Making sense of It.

In the mailbox this first sunny morning in a while . . .

On this date in 1945 American soldiers liberated 30,000 prisoners from a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany

Today is the 124th anniversary of Duke Ellington's birth. The composer, pianist, and bandleader was born on this date in 1899 Washington, D.C.

It is also Jerry Seinfeld's birthday. The yada, yada, yada comedian was born on this day in 1954 Brooklyn, New York

Birthdays yesterday: playwright Robert Anderson, born in 1917 New York City and best known for Tea and Sympathy, about the relationship between a prep school boy and his housemaster’s wife, Directed by Elia Kazan, It debuted on Broadway in 1953; Harper Lee, the author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird was born on this date in 1926 Monroeville, Alabama; and it's the 145th anniversary of actor and director Lionel Barrymore's birth in 1878 Philadelphia into the famous Barrymore acting family. His films included Grand Hotel, Dinner at Eight, You Can’t Take it With You, and It's a Wonderful Life.

It is not a “thing,” if anything it is an “It” and It is all One Thing. So, it can't be a “thing.”

Giordano Bruno, an early advocate of the Copernican model, was burned alive in Rome. Among his heresies was his philosophy, affirming that ‘the whole is one’ and that ‘Nature … is none other than God in things’ – Giordano Bruno in 1600. Giordano wasn't the only one. We've advanced from burning people to books being burned by the same old ideology in the hands of the same old politicians. https://aeon.co/essays/why-giordano-bruno-is-still-a-free-speech-hero-today

What I say comes not from me, but from the consciousness common to all of us . . . . As one individual changes, the system changes. – Ram Dass

Laura, the housemaster's lonely wife, shows Tom understanding. As she says to her husband: "The boy is more of a man than you are. Manliness is not all swagger and swearing and mountain-climbing. Manliness is also tenderness, gentleness, consideration. You men think you can decide on who is a man when only a woman can really know." Finally, Laura offers herself to him to prove his sexual normality. As she brings the boy's hand to her open blouse, she says: "Years from now, when you talk about this - and you will - be kind.” – Robert Anderson, from Tea and Sympathy.

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

A horse of course . . .

In Odin's mailbox, staying dry despite this week-long onset of April showers . . .

Thirty-seven years ago today, a flawed reactor design and lax safety standards led to one of the largest nuclear disasters in history. The 1986 USSR Chernobyl disaster has been turned into a tourist attraction by the current regime notwithstanding it was likely part of the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Suffering is not a problem to be solved. It is a truth to be recognized. – Cuong Lu

To honestly face the pain in our lives and the problems in the world, let’s start by looking compassionately and honestly at our own minds. We can become intimate with the mind of hatred, the mind that polarizes, the mind that makes somebody “other” and bad and wrong. We come to know, unflinchingly, and with great kindness, the angry, unforgiving, hostile wolf. Over time, that part of ourselves becomes very familiar, but we no longer feed it. Instead, we can make the choice to nurture openness, intelligence, and warmth. This choice, and the attitudes and actions that follow from it, are like a medicine that has the potential to cure all suffering. – Pema Chödrön

...be careful not to become attached to the goal of becoming detached . . . take a deep breath, and roll with the waves of the unfoldings of ourselves. – James Finley

Actually, if you think about it, we all know each other quite well. We all want happiness and do not want suffering. . .What is it about our minds that keeps us from this recognition, that makes it so easy to forget it? In Tibetan monastic education, one of the first things that young monastics are asked in the debating courtyards is: “Is a white horse white?” The proper answer is “No, the color of a white horse is white.” A horse, like a human, is a being, and beings are not colors. . . – Jeffrey Hopkins (English translator for the Dalai Lama).

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens. I've been knocking from the inside. – Rumi