Simplicity

There is no need for temples,
    no need for complicated philosophies,
        my brain and my heart are my temples;
            my philosophy is kindness.

                        Dalai Lama

 

 

 

 

Xenia

The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—
    a command to take care of traveling strangers,
        to open your door to whoever is out there,
            because anyone passing by, far from home,
                might be God.

Ovid tells the story of two immortals
    who came to Earth in disguise
        to cleanse the sickened world.
            No one would let them in but one old couple,
                Baucis and Philemon.

And their reward for opening their door to strangers
    was to live on after death as trees—an oak and a linden—
        huge and gracious and intertwined.

What we care for, we will grow to resemble.     
    And what we resemble will hold us,
        when we are us no longer.

                                Richard Powers, The Overstory

 

 

 

 

 

Being saved

The world is violent and mercurial--
    it will have its way with you.

We are saved only by love--
    love for each other
        and the love that we pour into the art
            we feel compelled to share:
                being a parent; being a writer;
                    being a painter; being a friend.

We live in a perpetually burning building,
    and what we must save from it,
        all the time,
            is love.
                

    Tennessee Williams, in Follies of God by James Grissom

 

 

 

October

October is a fine and dangerous season in America.

It is dry and cool
        and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson,
                and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood,
                        and you are full of ambition. 

It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all.
 

                Thomas Merton, A Thomas Merton Reader