Pausing for kindness to find us . . .
It's Tew's Day …
Poet and author Naomi Shihab Nye is celebrating her 72nd birthday today. She was born in 1952 in Saint Louis, Missouri
“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.” – Naomi Shihab Nye
James Taylor turns 76 today. The singer/songwriter was born today in1948, Boston, Massachusetts
Liza Minnelli is 78 today. (born March 12, 1946, Hollywood, California
And, Jack Kerouac was born 102 years ago on this date in 1922, Lowell, Massachusetts
Research is indicating the presence, perhaps, of the most debilitating and global disease ...
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth...
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing...
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you ….
– Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. The Eighth Mountain Press; First Edition (October 1, 1994).
Facing the keyhole . . .
The moon on Moon Day is now waxing from new, ten days from the vernal equinox . . . and a lovely day it is here in Okieland.
I'll be looking at the moon … but I'll be seeing you.
More International Women's Day: Lion's Roar sponsored online celebration women of wisdom...March 21-25
Seeing things through a narrow keyhole … there is too much of the self in the way. – Richard Rohr, in Meditations at CAC.
… Facing what is, we struggle to remember the simple character of our own voice. – David Whyte
As the mind develops spiritual qualities and gets rid of all that hinders them, it increasingly gains the ability to see clearly the nature of phenomena, until it perceives the ultimate nature without any obstruction. This perception of phenomena as they really are is the wisdom that knows everything without the least misconception. It is a state of wisdom that cannot be veiled, nor can it deteriorate. – H. H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, in The Way of the Bodhisattva, Shambhala Publications, 2018.
... human kind cannot bear very much reality ... at the still point of the turning world …
– T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton,” in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1980).
A new moon shines on Barbie
It's a Satyr's day . . . and the moon is new.
Many traditions have held that the new moon is a harbinger of new beginnings … and, well, why not?
The heroic vision of Joe Biden. No other path. – Heather Cox Richardson
Let Biden be Biden. Echoes by Joyce Vance in her online column Civil Discourse.
Not unrelated: Today in 1933 newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a special session of Congress and began the first hundred days of enacting his New Deal legislation.
Extending yesterday's International Women's Day celebration:
Juliette Binoche celebrates her 60th birthday today. The award winning actress was born on this date in 1964, Paris
Today in 1913 Virginia Woolf delivered the manuscript for her first novel, The Voyage Out, to the Duckworth Publishing House.
It is the 132nd anniversary of Vita Sackville-West's birth. Famous as a poet and writer in her own right, she was also Virginia Woolf's muse. She was born on this date in 1892 Sevenoaks, Kent, England.
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. – Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own
The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy. It's the disintegration of opposites altogether...The opposite of anthropocentrism is not some Divine Gender. The opposite is Everything...unlike Adam and Eve, we haven't been severed from The Garden. The Everything still includes us...The Animate Everything is a verb. An assemblage of verbs. – Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand, Inner Traditions: Bear and Company, 2022.
The Divine Feminine and The Divine Masculine are separate only in the language that shapes a false, projected perception of individuation to the exclusion of the “other.” Check out the extraordinary film adaptation of Ms. Woof's Orlando with a stellar performance by Tilda Swinton, adapted and directed by Sallie Potter. It's streaming on several platforms.
Oh, and Barbie turns 65 today.
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain – Dolly Parton
from “The Land”
Shepherds and stars are quiet with the hills.
There is a bond between the men who go
From youth about the business of the earth...
Strange lovers, man and earth! their love and hate
Braided in mutual need; and of their strife
A tired contentment born. – The poem “The Land” by Vita Sackville-West is in the public domain.