A slow dawn is still dawn

It's Freya's day . . . the April showers are easing here in Okieland, as The Way continues to fill the mailbox . . .

Wednesday was Carol Burnett's 90th birthday. And, Tuesday we got word that Harry Belafonte had died at the age of 96.

Yesterday was the 264th anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft's birth. She was born in 1759 London, and gave us A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Isn't it strange tht the god of phallic wands, probing vegetation, wine and lovemaking is often characterized in Western academic settings as asexual? Dionysus is one of – if not the only – Greek or Roman god who does not commit rape. . . Neither does he harm younger boys or men. . .Why is masculinity conflated with dominance and violence? The historic simplification of Dionysus, his femininity and androgeny and the other measures of his “otherness,” have been attempts to neuter and erase a pre-patriarchal mode of the sexual masculine. – Sophie Strand.

Letting go means simply releasing the thoughts and ideas that our minds get in the habit of attaching themselves to, including the ideas of yesterday and tomorrow. – Rev. angel Kyoto williams

See, also, Krista Tippett’s interview with Rev. williams.

Searching for what we already have diverts our awareness of the presence of The Way. All we can do is become quieter, smaller, and less filled with the flotsam and jetsam of our own self and our constant flurry. Then – amid the very now of things, in the simplicity of things – The Way becomes obvious. We can never get there, we can only be there.

from Roadtrip West – by Natalie Safir

. . .driving west in the early summer of our marriage.

We traveled by night in a compact car,
small dog panting in the backseat.

We fled scalding walls of heat toward
an ocean we could only picture.

Even trailer trucks behind us huffing across
the Rockies could not make us give way,

nor fog banks or detours we met full face;
challenged, we pressed north to the redwoods.

These things I knew: we were young and capable;
this was our America, our luck to belong here.

We were pursuing an instinct to find our edge,
look back at our innocence from a distance.

We saw rooms confining our aspirations,
doors to push open to a maze of choices.

– by Natalie Safir from Eyewitness. © Dos Madres, 2016. Previously posted by Garrison Keillor