your fellow sun-worshippers
run
the world. Watch as they kneel to the sun.
~ Frank Bidart, from “The Fifth Hour of the Night” in Paris Review (Issue 229, Summer 2019)
Photo: PDX Daybreak by Jake Egbert (Mt. Hood, Portland, OR)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 23, 2020 by 31 Comments
Lightly Child, Lightly
February 20, 2020 by 17 Comments
“Thinking about daylight and artificial light I have to admit that daylight, the light on things, is so moving to me that I feel it almost as a spiritual quality. When the sun comes up in the morning – which I always find so marvelous, absolutely fantastic the way it comes back every morning – and casts its light on things, it doesn’t feel as if it quite belongs in this world. I don’t understand light. It gives me the feeling there’s something beyond me, something beyond all understanding.”
Notes:
- Photo: Stephen Carroll FotoFiction (via Mennyfox55). Quote via noosphe
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Sunday Morning
November 17, 2019 by 15 Comments
People often ask me how Buddhists answer the question: ‘Does God exist?’ The other day I was walking along the river. The wind was blowing. Suddenly I thought, Oh! The air really exists. We know that the air is there, but unless the wind blows against our face, we are not aware of it. Here in the wind I was suddenly aware, yes it’s really there. And the sun too. I was suddenly aware of the sun, shining through the bare trees. Its warmth, its brightness, and all this completely free, completely gratuitous. Simply there for us to enjoy. And without my knowing it, completely spontaneously, my two hands came together, and I realized that I was making a deep bow. And it occurred to me that this is all that matters: that we can bow, take a deep bow. Just that. Just that.
~Rev. Eido Tai Shimano, Disciplines for Christian Living: Interfaith Perspectives by Thomas P. Ryan (Paulist Press, 1993)
Quote Source:
- Thank you Make Believe Boutique for sharing the quote.
- I admire the words. Not the Man, and the inexcusable conduct. Eido Shimano, Buddhist Leader Who Resigned in Scandal, Dies at 85
Sunday Morning
July 28, 2019 by 42 Comments
But if anything will soften me, it is food: dumplings, apple pie, sweet tea. A huge silent relief that is stillness passes through me like sun, a warm tongue on the cub’s crown, the thought of being thought of. Breath becomes easy.
~ A. K. Benjamin, Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind
Notes: Photo via ilyfood
Lightly child, lightly
July 25, 2019 by 18 Comments
i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body
~ e. e. cummings, from “Crepuscule” in Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E.E. Cummings by Richard S. Kennedy
Notes:
- Poem – thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo credit.
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
It hums, it throbs, it improvises. So many voices. Only one song.
June 15, 2019 by 26 Comments
A cardinal, the very essence of red, stabs
the hedgerow with his piercing notes;
a chickadee adds three short beats,
part of the percussion section, and a white-
throated sparrow moves the melody along…
And today, the sun, waiting for its cue,
comes out from the clouds for a short sweet
solo, then sits back down, rests between turns.
On the other side of the world, night’s black
bass fiddle rosins its bow, draws it over
the strings, resonates with the breath
of sleepers, animal, vegetable, human.
All the world breathes in, breathes out.
It hums, it throbs, it improvises. So many voices.
Only one song.
~ Barbara Crooker, from “One Song. After Rumi” in Line Dance
Photo credit: via your eyes blaze out. Poem: Beyond the Fields We Know
Miracle. All of it.
May 19, 2019 by 11 Comments
You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won’t last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—…
Your eyes are on fire.
It won’t last…
but you’ll
remember that it felt like nothing else you’ve felt…
~ Lloyd Schwartz, from “Leaves” in Goodnight, Gracie
Notes:
- Photo: Rye Hills Sunrise (West Virginia) by jimmah. Poem via: to escape from the commonplaces of existence
- Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
- Inspiration: Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Lightly Child, Lightly.
April 18, 2019 by 19 Comments
Once outside, I quicken my step as I head to my car. I have patients to see at the office, people like me, all of us trying our best to get out of our own ways. The light on the corner is about to change so I run to catch it, but then I notice the warmth on my skin and I stop at the curb, tilting my face to the sun, soaking it in, lifting my eyes to the world. Actually, I’ve got plenty of time.
~ Lori Gottlieb, from her new book titled Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed. Chosen as one of Amazon’s top 10 Books of the Month for April 2019.
Notes:
- Photo: Nirav Patel
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Lightly Child, Lightly.
March 7, 2019 by 23 Comments
Each second the earth is struck hard
by four and a half pounds of sunlight.
Each second.
Try to imagine that.
No wonder deep shade is what the soul longs for.
And not, as we always thought, the light.
~ Charles Wright, from “In Praise of Thomas Hardy,” A Short History of the Shadow: Poems
Notes:
- Photo Nirav Photography via Mennyfox55. Poem: Thank you memoryslandscape
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Lightly Child, Lightly.
February 28, 2019 by 22 Comments
When you were small, your cupped palms
each held a candlesworth under the skin,
enough light to begin…
~ Carol Ann Duffy, from The Light Gatherer in “Collected Poems”
Notes:
- Photo Credit. Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
