Springtime musings

Beauty and grace.

So many beings in the universe love us unconditionally.  A bird song can express joy, beauty, and purity, and evoke in us vitality and love. The trees, the water, and the air don’t ask anything of us; they just love us. Even though we need this kind of love, we continue to destroy these things. We should try our best to do the least harm to all living creatures.

We humans think we’re intelligent, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce symmetrical flowers; a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us to recognize and cultivate the noblest nature in ourselves.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have

A Monday meander: Imagining what’s possible

Imagining what spring will bring.

There is a pattern to the universe and everything in it, and there are knowledge systems and traditions that follow this pattern to maintain balance, to keep the temptations of narcissism in check. But recent traditions have emerged that break down creation systems like a virus, infecting complex patterns with artificial simplicity, exercising a civilizing control over what some see as chaos. The Sumerians started it. The Romans perfected it. The Anglosphere inherited it. The world is now mired in it. The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

Security blankets and stuffies

Sitting in church. (Antioch Church in Princess Anne, MD. They have a bear in each pew as comfort for those who need them.  If someone feels the need to take the bear home with them, someone else comes along with a new bear.)

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home–they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Future or past?

Nature’s mandala in the woods.

The circle is a reminder that each moment is not just the present, but is inclusive of our gratitude to the past and our responsibility to the future.

– Kazuaki Tanahashi

A Monday meander: Bloganuary and challenges

Sunlight, reflections, and a kingfisher chattering at me near sunset on the last day of 2023.

Here is where our most challenging work lies, in restoring a relationship of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. And love.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

The crisis begins without warning, shatters our assumptions about the way the world works, and changes our story and the stories of our neighbors. The reality that was so familiar to us is gone suddenly, and we don’t know what is happening. . . .

If life, as we experience it, is a fragile crystal orb that holds our daily routines and dreams of order and stability, then sudden and catastrophic crises shatter this illusion of normalcy. . . . I am referring to oppression, violence, pandemics, abuses of power, or natural disasters and planetary disturbances. . . .

We can identity three common elements in every crisis: The event is usually unexpected, the person or community is unprepared, and there is nothing that anyone could do to stop it from happening. Even if there are signs everywhere that something is not right, we tend to ignore the warnings and the signposts. Not even sky writing, or messengers from other worlds, would be able to shift our gaze from the comfort of our daily routines. Thus, the slave catchers, the roundups for native removal, the pandemics, devastating hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions catch us off guard. . . .

When the unexpected happens during a communal crisis, we are not alone. We are with friends and neighboring villagers, and we all experience the same break in reality. Bereft of words, all of us hold the same question: How could this be happening? . . .

I consider crisis contemplation to be an aspect of disorder that prepares communities for a leap toward the future. This is a leap toward our beginnings. We are not just organisms functioning on a biological level; our sphere of being also includes stardust and consciousness. We all have a spark of divinity within…

~ Barbara A. Holmes, Crisis Contemplation

A Monday meander: A nor’easter rolls through

Sunset luminosity and reflections.

Anything that’s shiny, shines due to its reflective quality. Reflection. People usually think that you are shiny because you are shiny. But what does it actually mean? It means that you reflect back to others the beauty in themselves and the love and care that they give to you. It’s never actually about you. It’s actually about everyone else. Your capability to reflect determines how luminous you are.
— C. JoyBell C

This. Is where you ARE. Be active in what you’ve got, not suckling some prescribed monastic salvation belonging to another era that isn’t yours.

Start living all these luminous philosophies in the down-n-dirty texture of the real world for others to see and trip over and align with. Try not segregating yourself so much, limiting your choices to one world or the other.

— Laurie Perez, The Look of Aime Martine

A Monday meander: Sassafras Mountain

Misty morning sunrise here on the ranch.

… Bliss is like the sun, which represents pure, unfiltered, energetic experience of the mind.  It is too much for us, as embodied beings, to experience.  It would annihilate the body in the same way getting too close to the sun would annihilate our planet.  It is an experience of the mind; the body cannot hold it.

Happiness is the heat and light we experience from the sun as earth-bound creatures.  However, we can’t always feel the full light and warmth of the sun.  There are cloudy days and cold, wintery days during which we feel disconnected from the sun.  Joy, on the other hand, is not only about feeling the warmth and light from the sun but also remembering that the sun is always there, even when the day is cloudy and cold.  Joy is the consistent state of believing in the sun and having that belief constantly sustain us when we choose it.

~ Lama Rod Owens, The New Saints