From nothing, everything . . .

It's Tew's day … and we return to our labors. The mailbox this morning is filled with philosophy . . .

The moment I stop ‘taking for granted,’ there is no end to the surprises I find. – Br. David Steindl-Rast.

At the very moment at which philosophy says you can't directly access the real, humans are drilling down deeper into it. – Timothy Morton, cited by Sophie Strand in The Flowering Wand. For a good synopsis and reviews, check out Waterstone.

Our world view has become Narcissus' mirror. – Sophie Strand.

If you’re doing it right, presence, rather than detaching you, sensitizes you to your environment. It puts you smack-dab in the discomfort . . .where you can grow more skilled at meeting life where it’s at, rather than how you’d prefer it to be. – Rob Brezsney

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the Mystery. – Ram Dass

– from The Book of Hours

We see the brightness of a new page

where everything yet can happen.

Unmoved by us, the fates take its measure

and look at one another, saying nothing. – Rilke

Yin is the mother of the 10,000 things:

Yang creates

from nothing.

– jb

Churchiness isn't a cure . . .

It's Moon day and lots of folks are taking the day off . . . but, not the mailbox . . .

Almost one hundred and forty-one years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. – Heather Cox Richardson

It’s time for Republican voters to start setting higher standards for their candidates. We all suffer when crooks and conmen are permitted to hold office. And it is all the worse when they are men who are not committed to the Constitution. – Joyce Vance

There is such a universal disillusionment with churchiness, which is the building and maintenance of churches and services. We’ve overplayed the church card for much of the last thousand years. It’s like the messenger overtook the message. – Richard Rohr

With the world on fire, or drowning, or no doubt soon, to be freezing … we can now add another newsworthy (?) distraction: rules for going braless...

That still, small voice isn’t coming from the clouds

but from the stars and galaxies, the mycelia of the earth,

the wind and rain in the trees, and

the marrow of your bones.

— jb

Summer: “It ain't over 'til it's over.”

In the Satyr's day mailbox . . .

Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur, has died. He was 76 years old.

The sunken wreck of the Titanic was discovered yesterday in 1985, off the coast of Newfoundland, in what's been called "Iceberg Alley."

Today is the 173rd anniversary of Eugene Field's birth. Known as "The Poet of Childhood,” Field was born in 1850 St. Louis, Missouri.

[There is an] ever present invitation to join in the dance with creation, one with us in our brokenness. The dance never ceases to stir within us, . . . deathless, childlike, and free; an infinite Presence wholly poured out in and as the concrete immediacy of who we simply are, beyond grasping in any way whatsoever. . . .Each time we give ourselves over to our contemplative practices, whatever they might be, we find ourselves, once again, one with the communal mystery in which there is no separate self. – James Finley

. . . except as we have loved / all news arrives as from a distant land. – Mary Oliver, from “Beyond the Snow Belt” in No Voyage. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd; First Edition (January 1, 1963). No Voyage was the first published collection of her poetry. It is now out of print.

Little Boy Blue

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
He dreamed of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,—
Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.

– Eugene Field, The Poems of Eugene Field. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911