Starlight in the Afternoon
It's Thor's day … Northerlies have returned to the Northeast corner of Okieland for one last cooling off before Spring really springs. In anticipation, the mailbox this morning held musical notes.
In every significant field of human understanding—religion, medicine, law, history, philosophy, psychology, even science and mathematics—the musicians associated with this tradition originally laid the groundwork. That’s a story the history books won’t tell you. And though their significance is mostly forgotten nowadays, the signs of their innovations are everywhere for those perceptive enough to see them. – Ted Gioia, Music to Raise the Dead
As Einstein said (though now in 21st Century terms), we have tried to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s software—which often caused the problem in the first place. It is not only relevant but absolutely necessary to [expand] our levels of consciousness. Westerners, including Christians, are rediscovering the value of nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building… not throwing out our rational mind, but adding nondual, mystical, contemplative perspectives. – Richard Rohr
We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It’s also what makes us afraid. Until we can embrace the reality of the “don't know” mind, we will be vulnerable to our ongoing ego's fear attact tactics. – Pema Chödrön (adapted), Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion, Shambhala, 2018.
[Can] any of us truly believe that we are capable of creating world peace when we can't find it in our intimate relationships with family, partners, friends, and neighbors? – bell hooks
Mid-Afternoon After Valentine's DayMid-Winter afternoon hike, half-way
around the neighborhood,
ear-buds blazing
“Afternoon Delight” by the
Starlight Vocal Band. Sunlight
as only mid-afternoon winter contains it.
Stopped mid-hike to watch a couple
holding hands, strolling, lost in their
mid-twenties reveries,
their eternal journey only half-way
into this mid-Winter
afternoon delight.
– jab
Indeed, love may appear to us as some kind of fresh blush on a newly awakened face, arising from relationship—one that has learned, or better perhaps is being remembered, how in the presence of the other to risk everything in each and every and even this very moment.