#1062 – after the wind
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Christianity stands or falls
Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear … Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Buttoned Up
“Whoever has no house by now will not build.” – Rilke
so many houses
all buttoned up
mid-October
late afternoon
kitchen lights on
silence in the barn
each tool hung
on its proper peg
I know these people
I’ve never met
every autumn I long
to be them but
I’ve walked away
from every home
I’ve ever owned
lights off tools forgotten
dark and exposed
winter in the wind
beauty is…
When you love something like reading — or drawing or music or nature — it surrounds you with a sense of connection to something great. If you are lucky enough to know this, then your search for meaning involves whatever that Something is. It’s an alchemical blend of affinity and focus that takes us to a place within that feels as close as we ever get to “home.” It’s like pulling into our own train station after a long trip — joy, relief, a pleasant exhaustion.
If a writer or artist creates from a place of truth and spirit and generosity, then I may be able to enter and ride this person’s train back to my own station. It’s the same with beautiful music and art.
Beauty is meaning.
What saved me was that I found gentle, loyal and hilarious companions, which is at the heart of meaning: maybe we don’t find a lot of answers to life’s tougher questions, but if we find a few true friends, that’s even better. They help you see who you truly are, which is not always the loveliest possible version of yourself, but then comes the greatest miracle of all — they still love you.
– Anne Lamott, from Stitches: a handbook of hope, meaning, and repair
#1061.2
#1061
wealth addiction
One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer.
– Philip Slater
Photo by David McBee on Pexels.com
the most regretful people
“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
– Mary Oliver
Autumn Day – Rainer Maria Rilke
Oh Lord, it’s time, it’s time. It was a great summer.
Lay your shadow now on the sundials,
and on the open fields let the winds go!
Give the tardy fruits the command to fill;
give them two more Mediterranean days,
drive them on into their greatness, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house by now will not build.
Whoever is alone now, will remain alone,
will wait up, read, write long letters,
and walk along sidewalks under large trees,
not going home, as the leaves fall and blow away.
(translated by Robert Bly)
(Photo: Little Sebago Lake, Maine – December 2016)
Climbing along the River – William Stafford
Willows never forget how it feels
to be young.
Do you remember where you came from?
Gravel remembers.
Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.
Exactly at midnight
yesterday sighs away.
What I believe is,
all animals have one soul.
Over the land they love
they crisscross forever.
Edge of Atlantic 