world
is gone
like the exact
shape of a cloud
or the exact shape
of a hand waving
in the sunlight
from across
a crowded
train-station
parking-lot
to another hand
that waves back.
Come to think of it,
everything up to now
is gone.
And I have also
already left
even though
I still ride
the train
through the outskirts
of the city.
And I still sit
by the window,
the filthy
train-window
while what is left
of the demolished
buildings
go past
and the empty
billboards
and the transitory
architecture.
It’s amazing
we’re not
more amazed.
The world
is here
but then it’s gone
like a wave
traveling toward
other waves.
Or like
the delicate white
spaceships
of the Dogwood
that float
as if there were
no gravity,
as if there were
no moments
isolated from
any other
moments
anywhere.
Malena Morling
**
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Secret of Every Moment (Really!)
A geode: Ordinary, rough, and unbeautiful on the outside, but break it open, and SURPRISE!--you can see the glory that was hidden within.
**
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