Ask your dog . . .
In Thor's day's mailbox on a mild Winter morning ahead of another weekend of cold and a week of rain . . .
Today is the 142nd birth anniversary of A. A. Milne. The author of Winnie the Pooh was born in 1882 London, England.
I see today that everyone on earth / wants the answer to the same question / but none has the language to ask it / Dogs know the answer / by never asking the question / but can't advise us. – Jim Harrison, Songs of Unreason, Copper Canyon Press, 2011. For more Jim Harrison.
The Earth herself is now angry and she is taking revenge with no quarter. – Susan Murphy
As mindfulness becomes steady and observant, the constant change of all physical and mental phenomena is increasingly apparent...Trying to hold on to what changes becomes like rope burn, clinging becomes a cause of suffering. – Jack Kornfield
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said an excited Tigger, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" Said a sleepy Pooh: "What's for breakfast?"
The snow began here this morning / and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain / – not a single answer has been found – / walking out now into the silence and light / feels like one.
– Mary Oliver, “First Snow” in American Primitive, Back Bay Books; First Edition,1983.
More than a pair of docs . . .
Odin's day's mailbox is filled with paradox :
An unprecedented flu strain is killing birds and other mammals with human potential possible, but not imminent.
Because paradox undermines dual thinking at its root, the dualistic mind immediately attacks paradox as weak thinking or confusion, somehow separate from and inferior to hard logic. The modern phenomenon of fundamentalism displays an almost complete incapacity to deal with paradox, and shows how much we’ve regressed. Today the church is trying to catch up to what mystics have always known, and great scientists now teach as well. – Fr. Richard Rohr
God made a dictator. . . the Lincoln Project.
Today is William Stafford's birth date. A poet's poet, he was born in 1914 Hutchinson, Kansas.
What's in My Journal
… Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
– William Stafford, “What's in My Journal” from Crossing Unmarked Snow. University of Michigan Press.
The Way
cannot be told, Lao Tsu told,
Paints but leaves no trace.
With no intent, wanders.
Searches but finds not,
finds but does not use nor save.
Knows no thing, knows everything.
Silent,
always speaking.
Tone deaf, it creates symphonies.
Always learning teaching
the ways of life's winds.
North Star, Southern Cross.
– JB
Destroying questions . . .
It's Tew's day and the Arctic vortex is easing its grip on Okieland ever so slightly . . .
… and it's the birth date of essayist and cultural critic Susan Sontag. She was born on this day in 1933 New York City.
Robert W. Service was also born on this date. The Canadian poet was born in 1874 Preston, England.
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.— Robert Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” Songs of a Sourdough, Barse and Hopkins, New York City, 1907 (original publisher). This poem is in the public domain.
Do you really mean it? – Soren Gordhamer
Democracy is not a noun, but a verb. It only exists if we do it. Conflict, struggle, change are ongoing components of a true democracy. Fear of the “other” easily leads to its dissolution into authoritarian rule. It does not happen overnight. – TED Democracy with Hungarian Tessza Udvarhelyi https://www.ted.com/talks/tessza_udvarhelyi_how_to_build_democracy_in_an_authoritarian_country?
It is we what needs fixing:
The patriarchal worldview imposed upon us is such that we would become Narcissus's mirror...We have no more time for abstraction nor moralizing. Species collapse every day bringing down other beings they have been mutualistically involved with for millenia. Conversely, this does not call for the manic techno-narcissistic death dance of trying to “fix” the world. It calls for slowing down and looking into the pool. What we see is not merely a reflection. We are in the pool. We are not outside of the life forms we are damaging, polluting and destroying. We are intimately of them. – Sophie Strand, in The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine.
We need heroes... be one...vote to save our democracy and protect our Constitution from the MAGA authoritarians.
“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions . . . . The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is. ― Susan Sontag