Gaia Community: Rareflight's Blog

What has your response been to climate change?

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:56:30 GMT

I got a new job. I'm now working full-time (as compared to part of my responsibilities previously) on renewable energy and carbon asset management projects. I've been at it almost full time for about 6 months now but the weather seems pretty much the same.

Tags: Q&R, right, correct, knowledge, clarity

A Foray into Haiku

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:37:40 GMT

For Janie, who helped show me how to beat the devil....

winter sky whistles
the sun cups its tawny hand
into the chopped sea

Kris Kristofferson To Beat the Devil

Tags: Haiku, winter sky, poetry, sunset

Pick three words that describe you as you are right now.

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:58:48 GMT

I am. Not.

Tags: QaR, words, description, self

What makes something sacred?

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:55:48 GMT

It does not require intrepretation. It is timeless, independent of context and an expression of our highest selves. The things most sacred are a reflecting pool...they validate our belief in ourselves - not just some higher power.

Goethe: Was kann ein mensch im leben mehr gewinnen als das sich Gott-Zatur ihm offenbare?

What more can one gain in life than to have God-Nature reveal Himself through one's self?

That is what makes something sacred.

Tags: Q&R, sacred, reverence, holy

A Book About the Sky (an excerpt)

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:15:12 GMT

Ulysses to Persephone, Journal Entry, 15 September

Dearest Persy,

We've brought the vessel in for minor repairs. It's still raining here in Corsica. We've once again lost a second mate (sent on a shore errand and never to return) and it's difficult at best to find any reliable help here. It is in my best estimation the Southern Mediterranean influence; it inures a certain contentment that dulls the senses and indeed I feel the laconic island air dulling my senses as well as the keen spirit of the men. I at times and increasingly more often feel the onset of torpor here and it's only with vigilance to our bound duties that we press on.

And so, with some good fortune bestowed by favor of the Gods and the enlistment of some fine crafts and tradesmen here we will at first light set sail for the Southern Ocean. Despite the season we do expect rough passage and I harbor some concern if the traverse timbers at the keel are up to the task. We are applying pitch and rosin at all joints we have found weak but it's the stresses below waterline that give me some pause. Tomorrow we attempt a trial of the sails and timbers and if all goes well we will reach Porto Vecchio by nightfall. After that and upon taking on much needed supplies and six more men commissioned to me in an agreement with the local Consulate we will tack westward through the Strait. I find it helpful to focus only on the known and not the unknown. There are others surely more experienced and braver than I; and I have benefited from the accounts of a few sailors that have successfully passed the Cape Verdes and returned to recount their travels. They are few indeed, and from my encounters, those that are eager to talk have almost certainly never made the journey; I have found it a far better measure of the worth of their advice by their reluctance to discuss the trip at all. It is to be expected given the privations, and loss of men, and constant punishment from wind and swell that are the hallmark of the southern latitudes.

Still, do not darken your spirits or your thoughts with such troubles; we are an able-bodied and skilled crew. As our vessel will soon be sound and we have only now left to put our faith in the parchment maps we have assembled, and the winds and each other, I bid you my deepest and warmest blessings and trust that you find comfort in our thoughts of each other.

Ulysses

Tags: A book about the sky

Leaving Does That

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:51:46 GMT

Leaving does that
like the slow drip of the big guns
hurtling their payload into the darkness;

the tired calving of an ancient glacier
that slips its bonds and hefts its weight
into the frothy night waters;

roiling the smooth surface below
of the unseen and unforeseen
leaving does that;

an irreversible commitment
surrendering the dimension of millions
in one final exhale;

the slow curve and rugged sluice
are sent forth - as for the icy flotsam
somewhere in the far off distance
a silent shore waits to receive

the big guns are silent now, cooling
still remembering the shock of
sharp crack and jagged thunder
the whistling of the ballistic sear

somewhere in the far off distance
a silent shore waits to receive
leaving does that

Tags: Poetry

Sunlight: Look what the cat dragged in....

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:53:20 GMT

After a meltdown, a mental "lockdown" and 2 1/2 year walkabout through strange and exotic lands, I'm back, dancing on my own grave it seems. I do appreciate the support and encouragement of some very dear friends that helped return me to this place (you know who you are! :-))

Hello again all you wonderful people. Won't you be, oh won't you be, my neighbor?

Rareflight

Tags:

Roadside Cafe'

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:23:35 GMT

roadside cafe

Old Lovers at a Roadside Cafe'
(A tragicomedy in 3 acts)

I met you
for lunch and nothing more;
as thin coffee in five ounce cups
provided speckled porcelain relief

I held you
against the broad breadth of time;
as a child holds a flower
if not for fate begotten wonder

I left you
as a curl of dust haloed your feet
a brave and crooked little smile
raised and held for my sake

Tags: poetry, relationships, human condition

Tabula Rasa

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:30:58 GMT

Tabula Rasa

Tabula rasa (Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world

-- Wikipedia

Estragon (aphoristic for once): We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

what should now be said

to the young man grown old

what charmed wind

struck and calendered his days

and left his songs unsung

whilst the slow scolding etch of time

utters its sole remark

into the vibrant air

Estragon to Vladimir: I've found a grass path I'll follow to its end

what torn loss

squirming with intellect and wonder

was ushered to the door

and left standing there;

how unrolls now the pinch of pain

left there by its charges

what hurt thing

now arches its back lazily

builds a fire de facto over the head

and asks: why is it?

Vladimir to Estragon: I've found all manner of speaking no cope for words

whose yearning was it

that held its breath easily

which lie

spread amongst all the old lies

left its mark of grief

coloured clouds of despair

and launched the breach

of air

Vladimir to no one in particular: I've found what fullness of self was left hiding there...

what trial is still held between clenched teeth

and chasms of silence

what cavernous vent

tears again this way

where sour history gives foaming rent

all beliefs contain some form of lie

hidden deep beneath their meaning

Estragon: I've found it's not enough to be worldly in affairs....

there wandering child goes I

little and innocent face washed clean

I was held mortal brief by hollow stem

and quite simply, plumply

lowered gently into the ground

Tags: tabula rasa, finding original potential, childhood, religion, philosophy, loss of innocence, human condition, poetry

Elm

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:13:24 GMT

The smooth west wind
pulled your silver side to the sun;

At seventy miles an hour
there wasn't time

to know you;

it creased my hair
and sent my deciduous love flying....

where these tiny boats

curled

into a fold of air;

conspired

to let me

love you

the only way I know how

Tags: nature

Afternoon in Amsterdam

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:09:03 GMT

Pulling my easy time from the moments of the day, I sit now lightly on the step of the stair. Shall I walk to the thicket where wild things play, or leave them alone to ferret out their day?

I can't now intrude on another's wonder, elucidated either from the everpresent now or each other; even those instances where it is enjoined or contrived (and who am I to judge?), it was acquired in a universe of infinite possibilities that did not include me; and so it is theirs solely to consume or enjoy, as they find it now. No. I shall find my own. Still. Where can one go these days for sustenance?

To the fair Laundromat or the bookstore cornered? Shall I again fill my day with the centuries of heavy, musty pages or simply light out upon my way, letting the buzz of afternoon heat leaven the air in front? How shall I be changed at the end of the day, depending on the course I choose? Which makes me smarter? More importantly, which makes me happier, by lights and measures, and happier still when those things are put asunder?

Let us go then, you and I. So that's it, Prufrock revisited and a stroll down cavernous city streets. I'll stroll to the pub that serves Belgian beers and never takes checks (and, of the many artifacts that adorn the brown-café walls, has my favorite directly behind the bar: The white coffee cup, WWII-vintage American GI on the side, looking a little smug in his netted helmet, strap undone, his ruddy cheeks and gee-whiz grin purposely incongruous with the embossed caption: How about a big ol' cup of shut the fuck up?).

That's the destination; it's almost always the destination when I choose this path, but I never arrive. Well sometimes, but only if I struck out for someplace else. That's the way it is. A turning of the screw and the gentle sashay of fate, Lorenz's butterfly never flaps the same way twice, and we arrive, while never arriving. Something pulls at our cape, but we don't know what it is. I'll tell it a story if I can find the time. I'll throw it in an urn and keep it on the shelf, if it will ever stop its ceaseless shifting and hiding. Ayn Rand reminded us that men have for centuries struck out down roads, armed with nothing but their own vision, but those were headier times. I've barely begun to crawl, how now shall I walk?

Chimay Dubbel, als' u blieft. I'm driven lightly by the more secular thought of a beer, or not, and the metallic taste of summer city air upon the tongue. Tell me now, did I comb my hair, did I say grace to the day and good-bye to the dog, or did I simply float through the morning? I'll see him again soon; the rest will have to wait. I'm locked under the sky like a dome and proceed apace to its edge. I've learned to not be seduced by what the wind whispers, at times like these; it knows not when to stop nor come up for air. One false move and I'll be in Idaho, when I finally awake.

So I navigate tenuously along the planar surfaces of Cambridge brick walls, the city streets and the muscular summer air. Bracketed this way, I can arrive unassisted at the tail of the thread without encountering the edge of the world.

Should I indulge my habit of looking casually but intently into the eyes of strangers passing by? This is an unnerving but useful trait for seeing their self, the tired child behind the mask of complicit pain. I don't just look deeply; I do this to allow mine to reach out to theirs; a clumsy attempt at an embrace perhaps; an acknowledgement of their fragility, and hence mine; their innocence, long since heaped upon by the harsh schoolmaster of their lives; their pain and its false power. The amount of sadness hidden there is staggering. Good sunglasses help, protecting all concerned from an unwanted intrusion, while still allowing some type of naked communication between their inner child and mine, filtered through a bronze, polarized pane.

Pulling their genuine selves next to mine, just for a moment, is terrifying but often invigorating. It lets us connect for a brief and glorious instant. A blessing gently pushed their way and we're off again, like boats shoved from shore pilings or the undocking of craft from space stations.

Lack of sleep intensifies the effect, or low blood sugar, and the best lens by far for engaging in this exercise is a robustly acquired hangover - so far the only beneficial byproduct I have found. This is for some reason particularly effective at stripping away the layers that exist in between each and any one of us as we slide by each other in the cramped confines of our day, sometimes too much so; it has an edginess that can be overwhelming in the intensity of the experience. The best cure for that? Well, a drink or two seems to have the perfect polishing effect. So. You can quickly see the downside of this strategy.

Why do these things make a difference? Are the filters by which we see the world simply biochemistry? (It would appear so. Aldous Huxley wrote an entire book affirming this point.) We, with our carefully constructed webbing of delicate synapses, like spider's silk and similarly disturbed by the slightest of breezes.

Can I make a difference this way? Do I make matters worse? No la puerta? No se nada. It's not a light question, nor an answer that can be settled upon with any reasonable assurance. Who am I to ask of intimacy from others, especially without their consent? What is it that we fear losing when we share our authentic selves? Why do we consider it such an affront to be genuinely honest with each other? We've trained ourselves to avoid it smoothly. The day's moments are forged in metal casts, tumbled upon anvils and then tumbled further unto the city's masonry floor. There we struggle to find the softness in the clanging ingots scattered before us. Or we've longed stopped trying, and simply struggle onward, pulling the hairshirt on with the morning news.

It's cruel, and it's self-inflicted. Entropy assails us; Time rolls on and we fail or succeed in varying degrees, pulled by time and the promise of something unseen. Can we awaken from this dream? I wonder. Now W.H. Auden: "All the conventions conspire to make this fort assume the furniture of home; lest we should see where we are, lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night who have never been happy or good."

Lovingkindness sometimes finds a door, or a crack to grow, and there works to transform certain energies, leavening crystals in a pot of clay; liquid and alive it feeds the world. But it's difficult, incredibly difficult, for this to occur when we're simply peering out of our deadlights looking for another, as Beckett knew. Still, the whole process moves forward, confirming that we've somehow managed to stay sufficiently connected - I imagine only just barely - and by a whisker have kept worlds from disintegration and somehow averted the expiration of our collective consciousness.

These factors combine to result in what is the obvious: We eek out our days completely absorbed in the private interiority of things, surrounded by the stone monuments to our own surrender. It is still possible, and refreshingly not so uncommon, to acquire the fleeting, hopeful glance from those impossibly optimistic souls still not quite consumed by the glare of suffering and the ravages of time, death's handmaiden. And then much rarer still are the encounters with the sentinels.

This exchange usually results in a mildly humorous and moderately terrifying moment of instant warmth, and in the instantaneous docking I in turn am blessed by their calm abiding. May I help you? I'm fine, thanks for asking. By your furtive trembling, you look as if you could use a little help of your own, however. May you find as much reward in the journey as the treasure you seek, and peace to you. I'm released just as quickly, and they're gone, creasing the fabric of the throng behind.

Auden knew this reflexively, composing his own prayer to the aspiring struggle:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

This place we at any moment in space and time call home gives up her secrets only when pressed and plied, in between the sinew and bone. I stand, neither impeded from in front nor expunged from behind, on the threshold of some great mountain pass. Something far off beckons. I must move now, quick as light, shielded from the sigh of self-pity, seeking this new plane. The minstrel's lyre tinkels, pianissimo, somewhere just ahead and off to the right, beckoning like a siren. I slip my hands in my pockets, giving a long glance backwards, over the right shoulder, and ease off the curb.

I'm drifting westward across the wide street, my blood turning comfortably bohemian by degrees and desires. Somewhere not too far off, the metro buses are making little rocks out of big ones. The currents continue their run in the streets, thick as blood and granular with decay. The canyon walls ripple, banlieues in the making. The city's expeller pulls the humanity forward, this way and that, with the capillary action of a candle wick. The gears grind and catch, the great sliding iron straining to perform its beast-of-burden work.

Approaching a corner, I turn right once more, and step onto a long, narrow street. Its arc mimics the spine of a swaybacked horse, its dimpled blackness glistening, and I fix my eyes on the farthest slope, rising gently towards the afternoon sun.

Tags: life, love, human condition, city

Why Do I Wake in the Morning?

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:14:55 GMT

I've been thinking about birds lately, or at least one in particular. There's a woodpecker outside my window nearly every day now. I'm confused as to what type, because they all seem to have similar markings and similar names. I have more confidence it's a male because of his red tuft. Admittedly I have little reference for comparison, but I'm surprised at how highly successful he seems to be. His method of hunting - repeatedly banging one's head against a hard wooden object with incredible speed and force, until the quarry is retrieved - seems incredibly difficult, even by nature's consistently harsh standards. What I find more amazing is that his (super) natural abilities apparently are not diminished by my presence, or my kin. Let's face it: We humans are insufferably noisy creatures. We announce our arrival with a clang and a clamor, stomp about with our self-important machinations and then depart with a huge auditory wash and wake behind us. Even the quietest city streets are a cacophony of sights and sounds that impose upon the natural background; noisy footprints in the snow-falling-upon-snow softness of nature. And yet somehow, this little woodpecker serenely goes about his work, his survival, completely unperturbed by the whole course of human affairs.

To make his living means to be attuned to the most ethereal subtleties. The hawk on the fence post, whose skills are impressive enough, seems to have an easier time of it from my perspective. I can't promise I could spot a small furry rodent from many yards away, but I can at least grasp the concept. The woodpecker's skills inhabit the same region as life-after-death and the interior of stars: Not just unknown, but unknowable, at least for me in the normal course of things. How much noise, without amplification, does a grub make in the process of turning wood into wormwood? Less than an eyelash closing? More than a flower opening? My friend here can detect not just the grub's motions, but his location, his orientation within the tree and his size. Who knows what else? Can he tell the tasty ones from the run-of-the-mill? Can woodpeckers gauge how well a grub fared the winter, feeling a rush of anticipatory excitement when they detect an especially plump one?

His hunting method is a balance of extremes; a cyclical display of dichotomous behaviors. First, a staccato burst with his jackhammer beak. Nothing subtle about that. He fiercely announces his presence, attacking the tree with a fury, like barbarians at the castle door, terrorizing the poor townfolk inside. Then.....listening....listening....listening intently to the far away gossamer whispers of bug scratch. Perhaps a hop here, a headcock there, that thing that seems a signature of birds. Then another furious, staccato burst. The echoes reverberate off surrounding objects like an african drum, but with a difference: Unlike skinned percussion instruments, the individual notes don't blur together. His strikes are incredibly fast. Faster than the fastest drum roll, yet each machine-gun stroke remains an individual note, coupled with its echo. Then more listening, fixing his eyes like lasers on a single focal point. I imagine him holding his breath, although that's probably not right. And all the while, he remains nonplussed by the air conditioner's noisy fan. The cars on the street seem to have no ill effect. Nor does the next street over, which I find more annoying, with its constant bustle of transient traffic. Are these at different frequencies? The racket of the a/c unit sounds like the perfect white noise machine, meaning it's producing lots of undifferentiated noise in all ranges of the spectrum (or at least the spectrum available to my senses). Does he tune them out, not hear them at all, or simply muscle through with his supersonic skills?

Are his concentration skills, his ability to focus, honed by the fact that his life depends on being successful at this? As a mid-life human, I sometimes forget that every non-domesticated creature on this planet is focused, to the exclusion of everything else, on its continued survival. Unlike us, the next meal for them is not a trivial matter. Come to think of it, neither is the risk of being something else's next meal. What capacities could we tap and skills could we hone if we lived the same way? Is there a way to do so without the obvious downside of living on the edge of survival? I doubt it. There doesn't seem to be any way to fake the intensity of living each moment like it may be one's last. We're at our best when acting with adrenaline or in serene contemplation. Goethe: Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. We vow to do so and yet easily slip back into the coma, lulled by the sedatives of daily life. Who creates the sedatives? We do. We work hard, individually and collectively, to make our lives more comfortable, more convenient.

So perhaps my woodchopping, ultrasonic friend can serve as inspiration for me, so that in some small way I can learn to live each moment rounded to its fullest; more alive, more aware, and in doing so extend life's boundaries beyond its current limits. As we age, we suffer sclerosis to our vision, to our creativity, to our capacities. We must struggle every day to be more desirous to live, and in doing so, live more fully. Our nemesis, that which preys upon us, is pernicious. It is the lure of comfort and the tyranny of custom, among other things. Unless we struggle daily against it, we resemble more the cows grazing for the slaughter than the wild, sleek things in the forest.

Explorer, ultra-distance cyclist and National Geographic writer Dan Buettner is on a quest to find commonalities amongst those of us that live the longest, healthiest lives. There are places on this planet where the people routinely live past the age of 100. What do they eat, how do they spend their day, how often do they share a laugh with a family member? One thing that he discovered in his studies, without exception: They have purpose. Of the first group Buettner studied, he said the following: "Okinawans do not even have a word for retirement. They have one word that imbues their entire adult life, and that's ikigai, which means, 'Why do I wake up in the morning?'

In the end, it always comes back to that. "Why do I wake up in the morning?" Do I have the ability to listen intently, so to hear those gossamer whispers when they slide by? The Divine doesn't roll down to us in thunderous tones from mountaintops; it rustles quietly and lies patiently, hidden in the opaque murk from which we construct our lives. Can I hone my skills to razor sharpness, learn to focus like a laser on my purpose, or on finding my purpose? And can I then, with fierce abandon, tear with a staccato burst of my beak into the heart of the matter and the full current of human endeavor? I must try. I must try.

Tags: birds, life, living large, nature, purpose

The Younger You Are, The Wiser You Are

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:53:47 GMT

Hello fellow zaadsters, I have been out of touch for a while and it's nigh time I checked in. I've been living some version of the Harry Chapin song....you know, hows it go again? "....the new job's a hassle and the kid's got the flu....." or something like that. But life is still grand! I just got a note from my buddy Tim and was really inspired by his blog about his son. We've got twin 5-month old boys at home and I'm continually amazed at how much they're teaching me. I'm trying to listen to their sage advice like learning to be flexible with your schedule, that wonder and beauty can be found in the simplest of things, and that a little nap in the daytime can change your whole outlook!

And perhaps most of all, I'm trying to internalize the meaning of one other little habit they have: they always - and I mean always - greet the day with a smile on their face....even when they're sick! They're simply happy to be alive, to be on this blue ball, to have parents that love them and a whole day of adventure ahead of them. Richard Wilbur wrote a beautiful poem about the beauty of being in the world in a child-like way:

PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, EARLY MORNING

I can't forget
How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

Nothing upon her face
But some impersonal loneliness, - not then a girl,
But as it were a reverie of the place,
A called - for falling glide and whirl;

As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it,
Rides on over the lip-
Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.

Richard Wilbur 1956

Although a constant struggle, I'm resolving to live my life more in the moment and make each day count. Sometimes I'll ask for your support, and I thank you for all the inspiration you provide here at Zaadz.

Namaste,
Rareflight

Tags: children, Richard Wilbur

Good Life

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:26:51 GMT

Good Life

Softly now, you owe it to the world

And everyone knows that you're my favorite girl

But there are somethings in life that are not meant to be

I'm not meant for you, and you're not meant for me

Here's to our problems and here's to our fights

Here's to our achings and here's to your having...

A good life, from me

Softly now, you owe it to yourself

And dont think that you will be left on the shelf

Cuz, there's someone for you and there's someone for me

Like me, you'll meet them eventually

Here's to your lover and here's to my wife

Here's to your children and here's to your having...

A good life, from me

Loudly now, you've lost all your pain

You're married with children and happy again

Now I'm regretting the moves that I made

Fatal mistakes are so easily made

Enough of my problems they only cause fights

Forget that I rang you and promise that you'll have

Such a beautifully happy and painlessly romantic...

Good life, from me

Good life

--- Francis Dunnery

Tags:

Finding Solutions To The Climate Crisis

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:10:17 GMT

The following speech by Al Gore provides IMO the best summation of what can be done about climate change. While his movie An Inconvenient Truth described all the dire consequences from global warming, the speech he recently gave at NYU provides very compelling evidence on why actions to mitigate / reverse global warming are not only possible, they in the end are actually opportunities in disguise. Another excellent "action plan" and 20-step program to reduce global warming and securing America's energy future has been developed by Energize America. Their strategic and comprehensive plan is available here.

Tags: global warming, climate change, Al Gore, Energy

The Beautiful Changes

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:43:06 GMT

I've been collecting "beautiful poems". Ahh, but what's beautiful? What is beauty? yeah, yeah I know. But I subscribe to the Potter Stewart theory of "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." If you have some that fall in this category, please share! Anyway, here's one by Richard Wilber to give you the idea....

The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides

The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies

On water;
it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed

By a Chameleon's turning his skin to it;

As a mantis, arranged

On a leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes

In such kind ways,

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Richard Wilbur - 1947

Tags:

Contemplation

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:20:36 GMT

Thomas Merton said this fine thing about Contemplation. It reminds that there is no easy, quick fix to our aspirations to be a better person...along with other things it requires perserverance, patience and just good old fashioned work.

"Let us never forget that the ordinary way to contemplation lies through a desert without trees and without beauty and without water. The spirit enters a wilderness and travels blindly in directions that seem to lead away from vision, away from God, away from all fulfillment and joy. It may become almost impossible to believe that this road goes anywhere at all except to a desolation full of dry bones - the ruin of all hopes and good intentions.

The prospect of this wilderness is something that so appalls most people that they refuse to enter upon its burning sands and travel among its rocks. They cannot believe that contemplation and sanctity are to be found in a desolation where there is no food and no shelter and no refreshment for their imagination and intellect and for the desires of their nature.

Convinced that perfection is to be measured by brilliant intuitions of God and fervent resolutions of a will on fire with love, persuaded that sanctity is a matter of sensible fervor and tangible results, they will have nothing to do with a contemplation that does not delight their reason and invest their minds and wills with consolations and sensible joy. They want to know where they are going and see what they are doing, and as soon as they enter into regions where their own activity becomes paralyzed and bears no visible fruit, they turn around and go back to the lush fields where they can be sure that they are doing something and getting somewhere.

And if they cannot achieve the results they desire with such intense anxiety, at least they convince themselves that they have made great progress if they have said many prayers, performed many mortifications, preached many sermons, read (and perhaps also written) many books and articles, paged through many books of meditations, acquired hundreds of new and different devotions and girdled the earth with pilgrimages. Not that all of these things are not good in themselves: but there are times in the life of a person when they can become an escape, an anodyne, a refuge from the responsibility of suffering in darkness and obscurity and helplessness, and allowing God to strip us of our false selves and make us into the new persons that we are really meant to be." - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Tags: Thomas Merton, Spiritual Path, Contemplation, New Seeds of Contemplation

Spiritual Path

http://Rareflight.gaia.com — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:06:03 GMT

The following is an excerpt from Annie Dillard's book, For the Time Being. It sums up in a very succinct and poetic way the experience we've all had, and that which we seek. I hope you find it resonates with you and would appreciate your comments.

Spiritual Path

"Spiritual path" is the hilarious popular term for those night-blind mesas and flayed hills in which people grope, for decades on end, with the goal of knowing the absolute. They discover others spread under the stars and encamped here and there by watch fires, in groups or alone, in the open landscape; they stop for a sleep, or for several years, and move along without knowing toward what or why. They leave whatever they find, picking up each stone, carrying it awhile, and dropping it gratefully and without regret, for it is not the absolute, though they cannot say what is. Their life's fine, impossible goal justifies the term "spiritual". Nothing, however, can justify the term "path" for this bewildered and empty stumbling, this blackened vagabondage - except one thing: They don't quit. They stick with it. Year after year they put one foot in front of the other, though they fare nowhere. Year after year they find themselves still feeling with their fingers for lumps in the dark.

The planet turns under their steps like a water wheel rolling; constellations shift without anyone's gaining ground. They are presenting themselves to the unseen gaze of emptiness. Why do they want to do this? They hope to learn how to be useful.

Their feet catch in nets; they untangle them when they notice, and keep moving. They hope to learn where they came from. "The soul teaches incessantly", said Rabbi Pinnhas (see footnote) [1], "but it never repeats". Decade after decade they see no progress. But they do notice, if they look, that they have left doubt behind. Decades ago, they left behind doubt about this or that doctrine, abandoning the issues as unimportant. Now, I mean, they have left behind the early doubt that this feckless prospecting in the dark for the unseen is a reasonable way to pass one's life.

"Plunge into matter", Teilhard[2]said - and at another time, "Plunge into God." And he said this fine thing: "By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers."

Here is how adept people conduct themselves, according to the Son Master Chinul: "In everything they are like empty boats riding the waves...buoyantly going along with nature today, going along with nature buoyantly tomorrow." Was he describing people now extinct?

"Only by living completely in the world can one learn to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself - even to make of oneself a righteous person." Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this in a letter from prison a year before the Nazis hanged him for resisting Nazism and plotting to assassinate Hitler.

"I can and I must throw myself into the thick of human endeavor, and with no stopping for breath," said Teilhard, who by no means stopped for breath. But what distinguishes living "completely in the world" (Bonhoeffer) or throwing oneself "into the thick of human endeavor" (Teilhard), as these two prayerful men did, from any other life lived in the thick of things? A secular broker's life, a shoe salesman's life, a mechanic's, a writer's, a farmer's? Where else is there? The world and human endeavor catch and hold everyone alive but a handful of hoboes, nuns, and monks. Were these two men especially dense, that they spent years learning what every kid already knows, that life here is all there is? Authorities in Rome or the Gestapo forbade them each to teach (as secular Rome had forbidden Rabbi Akiva to teach). One of them in his density went to prison and died on a scaffold. The other in his density kept his vows despite Rome's stubborn ignorance and righteous cruelty and despite the importunings of a woman he loved. No.

We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the people, events and things of the day - to which we as sophisticated children have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

What to do? There is only matter, Teilhard said; there is only spirit, the Kabbalists and Gnostics said. These are essentially identical views. Each impels an individual soul to undertake to divinize, transform and complete the world, to - as these thinkers say quite as if there were both matter and spirit - "subject a little more matter to spirit," to "lift up the fallen and to free the imprisoned," to "establish in this our place a dwelling place of the Divine Presence," to "work for the redemption of the world," to "extract spiritual power without letting any of it be lost," to "help the holy spiritual substance to accomplish itself in that section of creation in which we are living," to "mend the shattered unity of the divine worlds," to "force the gates of spirit, and cry, ‘Let me come by.'"

When one of his Hasids complained of God's hiddenness, Rabbi Pinnhas said, "It ceases to be a hiding, if you know it is hiding." But it does not cease to hide, not ever, not under any circumstance, for anyone.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rabbi Pinnhas was a Kabbalist who lived in upper Galilee town of Safad in the 18^th Century. A student and scholar of the Torah, he descended from a long lineage of Kabbalists, including Rabbi Isaac Luria, Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Akiva (killed in gruesome fashion by the Romans for his teachings).

[2] Pierre Teilhard de Charding (1881 - 1953) was a Jesuit priest and incredibly prolific paleontologist (his discoveries included Peking Man and the first evidence of hominids in all of Asia). He won (4) medals of bravery for his service as a Corpsman in the trench warfare of World War I. Teilhard wrote (14) books in his lifetime, but was forbidden to teach or publish his entire life because Rome still considered ideas of evolution too "controversial". Later most of his philosophies and teachings were calmly incorporated into Vatican II, and all his books were eventually published after his death. Teilhard maintained a friendship with the widowed Lucile Swan for 23 years, yet remained always faithful to his calling and his vows to the Jesuit Order.

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