Stubborn optimism . . .
It's Freya's day . . . and Okieland is getting a preview of Summer attractions …
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming”- Pablo Neruda
Today is the 146th anniversary of the birth of Lionel Barrymore. One of the true theatrical greats, he was born in 1878 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Check out this visual list of his accomplishments.
Speaking of greats, the psychologist James Hillman was born 98 years ago today in 1926 Atlantic City, New Jersey
David Letterman turns 76 today. He was born today in 1947 Indianapolis, Indiana.
And, in 1981 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space.
For the "stubborn optimist" facing the future.
The Ecuadorean moms selling candy bars in subway stations know more about real life than Garrison Keillor or I or maybe even you.
The Haiku Way
The rain in Spain falls
wherever it damned well must.
The Way is all ways.
– jab 4.10.24
Standing in mid-stream
It's Odin's day … Northerlies and rain are in the forecasts for our Northeastern Okieland . . .
Anne Lamott turns 70 today. The “people's author” was born on this day in 1954 San Francisco, California. If you don't already know her, check out her most worthy TED presentation.
Ninety-nine years ago today, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was published today in 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
[T]here is death, and there is commemoration of life, both happening at the same time. That is reality, and it is good to stand in the middle of the stream and live rather than stand on the bank and witness things from afar, to have both a sense of participation and also a sense of wise detachment because one knows the reality of things. – Amitava Kumar in Tricycle, March 4, 2024
The Way of the Way . . .
. . . cannot be told Lao Tszu told,
save by Yang's feeble grasping
attempt to comprehend
the incomprehensible Yin
of infinite Silence
mothering the ten-thousand things.
– jab
Historic confusion
It's Tew's day . . . Northerlies are bringing increasing storm chances tonight to Okieland . . .
Today in 1865 General Robert E. Lee , commander of the Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America, signed a treaty of surrender at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War.
And, in 2003, Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces on this day, several weeks after the start of the Iraq War, a conflict begun to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein because of his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
“You have a right to be confused. . . Do not take anything on trust merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it’s written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it.” – Bhudda 2500 years ago. True then. True today.
The philosophy of Science holds that every claim contains the possibility of error. I would claim that such claims are rooted in the symbol systems used in their utterance – written or spoken – whether derived from mathematical / statistical proofs or logical reasoning. Repeated proofs decrease but do not eliminate the possibility of error. Of course, I could be wrong.
The belief that the world is brute matter us relatively recent, dating back to the rise of the concept of sola ratio – reason alone. The 16th Century saw science dividing from an association with faith and in the process dividing humans from an animate world. Now, five centuries later, we are slowing coming to grips with a new reality.
Turns out, the world isn't dead matter after all. Under the sloppy paint job of materialism and rationalism the animate world was just asleep. What does it mean to wake up to the animacy of the world outside your front door?
We have been living in the nightmare of reason long enough. Fortunately there are better dreams to be had. Outside our own heads. Reason, it turns out, to be complete must embrace that which it is not, in the same way that probability embraces error. There is reason in what appears to be chaos. Which clearly has a mind of its own.
– after Sophie Strand in “Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping World,” The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2022.