The crooked Way . . .

In Thor's day's mailbox:

Today is the 260th anniversary of the birth of Kobayashi Issa. The Japanese poet was born in 1763 Kashiwabara, Japan. He remains among the recognized masters of the Haiku form. He wrote more than 20,000 of them in his lifetime

DJ Trump has been formally called to account.

The willingness of government officials to ignore the rule of law in order to buy peace gave us enduring reverence for the principles of the Confederacy, along with countless dead Unionists, mostly Black people, killed as former Confederates reclaimed supremacy in the South. It also gave us the idea that presidents cannot be held accountable for crimes, a belief that likely made some of the presidents who followed Nixon less careful about following the law than they might have been if they had seen Nixon indicted.

Holding a former president accountable for an alleged profound attack on the United States is indeed unprecedented, as his supporters insist. But far from being a bad thing to stand firm on the rule of law at the upper levels of government, it seems to fall into the category of “high time.” – Heather Cox Richardson

The inconceivable wish to help all sentient beings always begins with oneself. Our own experience is the only thing we have to share. Other than that, we can’t pretend to be more awake or more compassionate than we actually are. Much of our realization comes from the honest recognition of our foibles. The inability to measure up to our own standards is decidedly humbling. It allows us to empathize with other people’s difficulties and mistakes. – Pema Chödrön

approaching my village

I don't know about the people
but all the scarecrows
are crooked – Issa

Translated by Robert Hass

We cannot avoid the Watercourse Way. It is us, we are It, and it is FAR better to ride the waves than it is to tempt drowning.

Limits? We don't need no stinkin' limits . . .

It’s Tew’s Day and the front range near Colorado Springs is getting its share of heavy Summer rains . . .

“Don't believe in limits.” – Victoria Clark, accepting the 2023 Tony Award, this past Sunday, for her performance as featured actor in the Best Musical Kimberly Akimbo

Systems theory makes the amazing assertion that nature is self-organizing. You don’t need mind, either divine or human, operating from above to make nature behave itself. The whole show is spontaneously self-regulating and self-evolving. Its very dynamics move toward complexity and intelligence. It is alive with mind. – Joanna Macy

Almost every religion’s history begins with one massive misperception; namely, making a fatal distinction between the sacred and the profane. Religions often put all their emphasis on creating sacred places, sacred time, and sacred actions. While I fully appreciate the need for this, it unfortunately leaves most of life “un-sacred.” In authentic mystical moments, any clear distinction between sacred and profane quickly falls apart. . . .Our task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything—even, and most especially, in the problematic. – Richard Rohr

Today is the 158th anniversary celebration of the birth of William Butler Yeats. The Irish poet, considered among the greatest in the English language, was born in 1865 Sandymount, Ireland. His writing celebrated Irish nationalism and Ireland's natural beauty and spirituality.

I read intently the Book of Nature....Into its pages I step in the murky hour just before the dawn, before the rising sun stages its rehearsal, bleeds pink into the edge of night. It’s where you might find me, nose pressed to the glass, when the softening winter sky at last exhales and the first tumble of snowflakes fall, blanketing the world in a quiet like no other. Or, at twilight, the in-between hour when day dissolves into darkness, when on a summer’s eve I surrender to the rising surround sound of crickets and keep watch till the starkeepers trot out the stars.... – Barbara Mahany, posted in Richard Rohr's Meditations.

I am content to follow to its source

Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blest.

– W.B. Yeats from “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan, 1989.

Thinking beneath the skin . . .

In the “Moon-day” mailbox:

I used to think that I ended with my skin, that everything within the skin was me and everything outside the skin was not. . .What I am, as systems theorists have helped me see, is a “flow-through.” I am a flow-through of matter, energy, and information, which is transformed in turn by my own experiences and intentions. Systems theory seeks to define the principles by which this transformation occurs, but not the stuff itself that flows through, for that, in the last analysis, would be a metaphysical endeavor. Systems thinkers Kenneth and Elise Boulding suggest that we could simply call it agape—the Greek and early-Christian word for “love.” – Joanna Macy

The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Lantern-Bearers,” Across the plains, Independently published (May 3, 2023) in Maria Popova's Marginalian

Imagine what would happen if experts stopped only defining and diagnosing patients, and instead taught people to study themselves.

When I Run After What I Think I Want

When I run after what I think I want,

my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;

if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need

flows to me, and without pain. From this

I understand that what I want also wants me,

is looking for me and attracting me.

There is a great secret here for anyone
who can grasp it.

-- Rumi, Rumi Poetry:100 Bedtime Verses. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (2017).

It's damned hard to grasp your stuff

when you are running in a maze

and out of breath.