A Monday meander: Numbers game

The New Twins.

When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (anima). Before the resonance of love, we are largely blind to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to “save” us and help us live in union with the source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven’t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love…

~ Richard Rohr

You have to have compassion because it gives you the juice, the power, the passion to move. When you open to the pain of the world you move, you act. But that weapon is not enough. It can burn you out, so you need the other—you need insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between good guys and bad guys, but that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. With insight into our profound interrelatedness, you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern.

~ Joanna Macy

A Monday meander: Fall in (to) summer

Four crows. (2012)

Anything [manifested] in the physical world is already history.

~ Caroline Myss

A Monday meander: On a personal note

The twins, one foggy morning by the pond.

Is it time uninterrupted? Only the present comprehended? Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains, no stops, devoid of dimension, whizzing by massive posters with repeating images? Catching a fragment from a window seat, yet another fragment from the next identical frame? If I write in the present yet digress, is that still real time? Real time, I reasoned, cannot be divided into sections like numbers on the face of a clock. If I write about the past as I simultaneously dwell in the present, am I still in real time? Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory. I looked out into the street and noticed the light changing. Perhaps the sun had slipped behind a cloud. Perhaps time had slipped away.

~ Patti Smith, on the fluidity of past and present

The wounded trees and other tales

The crossing.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

~ Octavia E. Butler, The Parable of the Talents

Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.

~ Octavia E. Butler, The Parable of the Talents

Playing with circles

In the rock.

The resolution of a koan requires a certain trust of mystery, a faith that there is an answer which will come in time.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen

The queen of flowers

After the rain.

Peonies are old-fashioned favorites of many gardeners because of their spectacular late-spring blossoms.  Each spring new shoots rise up from below the ground and develop into clumps of large leaves.  Its name means “healing,” and this embodies its protective energies.

… The peony does have some interesting folklore.  Its roots were used to carve amulets because of its protective energy.  If stormy weather arose while on a boat, a peony was burned like incense and the rough weather would calm.  To the Chinese, the peony is the queen of flowers and was always associated with the summer season.  They have grown peonies for 2,000 years.

… Some traditions tell us that the peony was created by the goddess of the moon to reflect her light at night.  Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, alignment with this flower helps your own inner sun reflect out into life more distinctly.  It helps to cleanse the aura of negative energies and it reminds us that the manifestation of any healing and artistic abilities will be beneficial now and that opportunities to use them are at hand.

~ Ted Andrews, Nature-Speak

Irises in bloom

Iris and twirls.

This flower is sacred to all who worship and reverence the virgin goddess in any of her forms.  As a flower, it is associated with creativity and self-expression.  It is a flower which draws to us higher inspiration and psychic purity.  Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow who led souls to the Elysian Fields.  Alignment with the flower named for her awakens within the auric field a strong sense of peace and the hope for new birth, and thus as a messenger, it reminds us to maintain hope for a new birth and new peace will soon be at hand.

~ Ted Andrews, Nature Speak