A Monday meander: What does it mean to be human?

Watching the skipjack races from the water.

…And, gratitude is the same thing as not taking for granted. Really it’s all part of the via positiva that the mystics talk about. Awe, wonder, gratitude. And, I think we as a species today, we have to ingest this in a deeper way. I think during previous moments in history or eras of history, we were more grateful. I think our secularizing of life has taken things for granted. However, science and the new creation story from science — I mean, 13.8 billion years has brought us here, each of us and all the species that we know — ups the ante on gratitude to know that this is a pretty surprising event that we call the Earth, and the human species, and the rest.

So, yeah, I think when that really seeps in, the new creation story from science, I think a lot of awe, wonder, and gratitude will rise. But we don’t have much time for that seeping to happen. So I think that’s part of the rattling of the cages we have to do today is to take in the new creation story and then draw conclusions from that about how fragile and special this Earth is and our species is.

~ Matthew Fox

A Monday meander: With the boys

At the Point on a rainy day.

No child ever receives a box of colored crayons and says, “What’s the point? I can’t draw.” Nor does she reject a jar of modeling dough because sculpture is too complicated. If you give him a guitar, he gets sounds out of it without fuss. If you ask her to sing, she doesn’t refuse to because she doesn’t know the words or because she hasn’t got a perfect voice: she simply takes a breath, opens her mouth and belts it out!

~ Fabiana Fondevila, Where Wonder Lives

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

~ Albert Camus

A Monday meander: What’s happening

On the dock on Jane’s Island.

Once I had imagined that my journey would be like the Pilgrim’s Progress, where each adventure brings the hero closer to the heavenly city, but the Christian God with whom I had been intoxicated in my teenage years did not survive the theological studies I undertook to serve him (and it was a him).  When I turned outward, angry and heartsick, to political affairs, I found that I was a failure as an atheist, too, for I could not cure myself of praying to a God I no longer believed in.

~ Joanna Macy, from the preface to Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

~ Hildegard Von Bingen

Sifting

Lightning in a bottle.

It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.

~ George Harrison

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

~ Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters

A Monday meander: Surprise adventures

Cape May-Lewes Ferry. Lewes, Delaware.

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else – above all, a travel bureau – arrange everything before-hand?

~ Richard Aldington, 1929

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art.

~ Oscar Wilde

A Monday meander: It was a dark and stormy day

Looking out the kitchen window this morning.

But the beauty is in the walking — we are betrayed by destinations.

~ Gwyn Thomas

Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better.  And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, “What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.”  Yes, evil often seems to surpass good.  But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts.  One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw.  And so I must still have hope.

~ Vincent van Gogh

On and off the water

Somewhere on Daugherty Creek near Janes Island.

Find joy and peace in this very moment.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Just as you throw a stone into the water and the waves go out, similarly your thought waves are going out. Imagine you are on the top of Mount Everest. You are sitting and sending waves out to the entire globe. You are a beautiful magnetic field and you vibrate…Become a beacon of vibratory power of your soul…Send the waves out…One planet, one humanity, one mankind…

~ Yogi Bhajan