First language

Silence is God's first language;
        everything else is a poor translation.

Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Purim Greetings

May you be turned inside out
upside down
and outside in

May your masks be masked
and your inside unmasked
May your countenance (panim) shine from within (panim)
as you meet yourself face to face

May your masquerade no longer be needed
as the shrouds fade away

May your child smile and dance
as the facade is lifted

May you just be

                        Simon Jacobson 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Healers

When they say, If there are any doctors aboard,
would they make themselves known, I remember when my then
husband would rise, and I would get to be
the one he rose from beside. They say now
that it does not work, unless you are equal.
And after those first thirty years,
I was not the one he wanted to rise from
or return to - not I but she who would also
rise, when such were needed. Now I see them,
lifting, side by side, on wide,
medical, wading-bird wings - like storks with the
doctor bags of like-loves-like
dangling from their beaks. Oh well. It was the way
it was, he did not feel happy when words
were called for, and I stood.

                 Sharon Olds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to Earth

I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids,
telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it,
how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on.
I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth.
But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet.
Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything.
If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce,
how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution.
I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures,
and I should have learned that in the first grade.
A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention;
that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well;
that all cultures function on faith rather than truth;
that there are lots of alternatives to our own society.
Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive.
It's also a source of hope.
It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

                Kurt Vonnegut, 1973 Playboy interview 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saints preserve us!

Modern media, especially social media, is a giant machine
    for exposing you to a bottomless newsfeed of far more suffering
        than St Francis of Assisi himself was ever asked to care about.

            Oliver Burkeman, The Imperfectionist

 

 

 

 

Beauty and simplicity

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.
When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—
at least if you have any experience—
because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. ...

The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple,
but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count.
Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated,
and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true
because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.

    Richard Feynman, Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life

 

 

 

 

 

Axiom of Existence

Whatever is referred to must exist.
        Let us call this the axiom of existence.

            John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language