Reminding the Chior: Thou Art a Verb . . .

In our Sol's day mailbox, this cold start to a soon to be mild day:

There are two types of people: those who believe everything is a miracle and those who believe nothing is.

It is possible . . . to live from a place of wisdom and compassion rather than delusion and reactivity. This is where the path of The Way leads, and no matter how far from “enlightenment” we may feel, if we are purposfully sincere, even for a moment, we are moving toward it. The journey of a thousand miles is taken in the first step.

Just because it can occur, there is no quick, it-could-happen-any-day-now enlightenment plan. – Marshall Glickman, in Zen Moorings.

Engaging with a world on fire.

We do not know where the horizon will take us. We have a glimmering, an inclination, a notion that somehow we will find something beyond our present knowledge. The excitement is palpable and belongs to the horizon. – David Whyte, from the opening to A Star for Navigation.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me …

… I come into the peace of wild things
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

– Wendell Berry. The Peace of Wild Things, Penguin, 1968.

A prophet’s fortune

In the mailbox this cloudy and cold Satyr's day . . .

There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. – Euripides

Today is the solemn third anniversary of Trump’s effort to undo American democracy...It’s a disturbing convergence of events. – Joyce Vance

It's the birthday of poet Khalil Gibran, born in the1883 mountain village of Bsharri, Lebanon.

It's also the birth date of Carl Sandburg. The journalist, poet, novelist, and biographer was born in 1878 Galesburg, Illinois

The poet W. D. Snodgrass was born on yesterday's date in 1926 Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania

Also yesterday, Umberto Eco was born in the 1932 Piedmont region of Italy.

Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, Speak to us of Crime and Punishment.

And he answered, saying:

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.

– Khalil Gibran, “On Crime and Punishment,” in The Prophet, Alfred A. Knopf , 1923.

Dancing with ghosts . . .

In Freya's mail box this morning, wet with rain mixed with snow . . .

All species are equal, but some are more equal than others. – George Orwell, Animal Farm ,Secker and Warburg,. London 1945.

There is clear evidence that there are “Keystone” species maintaining balance in ecosystems tiny and global. Humans are considered “Super Keystone” for the planetary ecosystem. How we replace intolerance with tolerance appears to be our #1 challenge. How we do that and eliminate greed is rather beyond me this morning. And, in case you didn't know, the other major Keystone for the planet is the Arctic.

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. – Rilke

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children. – Gandhi

Like never before we need the haunting silence of the Ghost Dance.

There are no monsters. Only bad re-writes of forgotten stories. – Sophie Strand,