Memorial Day

They sent forth men to battle,
But no such men return;
And home, to claim their welcome,
Come ashes in an urn.

            Aeschylus, Agamemnon

 

 

 

 

Fundamental concerns

I am concerned about a better world.
I'm concerned about justice.
I'm concerned about brotherhood.
I'm concerned about truth.
And when one is concerned about these,
he can never advocate violence.
For through violence you may murder a murderer
but you can't murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar
but you can't establish truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater,
but you can't murder hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness.
Only light can do that. . . .

         Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: This is It

This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That

O it is This
and it is Thus
and it is Them
and it is Us
and it is Now
and Here It is
and Here We are
so This is It

      James Broughton

 

 

 

 

 

Fame

Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.

       Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

 

 

Guessing game

Good tests kill flawed theories;
we remain alive to guess again.

        Karl Popper, quoted in My Universe: A Transcendent Reality

 

 

 

 

Leaving on a jet plane

She had been scheduled to fly on Korean Air Lines Flight 007,
September 1, 1993, the day that plane was shot down.
But in August her trip was moved to the following day.
This is wonder story about where we are going, not where we've been.
The meaning is not to be found on the day when you miss flight 007.
The meaning is in what you do afterwards.
The meaning is not in the historical explanation.
The meaning all lies in the future.
Our experience comes to mind.
Its meaning lies in the future, in what we are going to do about it.
It is enough to mention and share your experience,
there is no need to interpret it or preach to each other.
Fantasies or interpretations we carry with us lead to a dangerously false future. 

                       From a sermon preached by Fr. Richard Fabian 

Poem: Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic – decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

                              Louise Erdrich

 

 

 

 

Stories

No one ever made a decision because of a number.
They need a story.

              Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Lightening the Load

The first thing we have to do
is to notice
that we've loaded down this camel
with so much baggage
we'll never get through the desert alive.
Something has to go.

Then we can begin to dump
the thousand things
we've brought along
until even the camel has to go
and we're walking barefoot
on the desert sand.

There's no telling what will happen then.
But I've heard that someone,
walking in this way,
has seen a burning bush.

                      Francis Dorff 

 

 

 

 

Destinations

I rarely end up where I was intending to go,
but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.

          Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

 

 

 

 

Our proper occupation

In a sense, people are our proper occupation.
Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
But when they obstruct our proper tasks,
they become irrelevant to us--like sun, wind, and animals.
Our actions may be impeded by them,
but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions.
Because we can accommodate and adapt.
The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way. 

                       Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Hays translation)

 

 

 

Believe!

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul
into believing in government and business.

            Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 

 

 

 

 

How to save the world

Moyers: Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus,
we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.

Campbell: But in doing that you save the world.
The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it.
The world without spirit is a wasteland.
People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around,
changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no!
Any world is a valid world if it's alive.
The thing to do is to bring life to it,
and the only way to do that is to find in your own case
where the life is and become alive yourself.

                    The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers