When world religions become mature, we will have a new history, no longer based on competition, rivalry, cultures or warfare, but on people who are actually transformed. These people will change the world, as Mary did, almost precisely because they know it is not they who are doing the changing. They will know they do not need to change other people, just themselves, God takes it from there.
– Richard Rohr
(photo: Fiesole, Italy – July 2002)
The venerable Dabba rose from his seat, saluted the Exalted One with his right side, rose into the air and, sitting cross-legged in the sky, attained the sphere of heat, and rising from it passed finally away.
– Udana 8.9
sub specie aeternitate
The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
(photo: Chama River, NM – September 2018)
We become what we do.
The policies of people contain within themselves the judgement and doom of God upon their society, and when the Church identifies its policies with theirs, it too is judged with them – for it has in this been unfaithful and is not truly “the Church.” The power of “the Church” (who is not “the Church” if it is rich and powerful) contains the judgement that “begins at the house of God.”
– Thomas Merton – journal entry, November 30, 1964
Photo by Harry Smith on Pexels.com
Ask for something, Per
favore, please, the answer is
Prego. Please.
Thank you, Grazie, thank you,
you say. Instead of you’re welcome?
Prego. The answer is please.
Prego, listen, here in Italy, every
time you think you’re polite, this lift
of the verbal eyebrow, this rise
and fall of the voice like a hand
on its way to your shoulder, insistent
lifeline picking you up,
letting you go
again. No problem! Prego
pulls up the covers and tucks you in.
Cape of Saint Martin. Communion
wafer on each Italian tongue. Prego.
Please, Prego, I pray to you,
Prego, don’t
worry. Let me
do something for you.
(Photo: Assisi, 2002)
The Lord is close to the broken-hearted.
– Psalm 34:18
Edge of Atlantic 