When in the soul of the serene disciple

Photo by Thomas Merton

When in the soul of the serene disciple
With no more Fathers to imitate
Poverty is a success,
It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:
He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,
Are angry with the noble ruin.
Saints depart in several directions.

Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares,
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

Here you will find
Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
There are no ways,
No methods to admire
Where poverty is no achievement.
His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

What choice remains?
Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
It is the usual freedom
Of men without visions.

~ Thomas Merton

going nowhere

 

Leonard Cohen

“Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.” Leonard Cohen

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/10/pico-iyer-the-art-of-stillness/

Untitled

Robert Lax

There are not many songs

There is only one song

The animals lope to it

The fish swim to it

The sun circles to it

The stars rise

The snow falls

The grass grows

There is no end to the song and no beginning

The singer may die

But the song is forever

Truth is the name of the song

And the song is truth

- Robert Lax poem, no title, no date, no source

learning to use the word "we"

"And we live in a time of real urgency where we have to mine the insights of the past. I guess one way of saying it is, we have to learn to use the word “we” to include all of life on earth. We have to learn to experience that as a terrible and tender beauty. And shape everything we do to protect it."

  - Mary Catherine Bateson, in an interview with Krista Tippet, On Being, "Composing a Life"

https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-catherine-bateson-composing-a-life/

Gott wirt und Gott entwirt

“Gott wirt und Gott entwirt.” That means, “God becomes and God un-becomes,” or translated, it means that “God” is only our name for it, and the closer we get to it, the more it ceases to be God. So then you are on a real safari with the wildness and danger and otherness of God. And I think when you begin to get a sense of the depth that is there, then your whole heart wakens up. I mean I love Irenaeus’s thing from the second century, which said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.”

John O’Donahue, from an interview with Krista Tippett, On Being, “The Inner Landscape of Beauty

https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/