“One of the best preparations for the future is to pay attention to the present moment. Not by being provident, cautious, and miserly with life’s experiential wealth, but by attending to the unfolding of today’s events and one’s part within them.
For those who have places to go and tasks to accomplish, the active use of the imagination to shape their destiny should never be despised. There is no such thing as a “destined future” – one that is fixed and immovable – since every step we take toward the future, every action and intention, changes the dance of our life to some degree. By imagining our future in an active way, we become more sensitive to the influences and interests around us. This active imagining also helps break down our romantic or false expectations and sets up pathways of practice toward our life’s purpose, as we grow ever more sensitive to the unfolding patterns. Furthermore, it helps sustain us when achievement seems far off or unendingly delayed.
The work of shaping the future consists not in the ruthless excision of everything and everyone standing in our way, but in the gentle retuning of ourselves and our abilities to the pitch of our innate life’s purpose. This is a daily, intentional shaping whereby we become attuned to the song that is always singing us.”
From The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews
“Matter and Spirit: These were no longer two things, but two states or two aspects of one and the same cosmic Stuff.. Matter is the Matrix of Spirit. Spirit is the higher state of Matter.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955), Jesuit priest, paleontologist and theologian, quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox
Image: The Emergence of Spirit and Matter from the Shiva Purana, Marwar, 1828
International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
“In the old times, when people’s lives were so directly tied to the land, it was easy to know the world as gift. When fall came, the skits would darken with flocks of geese, honking “Here we are.” It reminds the people of the Creation story, when the geese came to save Skywoman. The people are hungry, winter is coming, and the geese fill the marshes with food. It is a gift and the people receive it with thanksgiving, love, and respect. But when the food does not come from a flock in the sky, when you don’t feel the warm feathers cool in your hand and know that a life has been given for yours, when there is no gratitude in return — that food may not satisfy. It may leave the spirit hungry while the belly is full. Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.
How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again? I know we cannot all become hunter-gatherers — the living world could not bear our weight — but even in a market economy, can we behave “as if” the living world were a gift?
We could start by listening to Wally. There are those who will try to sell the gifts, but, as Wally says of sweetgrass for sale, “Don’t buy it.”Refusal to participate is a moral choke. Water is a gift for all, not meant to be bought and sold. Don’t buy it. When food has been wrenched from the earth, depleting the soil and poisoning our relatives in the name of higher yields, don’t buy it.
In material fact, [wild] Strawberries belong only to themselves. The exchange relationships we choose determine whether we share them as a common gift or sell them as a private commodity. A great deal rests on that choice. For the greater part of human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one.
One of these stories sustains the living systems on which we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our kinship with the world. We can choose. If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”
From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Professor of Environmental Biology and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation
“There’s a kind of vegetable in Vietnam called he (pronounced “hey”). It belongs to the onion family and looks like a scallion [spring onion]; it’s very good in soup. The more you cut the plants at the base, the more they grow. If you don’t cut them, they won’t grow very much, but if you cut them often, right at the base of the stalk, they grow bigger and bigger.
This is also true of the practice of generosity. If you give and continue to give, you become richer and richer all the time, richer in terms of happiness and well-be-ing. This may seem strange, but it’s always true.”
From Peace Is This Moment: Mindful Reflections for Daily Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh
“Let us have the presence to stand at the edge of the sea To sense the ebb and flow of the tides. Let us have the senses to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great saltmarsh, To watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the continents For untold thousands of years, and see the endless running of the eels to the sea. Let us have the knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
Bert Clough (Oxford Unitarians), adapted from words by Rachel Carson, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection
“Believe me, I know how tempting it is to remain inside this blessing, to linger where everything is dazzling and clear.
We could build walls around this blessing, put a roof over it. We could bring in a table, chairs, have the most amazing meals. We could make a home. We could stay.
But this blessing is built for leaving. This blessing is made for coming down the mountain. This blessing wants to be in motion, to travel with you as you return to level ground.
It will seem strange how quiet this blessing becomes when it returns to earth. It is not shy. It is not afraid.
It simply knows how to bide its time, to watch and wait, to discern and pray
until the moment comes when it will reveal everything it knows, when it will shine forth with all it has seen, when it will dazzle with the unforgettable light you have carried all this way.”
“For myself, solitude is rather like a folded-up forest that I carry with me everywhere and unfurl around myself when I have need…
Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Artwork: Forest Solitude, 1879, by Eduard Leonhardi
I. “We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—
II. Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.
III. We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep; We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:—
V. It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free; Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.”
Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822), born on this day
“It is pointless to deny the diversity of the world. Each nation, religion and social group will have its own culture, viewpoint and focus. While at times this diversity may seem to create obstacles to peace and harmony, if we go deeper and embrace the noblest human values, we will see that the very beauty of the world lies in this diversity. Isn’t a bouquet made from a variety of flowers more beautiful than a bouquet of just one kind?”
“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
Late Fragment by Raymond Carver (1938 – 1988), short story writer and poet, written when he was dying from lung cancer, and inscribed on his tombstone, died on this day
King Edward Street Chapel 