Jameswoodward’s Weblog

here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap

and to your(in my arms flowering so new)

self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain

and here’s to silent certainly mountains;and to

a disappearing poet of always, snow

and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful friend

twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and

let must or if be damned with whomever’s afraid

down with ought with because with every brain

which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel(but up

with joy; and up with laughing and drunkenness)

here’s to one undiscoverable guess

of whose mad skill each world of blood is made

whose fatal songs are moving in the moon

e.e.cummings

ah, the hidden sweetness

we find when the belly is empty!

we are no more or less than

string instruments: if

the sound box is full of something,

no music: obviously.

so: if the brain and the belly

are burned clean with fasting,

every moment a new song

comes out of the fire:

the fog goes away

a new energy

makes you run up the steps

in front of you.

be empty: make music

like a reed pipe;

write love’s secrets

with a reed pen.

rumi

MOTHER MARY CLARE SLG (1906-1988)

LIVING THROUGH THE DYING

Any Christian whether living in the world or in the Religious Life, active or enclosed, is being called as was St Antony of old to go down into the most frightening places of world history. If we are really trying to live this life in Christ, we are called to go down into the work! situation of today, which is rapidly be­coming divorced from God. It is only in prayer that those truly given to God can face this awful sense of disintegration, and face it united to Christ not only in his Passion but also in the power of his Resurrection.

We have got to live now in and through the dying, in order that we may bear witness to the Resurrection life … If we live in this glorious perspective, we do not have to wait for the fullness of life after death. Life in God is here and now, experienced first and foremost through experiencing death. Do not be afraid to die, do not be afraid when you are overwhelmed by the sense of your own weakness and sin and muck and desolation. Let everything which is in you, and everything which is thrown up against you by the power of evil, be held in Christ’s healing power. Do not absorb it or be overcome by it, but let it in you meet Christ’s power to heal; let it in you meet this almighty power of God, so that in you the mess can be transformed, answered.

MOTHER MARY CLARE SLG

from a Conference given to the Community, Sunday in the Octave of Prayer for Unity, 1968

Indra’s net

Buddhism uses a similar image to describe the interconnectedness of all phenomena. It is called Indra’s Net. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every datum that is true—every dharma, in the language of Indian philosophy—is a pearl in Indra’s net. Not only is every pearl tied to every other pearl by virtue of the web on which they hang, but on the surface of every pearl is reflected every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists in Indra’s web implies all else that exists.

from Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat

To forgive,” writes Mary Gordon, “is to give up the exhilaration of ones own unassailable rightness”

And there is loss in that, only it is the loss of an illusion, and what is gained is unmistakably real: the chance to live again, free from the bitterness that draws the sweetness from our lives, that gives us scary faces and turns us into carrion crows who blot out the sun with our flapping.

No one else does this to us. We do it to ourselves, but we do not have to.

We are being forgiven every day of our lives. We are being set free by someone who has arranged things so that we have all the advantages. We have choices. We have will. And we have an advocate, who seems to know that we need lots of practice at this forgiveness business. How often should we forgive? Will seven times take care of it?”Not seven times,’’Jesus said,“but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.’’ This is no chore. This is a promise, because forgiveness is the way of life. It is God’s cure for the deformity our resentments cause us. It is how we discover our true shape, and every time we do it we get to be a little more alive. What God knows and we don’t yet is that once we get the hang of it, seventy times seven won’t be enough, not to mention seventy-seven.

We’ll be so carried away by it that well hope it never ends,

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

The same leaves over and over again!

They fall from giving shade above

To make one texture of faded brown

And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again

To fill the trees with another shade,

They must go down past things coming up.                 T

hey must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put

Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.

However it is in some other world

I know that this is the way in ours.

Robert Frost, In Hardwood Groves

BEDE GRIFFITHS: THE MONK GROWS OLD

Father Bede Griffiths was a a Catholic monk who spent most of his life as a
“Christian Yogi” in India, where he expounded the unity of world religions:

“(Father Bede) said at the age of 85 he begged to differ with those who
think that life is all over at 40, and that from then on we go downhill… Father Bede
insisted that the time from age 40 on is what life is all about; all the rest was preparation
for the flowering of the whole personality. For him, here the spiritual powers begin to
develop and transcend the capacities of mind and body. These are not left behind but
are integrated into what opens us to the Eternal, the discovery of the Absolute, the
Transcendent, the deep Source of all Reality.”

For more on Bede Griffiths and his work, visit:

http://www.bedegriffiths.com/

if only

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine wind that takes its course though the chaos of the

world

Like a fine, and exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the

Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It’s somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

D.H.Lawrence, The Song of a Man Who has Come Through

The Turkish folkhero Mullah Nasruddin was renowned for his paradoxical approach to wisdom as both paradox and folly.

A student sought out Mullah Nasruddin for years, hoping to find guidance from him.  He finally found the Mullah in the marketplace sitting atop a pile of anana peels– no one knows why.

“Oh great sage, Nasruddin,” said the student. “I must ask you an important question, whose answer we all seek: What is the secret to attaining happiness?”

Mullah Nasrudin pondered for a time and finally replied, “Good judgment.”

“Ah,” said the student. “But how do we attain good judgment?”

“From experience,” answered Nasruddin.

“Yes,” said the student. “But how do we get experience?”

“Bad judgment.”

(From Joel ben Izzy, THE BEGGAR KING AND THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS,

Algonquin Books, 2003).