Last night
in the dark
my heart
kept me
awake.
Last night it
kept me awake
searching
for hollows
and histories
headlights
on an island road.
Last night
in the dark
a car horn
echoing in my chest,
crying
like a cat
in a darkened
stair,
my heart kept
me awake.
Outside,
security lights
stayed on.
Outside,
the lights were
on, the branches
still, and not a single
breath of air.
Last night
in the dark
my heart
kept me
awake.
Photo by Rahul on Pexels.com
Photo by Irina Iriser on Pexels.com
It is like an English summer day, cool and cloudy, with deep green grass all around the Hermitage and trees heavy with foliage. Occasional slow bursts of gentle sunlight that imperceptibly pass by. Shafts of light in great rooms of shadow and the tall tree-church beyond the cedar cross. the path of creek gravel leads into the shadows and beyond them to the monastery, out of sight, down the hill, across fields and a road and a dirty stream. All such things as roads and sewers are far from this place.
Knowing when you do not need anymore. Acting just enough. Saying enough. Stopping when there is enough. Some may be wasted, nature is prodigal. Harmony is not bought with parsimoniousness.
Yet stopping is “going on.” To cling to something and want more of it, to use it more, to squeeze enjoyment out of it. this is to “stop”and not go on. But to leave it alone at the right time, this is the right stopping, the right going on. To leave a thing alone before you have had anything to do with it, if it is for your use, to leave it without use, is not “stopping” is not even beginning. Use it to go on.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry – May 16, 1961
And yet, each time we are on the way to follow our addiction, there seems to be a second of clarity when we see what we are doing and where we are going. We feel a flash of freedom, and then, if we neglect it, the darkness of our addiction descends again, and we go onward to our “fate” like sleepwalkers.
(Grateful that I’m no longer sleepwalking)
The language of descent is either learned by mid-life (normally through suffering and the experience of powerlessness), or we inevitably move into a long day’s journey of accusing, resentment and negativity, circling our wagons as the hurts and disappointments of life gather round us: “I am right and others are wrong. I have a right to my judgments and I will continue to use valuable energy to justify them.” I have visited too many old men and retired priests in nursing homes to doubt this common pattern. When mid-life no longer allowed them to ascend or to deny their dark side, far too many men shut down or kept running. The price is a world of men who do not age well, who are emotionally, spiritually, intellectually unavailable – or just eccentric. These are the dads, priests and leaders we all laugh about but seldom take seriously.
– Richard Rohr, from The Wild Man’s Journey
Paul Goodman –
Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!
Today it was just a dry leaf that told me
I should live for love.
It wasn’t the six birds sitting like little angels
in the white birch tree,
or the knife I use to carve my pear with.
It was a leaf, that had read Tolstoi, and Krishnamurti,
that had loved William James,
and put sweet Jesus under him where he could be safe forever.
“The world is so bright,” he said. “You should see the light.”
“We are born without defenses, both babies and leaves.”
“The branch is necessary but it’s in the way.”
“I am not afraid. I am never afraid.”
The he stretched his imaginary body
this way and that.
He weighs half a gram, is brown and green,
with two large mold spots on one side, and a stem
that curls away, as if with a little pride,
and he could be easily swept up and forgotten,
but oh he taught me love for two good hours,
and helped me with starvation, and dread, and dancing.
As far as I’m concerned his grave is here
beside me,
next to the telephone and the cupful of yellow pencils,
under the window, in the rich and lovely presence
of Franz Joseph Haydn and Domenico Scarlatti and Gustav Mahler
forever.
Photo: Grindstone, Maine – September 2019
A lover has four streams inside,
of water, wine, honey, and milk.
Find those in yourself, and pay no attention
what so-and-so says about such-and such.
The rose does not care if someone calls it a thorn,
or a jasmine. Ordinary eyes categorize
human beings, that one is Zoroastrian.
This one is Muslim.
Walk instead with the other vision given you,
your first eyes. Don’t squint,
and don’t stare blankly like a vulture.
Those who love fire fall in the fire.
A fly slips from the edge into the whey.
If you are in love with the infinite,
why grieve over earth washing away in the rain?
Bow to the essence in a human being.
A desert drinks war-blood,
but if it knew this secret,
springs would rise, rose gardens.
Don’t be content with judging people good and bad.
Grow out of that. The great blessing is
that Shams has poured a strength into the ground
that lets us wait and trust the waiting.
Today, may I walk in right paths, in God’s light. May peace prosper the steps of my family and friends, in city streets and buildings, and among all nations.
Today, may people stream from east and west to converge in God’s neighborhood. May nations labor to dismantle barricades. May our city be a just, peaceable center, united and vibrant. May my friends and relations strive for the good of each other, and may I remember I am neither higher nor lower than a servant.
Today, may east and west meet in my right and left hands, complementing, comprehending one another.
In my body, may north and south correspond, lifting my mind above worry, grounding my feet on the earth.
Today may I know what I am: created, not self-made, instructed to walk and work in God’s ways.
May I hammer old knives into new spoons, old enmities into love.
May I respect the least functional part of myself as surely as Jesus cherishes a paralytic slave and saves him with a word.
May the shriveled and disused part of my heart be bathed in God’s mercy today, that I might see sunlight for what it is: the gaze that beholds and heals us all.
In a banquet hall spacious enough for a whole world of nations, may I rest among neighbors and strangers, friends and relations.
May we feast among prophets on food grown in plowed mountain soil, reaped with weapons repurposed as tools.
Photo by Airam Dato-on on Pexels.com
Edge of Atlantic 