Look at humanity, how lacking in light people are,
how they perish out of desire for perishable things.
Because of pride they keep separate from God,
dead to the spirit, living a lie.
Isn’t it amazing how their spirits are imprisoned,
while all the while they hold the key in their hands!
– Rumi
(Photo: Florence – July 2002)
hours after
winter solstice
the day I wanted to die,
tried, and failed
I had failed at success
and succeeded in failure
today and every day
I am grateful for life
(… Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all…)
– Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero/No Limit
In the unmade light I can see the world
as the leaves brighten I see the air
the shadows melt and the apricots appear
now that the branches vanish I see the apricots
from a thousand trees ripening in the air
they are ripening in the sun along the west wall
apricots beyond number are ripening in the daylight
Whatever was there
I never saw those apricots swaying in the light
I might have stood in orchards forever
without beholding the day in the apricots
or knowing the ripeness of the lucid air
or touching the apricots in your skin
or tasting in your mouth the sun in the apricots
–from The Rain In The Trees
…by and by.
– traditional spiritual, “By and by”
You have to believe this. We are more than our anger; we are more than our suffering. We must recognize that we do have within us the capacity to love, to understand, to be compassionate. If you know this, then when it rains you won’t be desperate. You know that the rain is there, but the sunshine is still there somewhere. Soon the rain will stop, and the sun will shine again. Have hope. If you can remind yourself that the positive elements are still present within you and the other person, you will know that it is possible to break through, so that the best things in both of you can come up and manifest again.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
(photo: Abiquiu, NM – September 2018)
Sooner or later the world must burn and all things in it – all the books, the cloister together with the brothel, Fra Angelico together with the Lucky Strike ads…Sooner or later it will all be consumed by fire and nobody will be left, for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with.
And here I sit writing a diary.
But Love laughs at the end of the world because Love is the door to eternity. He who loves is playing on the doorstep of eternity, and before anything can happen, Love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door. He won’t bother about the world burning because he will know nothing but Love.
– Thomas Merton, Journal, October 10, 1948
Henceforth, from the mind,
For your whole joy, must spring
Such joy as you may find
In any earthly thing,
And every time and place
Will take your thought for grace.
Henceforth, from the tongue,
From shallow speech alone,
Comes joy you thought, when young,
Would wring you to the bone,
Would pierce you to the heart
And spoil its stop and start.
Henceforward, from the shell,
Wherein you heard, and wondered
At oceans like a bell
so far from ocean sundered—
A smothered sound that sleeps
Long lost within lost deeps,
Will chime you change and hours,
The shadow of increase,
Will sound you flowers
Born under troubled peace–
Will echo sea and earth.
It just comes. That is the miracle of it.
Edge of Atlantic 