A Community of Souls...exploring the mystery of being human
Krishna would counsel, “Regard alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, success and defeat—prepare yourself for battle.” Our joy is not in results. Our validation is not in evaluations. Our call is to fulfill our dharma and prepare ourselves for battle. This is our joy—if wonder is the seedbed and dharma the root, joy is the fruit.
Benjamin Martin
The I Ching reveals that great ideas are not merely bright lightbulbs that go off in our heads occasionally, providing us with new efficiencies, streamlined methods, and quality assurances. Rather, created under yang, the eternal masculine principle, great ideas are regenerative; they shock us out of puny thinking and feeling, they point to the greatness around us in nature and the universe, as well as the potential greatness slumbering within each. Great ideas under yang confront us with our own profound ignorance and egoism and reveal that we are here to create new beauty, new life. These visions under yang are not the same as sweet dreams; they are wrought with danger, for as the Taoists tell us—heaven creates its ideas under the dragons, the unremitting energy, the seasons of sword and arrow, the fires of yang. Yet, without the baptism of fire, great ideas are like dry winds and consume with no boon. The I Ching says: “The secret of tao in this world of the mutable—the realm of yang—is to keep the changes in motion in such a manner that an unbroken coherence is maintained. He who succeeds in endowing his work with this regenerative power creates something organic, and the thing so created is enduring.”
Teri Martin
On This Day…
Independence Day for the United States
St. Elizabeth of Portugal: born in 1271 in Spain, became queen of Portugal and, when widowed, a Franciscan tertiary who cared for the poor and was official negotiator to prevent war between Castile and Portugal
O Holy Spirit,
From who we are at the root
to what we do at the heart,
generate in us what is generative
and all shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well.
In Your Image. Amen.
Benjamin H Martin
The secret of the masculine: the will to act with no attachment to the outcome of that action. The outcome is the boon for others.
William Boast
On This Day…
Wislava Szymborska born 1904 in Poland, died 2012: poet, essayist, translator and Nobel Prize Laureate
Works: many collections of poems
Quotes: “Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier to live and die.” “Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out. It fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.” “I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.”
The winged Mercury quickening the fire,
The salamander withstanding the flames,
The phoenix rising from its charred remains,
Fire building
Fire burning,
Fire bringing.
Release within the power to transform.
Ever has the eternal masculine been fire and alchemy to me.
The impulse to create and transform from the ashes of the past.
The impetus to provide, protect, procreate.
Directed, focused, driving life.
Resurrecting life.
The active principle of God.
Benjamin Martin