Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
-- Wislawa Szymborska, "Under One Small Star" from Could Have, 1972
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
-- Wislawa Szymborska, "Under One Small Star" from Could Have, 1972
Posted at 05:06 PM in Poetry, small stones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
--unknown
Posted at 01:00 PM in small stones, Spirit | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Poetry is an incessant hovering between sound and meaning.
--Paul Valéry
(via wood s lot, merci mw)
Posted at 12:00 PM in Poetry, small stones | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is more about entering a vast mystery than arriving at a mental certitude. Enlightenment knows that grace is everywhere, and the only reasonable response is gratitude and the acknowledgment that there is more depth and meaning to everything.
Fr. Richard Rohr
Posted at 01:30 PM in small stones, Spirit | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
IN SPRING
Your grasses up north are as blue as jade,
Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches;
And at last you think of returning home,
Now when my heart is almost broken....
O breeze of the spring, since I dare not know you,
Why part the silk curtains by my bed?
Li Bai (701 – 762)
Posted at 02:17 PM in Poetry, small stones | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Although I'm continuing to post my "found" small stones and an occasional photograph every day this month, I wanted to leave this post at the top of the blog for a few days to try to encourage more of you to leave a comment and to read the ones that have been left so far. I've spent a lifetime trying to develop my own "natural aptitude" for music and art and self-expression, but also for spirituality -- and trying to explore the connections between these areas, which I find self-evident but I realize many do not. However, I'd argue that everyone is born with the potential for creativity and spirituality -- some with more natural aptitude, to be sure -- but life (often in the form of teachers and institutions) destroys our joy, dulls our senses, and undermines our confidence. Unfortunately that often happens at such an early age that people can never find their way again. This happens, I would argue, with gifts of the spirit just as much as with gifts of creativity, and is even more problematic in societies where spirituality is confused with organized religion, difficult to speak about, and where "masters" are rare or unrecognized because they don't necessarily go around wearing robes or clerical collars...
"His kind of faith is a gift. It’s like an ear for music or the talent to draw"
Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen
Profound aesthetic experiences, no less than the religious experiences of which James wrote, deserve to be thought of as gifts to the spirit. They may engender a sense of awe and mystery, and of the sublime; they may provoke a feeling of being privileged and so of gratitude. The experience may be at once elevating and humbling. These represent important points of contact with religious moments.
The points of contact are not limited to such reactions. Artistic and religious virtuosity both involve, even begin with, natural aptitude, as noted in the quotation from Crimes and Misdemeanors. Some are more given to these things than others. And in both domains, hard work, genuine focus -- at times single-minded -- is essential if one is to approach one’s potential. We are less apt to think this way about the religious domain than the artistic. But a religious giant, a Mozart of the spirit, is a rare find; she is (certainly typically) one who has labored strenuously in pursuit of excellence. And just as one who is tone-deaf can appreciate the musically gifted as responding to something of substance, one who is less able than another in matters of the spirit can recognize the latter’s accomplishment. Needless to say, being tonedeaf is a rare condition in either domain. Ordinarily people occupy an intermediate position within a wide spectrum of which being tone-deaf is at one extreme.
from "The Significance of Religious Experience" by Howard Wettstein, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside.
What do you think?
Posted at 12:20 PM in Religion, small stones, Spirit | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
Fiona and Kaspa invited me to contribute a short essay about writing for their website during this month's "River of Stones." Here's what I sent them, and it's to be posted on "Writing Our Way Home" today. There've been some excellent, inspiring, and helpful essays this month - hope you'll read all of them!
TRUSTING THE PROCESS
January brings a new River of Stones to the literary and spiritual blogsphere, right at a time when our attention to the world around us might be flagging, along with our spirits. This challenge -- to write one small observation each day -- inspired large numbers of us last year and I have no doubts that it will be the same in 2012. For some, this is the beginning, or renewal, of a daily writing practice. For others, it's the first taste of what that might be like. But the real challenge for all of us, no matter how long we've been doing this, is how to keep going.
There are lots of reasons why we find it hard to continue writing every day, and I'm only going to talk about one of them here, but it's a big one. Somehow, as we read what others have done, and re-read our own efforts, a little voice in our head starts making comparisons and judgments, almost always at our own expense. Maybe we hoped for more comments, more support, more encouragement. Maybe what we've done falls short of our own expectations. Maybe we think other people's writing always tends to be more___________ -- fill in the blank -- creative, interesting, unusual, perceptive, clever, intelligent, poetic. Most of us, I think, have been in this kind of negative, paralyzing place whose sole purpose seems to be to tell us, "You aren't good enough, this is too painful, this is pointless...just stop."
Of course, all the arts can be problematic in this way: it doesn't matter whether we're writing small stones or a blog or a novel, or trying to practice the piano, or make a drawing every day. My worst crisis over my own work came in my mid-thirties, when I was mostly working in the fine arts. I had had some conventional "success" but was convinced I was missing something significant; that something inside me was holding me back. I became so discouraged and frustrated about art that I gave up painting and drawing for five years, but I was equally determined to find answers.
During that time I learned to meditate, and studied the writings and teachings of masters of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and the contemplatives and mystics of my own Christian tradition. There were common threads, one of which was mindfulness and attentiveness to the present moment. With the experience of meditation as a practice, I gradually found a new way, which still continues to deepen twenty-five years later. The point of making art, I gradually realized, is not the finished piece of writing or art and the praise we hope to receive for it, but the process of creation and what it teaches us.
Shunryu Suzuki helped me a great deal. I still remember the first time I read his essay, "The Marrow of Zen," in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in which he wrote:
...almost all of us want to be the best horse. if it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be second best. This, I think, is the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one...
--
If you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art and in Zen. It is true in life.
--
The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact...In continuous practice, under a series of agreeable and disagreeable situations, you will realize the marrow of Zen and acquire its true strength.
Eventually, I began again. I learned not to judge my work, or continually compare it to others: just to do it, and let it go, moving on to the next piece of art or writing. It's one thing to be inspired, and to study work we admire, and quite another to allow our expectations and fragile ego to rule us. In meditation we follow our breath, noticing thoughts as they arise but not judging them, and then we let them go. We try to do this, we fail over and over, but we continue practicing anyway. Likewise, a daily writing practice is an opportunity to observe, think, and write to the best of our best ability right now, and then let that work go without judging, simply moving on to the next day, the next small stone. It's important to have faith in the process and its ability to teach us. That's difficult at the beginning, but -- please trust me -- it gets easier.
We are all meant to be creative beings; I firmly believe this is a big part of why we are here. Eventually, changes are wrought within us as we practice being observant, mindful, and creative. These changes have almost nothing to do with "success" in the eyes of the world, and everything to do with the contentment and peace and quiet wisdom that come from feeling our deep connection to everything around us. There is no hierarchy or limit to this potential; it is within each and every one of us. Even in the face of great difficulties, knowledge of our deeper selves -- including our own inherent creativity which is one with the inexhaustible creativity of the universe -- sustains us, and is a great gift which we both receive and give.
Posted at 08:00 AM in small stones, Writing | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)
If you do not change direction,
you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu
How the mighty have fallen!
2 Samuel 1:27
Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. Seems amazing, but it's been coming. While much of the analysis in the media will focus on competition from Japan in the 1980s, a failure to shift successfully from film to digital, and the sinking U.S. economy, it's true that other companies have been able to adapt to changing situations. My professional photographer husband remarked, "I could have told them what they needed to do twenty-five years ago: listen to their customers. They were such an incredibly arrogant company."
Posted at 01:11 PM in Arts & Culture, Current Affairs, small stones | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 01:34 PM in Food and Drink, small stones | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Snow, light as sugar
drifts into dunes, mesas, canyons
so willing to be shaped
so sure of its beauty.
Posted at 12:24 PM in small stones | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)