Reasons to meditate, if you need them

Meditation is always becoming. Meditation is always transformation. Meditation always moves us from one place to another; from unconsciousness to awareness, from tension to relaxation, from being scattered to being centered, from a shallow relationship with our environment and ourselves to a deeper one, from sleep to wakefulness, from a sense of God’s absence to the sense that God was in this place all along and I didn’t know it!

Alan Lew, Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Most of the Warriors

Most of the warriors I knew
Have settled down to gardening, and the morning Times,
Tired of stalking ghosts
and the melody of secret rhythms
above the sound of traffic
and other monotonous voices,
Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew
Have unsaddled stallions and built a fence in the backyard,
Weary of studying the clouds
And the shadows creeping across mountains
beyond the flash of neon
and other pretentious symbols,
Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew
Have died before their time and are forgotten
Save in the memory of their sons
And the dreams they seldom share
beyond the taint of time
and other unimportant measures

Finally content to stare and wonder.

                        James Kavanaugh 

 

 

 

 

From up there

There is a famous story that you and Springsteen were invited to a dinner party at Sinatra’s house around the time you did that TV tribute to him. Had you met him before? Did you feel like he knew your stuff?

Not really. I think he knew “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ In the Wind.” I know he liked “Forever Young,” he told me that. He was funny, we were standing out on his patio at night and he said to me, “You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we’re from up there,” and he pointed to the stars. “These other bums are from down here.” I remember thinking that he might be right.

        Bob Dylan, Q&A with Bill Flanagan, March 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

Small steps

People seldom see the halting and painful steps
by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

        Anne Mansfield Sullivan, Helen Keller: The Story of My Life

 

 

 

 

One reason to wake up

That of which we are not aware, owns us.

        James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

 

 

 

The risk

Where there is danger,
that which will save us also grows.

        Friedrich Hölderlin, Patmos

 

 

 

Great artists

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist
and that there are as few as there are any other great artists.
It might even be the greatest of the arts
since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

        John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction