Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. — William Saroyan
Author: Bill Schulz
Living simply like St. Francis of Assisi
community
if you offer
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
– Isaiah 58:10
Photo: Prout’s Neck, Maine – November 2016
The strength of the cold
The strength of the cold, the austerity and power of the landscape, redeems the snow colors and delicate shadows from anything of pastel shading. I can think of no art that has rendered with such things adequately – the nineteenth-century realists were so realistic as to be totally unlike what they painted. There is such a thing as too close a resemblance. In a way, nothing resembles reality less than the average photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial, you have to use a sign, which is itself substantial and exists in its own right.
Man is the image of God and not the shadow of God. – Thomas Merton, Journal entry, February 17, 1958
Photo: Portland, Maine – February 5, 2019
give it, give it all, give it now
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. Annie Dillard, from The Writing Life
Rilke, from Das Stundenbuch
In this town the last house stands
as lonely as if it were the last house in the world
The highway, which the tiny town is not able to stop,
slowly goes deeper out into the night.
The tiny town is only a passing-over place,
worried and afraid, between two huge spaces –
a path running past houses instead of a bridge.
And those who leave the town wander a long way off
and many perhaps die on the road.
Photo: South Portland, Maine – December 2018
“We’re in a Crisis of the Heart”
“We’re in a Crisis of the Heart” by Jack Kornfield https://link.medium.com/t8jInquw0T
And when I saw a holy Grail…
“Sir,” said Perceval, “for five
Full years I haven’t known
Where I was, or believed in God,
Or loved Him. All I have done
Was evil.” “Good friend,” said the hermit,
“Tell me why this happened,
And pray God to have mercy
On your sinful soul.” “Sir,
Once I was at the Fisher King’s
Castle, and I saw – the bleeding lance,
And seeing that drop of blood
On the bright white of its point,
I never asked what or why.
There are no amends I can make.
And when I saw a holy
Grail, I had no idea
For whom it was meant, and said nothing.
And ever since I’ve felt
Such sadness that I wished to die;
I forgot about God and never
Prayed for his grace and mercy
Or did what I should to deserve it.”
“Ah,” said the hermit. “Good friend,
Now you must tell me your name.”
And he answered, “Perceval, sir.”
And hearing this, the hermit
Sighed, for he knew that name,
And said, “Brother, this comes
From a sin of which you know nothing…”
– Perceval, Chretien de Troyes (6365 – 6394)
on Merton’s birthday
But life is a gift I am glad of, and I do not curse the day when I was born. On the contrary, if I had never been born I would never have had friends to love and be loved by, never have made mistakes to learn from, never have seen new countries, and, as for what I may have suffered, it is inconsequential and indeed part of the great good which life has been and will, I hope, continue to be. – Thomas Merton journal entry, January 31, 1960
