Poem: In Memoriam

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

          Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850)

 

 

 

 

 

Our greatest good fortune

But I believe without any doubt at all
that our greatest good fortune was
that even in the most extreme difficulties
we might lose our patience
but never our sense of humor.

              Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale 

 

 

 

 

 

Connecting the dots

You can't connect the dots looking forward;
you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots
will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something —
your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
This approach has never let me down,
and it has made all the difference in my life.

            Steve Jobs, Address at Stanford University, 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Time Being

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

            W. H. Auden, from the poem The Time Being

 

 

 

 

 

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –

so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

              Mary Oliver

 

 

 

 

 

Well pleased

Gloria, Gloria! they cry, for their song embraces
all that the Lord has begun this day:
Glory to God in the highest of heavens!
And peace to the people with whom he is pleased!
And who are these people?
With whom does the good Lord choose to take his pleasure?
The shepherds.
The plain and nameless —
whose every name the Lord knows well.
You.
And me.

               Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus

 

 

 

 

Christmas Greetings

Imagine that you have been dead for a year, ten years,
one hundred years, a thousand years . . .

The grave and night have taken and kept you in that silence and dark
which says nothing and so reveals absolutely zero . . .

In the middle of all this darkness and being alone and bereft of sense,
let us imagine that God comes to your still soul and lonely body and says:

    "I will give you one minute of life.
    I will restore you to your body and senses for sixty seconds.
    Out of all the minutes in your life, choose one.
    I will put you in that minute and you will live again,
    after a hundred, a thousand years of darkness.
    Which is it?
    Think.
    Speak.
    Which minute do you choose?"

And the answer is:
    "Any minute. Any minute at all!
    Oh God, oh sweet Christ, oh Mystery,
    give me any minute in all my life."

And the answer further is:
    "When I lived I didn't know that every minute was special, precious,
    a gift, a miracle, an incredible thing, an impossible work, an amazing dream.
    But now, like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Morn,
    with snow in the air and the promise of rebirth given,
    I know what I should have known in my dumb shambles:
    that all is a lark, and it is a beauty beyond tears, and also a terror.

   "But I dance about, I become a child,
    I am the boy who runs for the great bird in the window,
    and I am the man that sends the boy running for that bird,
    and I am the life that blows in the snowing wind along the street,
    and the bells that sound and say live, love,
    for too soon will your name which is shaped in snow melt,
    or your soul which is inscribed like a breath of vapor on a cold glass pane fade.

     "Run, run, lad, run, down the middle of Christmas at the center of life!"

                                   Ray Bradbury, Christmas 2008

Welcome!

Our Druid ancestors
welcomed every child
with the words:
Here comes God again.

             Fr. John Cullen, Roscommon, Ireland 

 

 

 

 

 

Poverty and abundance

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have everything,
look down on others,
those who have no need ever of God —
for them there will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

                   Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look out!

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season;
the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church;
the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue;
the atheists went to parties and drank.
People passing each other on the street would say
    'Merry Christmas!' or
    'Happy Hanukkah!'
or (to the atheists)
    'Look out for the wall!'

               Dave Barry, Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide

 

 

 

 

Song: The Rebel Jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbxrUtLOIZ0

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
While the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by 'the Prince of Peace'
And they call him by 'the Savior'
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Now pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There's a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

                  Jackson Browne

·    

Direction

Consult not your fears, but your hopes and dreams.
Think not about your frustrations,
but about your unfulfilled potential.
Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in,
but with what it is still possible for you to do.

                            Pope John XXIII

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slavery

Quite an experience, to live in fear, isn't it?
That's what it is to be a slave.

           Roy Batty, Blade Runner
           (script by Hampton Fancher & David Peoples)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blinded

Fear is an emotion that makes us blind.
How many things are we afraid of?
We're afraid to turn off the lights when our hands are wet.
We're afraid to stick a knife into the toaster
to get the stuck English muffin without unplugging it first.
We're afraid of what the doctor may tell
us when the physical exam is over;
when the airplane suddenly takes a great unearthly lurch in midair.
We're afraid that the oil may run out,
that the good air will run out, the good water, the good life.
When the daughter promised to be in by eleven
and it's now quarter past twelve
and sleet is spatting against the window like dry sand,
we sit and pretend to watch Johnny Carson
and look occasionally at the mute telephone
and we feel the emotion that makes us blind,
the emotion that makes a stealthy ruin of the thinking process.

                          Stephen King, Night Shift

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oldest and Strongest

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,
and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

               H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature 

 

 

 

 

 

For sure

Since we can never know anything for sure,
it is simply not worth searching for certainty;
but it is well worth searching for truth;
and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes,
so that we have to correct them.

            Sir Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World

 

 

 

 

 

To change something

You never change things
by fighting the existing reality.
To change something,
build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.

                  Buckminster Fuller

 

 

 

 

 

The Four Great Vows of Buddhism

Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them
Realities are boundless, I vow to master them.
The Enlightened Way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

               Used by the Zen Center of New York

 

A modern, ecological version of these vows written by
Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen:

Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.
Consuming desires are endless; I vow to stop them.
Bio-relations are intricate; I vow to honor them.
Nature's way is beautiful; I vow to become it.

 

 

 

 

 

No one but ourselves

No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path
Buddhas merely teach the way.
By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.

                    Gautama Buddha

 

 

 

 

 

Things

Things are not what they appear to be:
nor are they otherwise.

               Gautama Buddha, Surangama Sutra 

 

 

 

 

 

No other refuge

Make an island of yourself,
make yourself your refuge;
there is no other refuge.
Make truth your island,
make truth your refuge;
there is no other refuge.

             Gautama Buddha

 

 

 

 

Now

Now may every living thing,
young or old,
weak or strong,
living near or far,
known or unknown,
living or departed
or yet unborn,
may every thing
be full of bliss.

            The Buddha

 

 

 

 

 

Strive for this

 Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then, as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.

               Gautama Buddha, Sutta Nipata

Enlightenment

Traditions vary on what happened. Some say Siddhartha made a great vow to Nirvana and Earth to find the root of suffering, or die trying. In other traditions, while meditating he was harassed and tempted by the god Mara (literally, "Destroyer" in Sanskrit), demon of illusion. Other traditions simply state that he entered deeper and deeper states of meditation, confronting the nature of the self.

In the Pali Canon, there are several discourses said to be by Buddha himself, related to the story. In The Longer Discourse to Saccaka the Buddha describes his Enlightenment in three stages:

1. During the first watch of the night, the Buddha discovered all of his past lives in the cycle of rebirth, realizing that he had been born and reborn countless times before.

2. During the second watch, the Buddha discovered the Law of Karma, and the importance of living by the Eightfold Path.

3. During the third watch, the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths, finally reaching Nirvana.

In his words: My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there was the knowledge, 'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

All traditions agree that as the morning star rose in the sky in the early morning, the third watch of the night, Siddhartha finally found the answers he sought and became Enlightened, and experienced Nirvana. Having done so, Siddhartha now became a Buddha or "Awakened One".

                                From the Wikipedia entry on Bodhi Day

 

 

 

 

 

Remember Pearl Harbor

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Study war no more

I ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
I ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more

The function of prayer

The function of prayer
is not to influence God,
but rather to change
the nature of the one who prays.

                  Soren Kierkegaard

 

 

 

 

 

What the world needs

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive
and then go do that.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.

             Howard Thurman

 

 

 

 

 

Boredom

Boredom is boredom.
There is nothing to do,
deal with it.

        Joey Green, Philosophy on the Go

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: This is the time to be slow

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
     
              John O'Donohue
              To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings