Thursday, December 24, 2015

nothing I can give you which you have not





Most Noble Contessina:

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. 
But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. 
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. 
Take heaven! 

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. 
Take peace! 

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. 
Take Joy! 

There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
 And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, 
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, 
and you will find beneath it a living splendor, 
woven of love by wisdom, with power. 

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. 
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, 
that angel's hand is there.

The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. 
Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. 
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, 
that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. 
Courage then to claim it; that is all! 
But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, 
wending through unknown country home.


And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, 
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, 
now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.


your servant,
 Fra Giovanni


~ Ernest Temple Hargrove

The name of a certain "16th century monk" is familiar now to millions of people but, he never lived; he was created by an English barrister, Ernest Temple Hargrove.  With the arrival of Christmas season each year, the monk, Fra Giovanni, becomes better known, and his creator drifts farther into obscurity.  This is the way Mr. Hargrove wanted it.  Hargrove was born into a distinguished English family, came to the United States as a young man and spent many years in religious endeavors, particularly in the field of writing.

Before his death in 1939 Hargrove composed a Christmas greeting to a friend, writing in literary style that gave a medieval  flavor to his message.  The greeting took the form of a letter from a monk to an Italian countess.  According to a close friend, G.M.W. Kobbe of New York, Hargrove secured no copyright, feeling that if his greeting carried a real message there should be no impediment to it's circulation. With the passage of years, the letter is now thought of as the perfect Christmas card by a great host of appreciative readers, many of whom believe Fra Giovanni was a real person.

The monk is imaginary but the letter and the message are real.

~ Max L. Christensen - 1997

Ernest Temple Hargrove, of England, married to Amy Virginia Tehula Neresheimer, the daughter of Emil August Neresheimer, NYC diamond broker, on Tuesday, January 18, 1899, Church of the Holy Apostles, NYC.They had at least two children, William A, born in about 1902, and a daughter Joan, born about 1905.Hargrove was a prominent figure in the NY Theosophical Society, and later in life was known to have resided as a caretaker of the Chapel of the Comforter, located at 10 Horation St. in NYC.he eventually died in 1939.


Monday, December 14, 2015

no words







People come a long way to reach Parrot Lake
anxious to ask about practice
this old monk tells them the truth
the gatha that frees you has no words


~ Stonehouse
from The Zen Works of Stonehouse
Poems and Talks of a 14th Century Chinese Hermit
translated by Red Pine


Sunday, December 13, 2015

behind the word consciousness








~ Mauro Bergonzi

companion of my heart








You are the companion of my heart
Though my body I offer to those who desire it.

My body is friendly to guests

But you the companion of my heart
Are the guest of my soul.


~ Rabia

(712 - 801)
After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. 
When asked by Shaikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:

"You know of the how, but I know of the how-less."


Monday, December 7, 2015

the present has abated its urgencies






For people who live in the country there is a charming freedom in such days. One is free of obligations to the ground.  There is no outside work that one ought to do, simply because, with the ground frozen deep and covered with snow, no such work is possible.  Growth has stopped; there is plenty of hay and grain in the barn; the present has abated its urgencies.  The mind may again turn freely to the past and look back on the way it has come.

This morning has been bearing down out of the future toward this bit of riverbank forever. And for perhaps as long, in a sense, my life has been approaching from the opposite direction. The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?




- Wendell Berry
from The Long-Legged House
photo by Harry Callahan
with thanks to whiskey river


Friday, December 4, 2015

a star on the horizon of my heart







Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. 
It was they who led me from door to door, 
and with them have I felt about me, 
searching and touching my world.

It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; 
they showed me secret paths, 
they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.

They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, 
and, at last, 
to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?




~ Rabindranath Tagore
art by van gogh



Saturday, November 21, 2015

are animals thinking and feeling?










~ Carl Safina

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

the green cookstove







A lonely man once sat on a large flat stone.
When he lifted it, he saw a kitchen: a green
Enamel range with big claw feet, familiar.
Someone lives in that room, cooking and cackling.

"I saw her once," Virgil said. "She was Helen's
Younger sister."  Helen's betrayed husband
Sits by the window, peeling garlic cloves,
And throwing crusts to Plymouth Rocks.

We'll never understand this, Somewhere below
The flat stone of the skull, a carnivorous couple
Lives and plans future wars.  Are we innocent?
These wars don't happen by accident - they occur

Too regularly. How often do we lift the plate
At the bottom of our brain and throw some garlic
And grain down to the kitchen?  "Keep cooking,
My dears," "Something good will come of this."



~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems


who one is






One never knows who one is. 
The others tell you who you are, 
don't they? 

And as you're told so a million times 
if you live a long life, in the end you don't know at all 
who you are. Everyone says something different. 
You yourself also say something 
different each new moment.




~  Thomas Bernhard




Sunday, November 8, 2015

first step







The first step in love
is losing your head.

After the petty ego
you then give up your life
and bear the calamity.

With this behind you, proceed:
Polish the ego's rust
from the mirror
of your self



~ Fakhr al-Din Iraqi
from Love's Alchemy
translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler




Tuesday, November 3, 2015

glow






Not a single soul lacks
a pathway to you.

There's no stone,
no flower-
not a single piece of straw-
lacking your existence.

In every particle of the world,
the moon of your love
causes the heart
of each atom to glow.



~ Muhammad Shirin Maghribi  
from Love's Alchemy
Poems from the Sufi Tradition
translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler



Monday, November 2, 2015

a thousand years of joy - the film trailer








Saturday, October 17, 2015

what difference







Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.




~ William Stafford
from Ask Me


Sunday, October 11, 2015

what is happening







Instant to instant
we ask, what is happening?

The sound of shattering everywhere,
is it the world, fragmenting at last,
or our own hearts cracking,
the final break-up of ice?



~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame


how much









~  Beth Cioffoletti
 louie louie blog


this moment this love





This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.



Listen, if you can stand to.
Union with the friend
means not being who you have been,
being instead silence, a place,
a view where language is inside seeing.



From the wet source
someone cuts a reed to make a flute
The reed sips breath like wine,
sips more, practicing. Now drunk,
it starts the high clear notes.



There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.



We do not have to follow the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open together and leave.



My essence is like the essence of a red wine.
My body is a cup that grieves because it is inside time.
Glass after glass of wine go into my head.
Finally, my head goes into the wine.




~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks
from The Big Red Book



A clear midnight




This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.





~ Walt Whitman





Friday, October 9, 2015

the wild earth







Even through these trivial crowded days,
I never lose sight of the wild earth on which I live,
of the ravishing perfection of its beauty.
I stand before infinity and look out over a virgin wilderness.

The potential for reproducing fragments
of this in a form worthy of it are endless.



~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, January 15, 1987




Wednesday, October 7, 2015

silent journal







Inaudible consonant inaudible vowel 
The word continues to fall 
in splendor around us 
Window half shadow window half moon 
back yard like a book of snow 
That holds nothing and that nothing holds 
Immaculate text 
not too prescient not too true



~ Charles Wright
from Xionia

forgetting words







A water egret planes down like a page of blank paper
Toward the edge of the noon sky.
Let me, like him, find an island of white reeds
To settle down on, under the wind, forgetting words.



~ Charles Wright
 from T’ang Notebook,
 The Other Side of the River: Poems


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

it is










Almost noon, the meadow 
Waiting for someone to change it into an other. Not me. 
The horses, Monte and Littlefoot, 
Like it the way it is. 
And this morning, so do I.




~ Charles Wright
from Lightfoot


Sunday, October 4, 2015

the night watch







Outdoors, like a false morning,
 Fog washes the pine trees. It 
 Shoulders against the windows,
 Spreading across their surface
 On its way upward. In this 
 Moment between sleep and thought 

 This holding back, I can hear 
 The fog start to rise, the slow 
 Memory of an ocean, 

 And I, like a ship, begin 
 To stir, to lurch in its swell, 
 And to move outward, beyond 

 The steel jetty, the lighthouse, 
 The red-flagged channel buoys,
 --Beyond, at last, sleep even--

 Into a deeper water,
 Pale, oracular, its waves
 Motionless, seagulls absent. 




~ Charles Wright
art by andrew wyeth




wind










There is an otherness inside us 
We never touch, 
no matter how far down our hands reach. 
It is the past, 
with its good looks and Anytime, Anywhere ... 
Our prayers go out to it, our arms go out to it 
Year after year, 
But who can ever remember enough?

...

The life of this world is wind 
Windblown we come, and windblown we go away. 
All that we look on is windfall. 
All we remember is wind.




~ Charles Wright
from The Southern Cross