We call to the Muse as did Homer: Sing in me a new song, of the old story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, of agon, of the wanderer, harried for years on end. Thanks be to all those blessed Homers—bards who, by their vatic quests, eternally restore to us those who have stood on thresholds before us, who eternally restore that single party of the victorious and the defeated. Thanks be to those bards who, within the Holy Grail of their imaginations, fired and fused in syllable and rhythm the one call with the numberless stories of each way and path, and bring each of us again and again to the threshold, the razor’s edge, the narrow gate.
Teri H Martin
How long a season of barriers and blockades
where I am stalled and thwarted
and cannot break through,
how long a season of loss and feeling lost?....
Let fly my arrow—
straight as the will within me
true as the arete that drives me
that death may die in the battle won.
Benjamin H Martin
On This Day…
Happy Birthday to William Boast, Founder of Christuman
Baha’i Martyrdom of the Bab (forerunner to Baha U’llah)
Buddhist Asalha Puja Day: remembrance of the Buddha’s first Sermon, setting out his doctrines
O Beloved Spirit,
While we wear a body
that is either male or female,
we know that beneath this outer body,
we are both.
And though our particular outer
seems to separate us from the other,
we seek in the inner
a balance of the both.
This day we pray for fire
that it may flare atop our water
in its dance of light and hot.
May its flame fuel us with beauty
as we look for beauty
in what we touch,
in what we create.
Generate and temper in us a flame,
that what is eternally masculine
will direct us toward what is active,
toward what will activate.
We delight in the light of what is yang—
may we cultivate this delight
as we raise the both to a higher balance.
In Your Image. Amen.
Benjamin H. Martin
Dr. Randy Pausch, a 35 year old professor from Carnegie Mellon University, gave his last lecture to his students on September 18, 2007. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and after all the treatments, his doctors told him he had only a few months to live. In this lecture, he stated that he could not control the cards he was dealt but could control the way he played them. He chose to live with curiosity and joy and managed to live all of his childhood dreams. You could be, he said, either a Tigger or an Eeyore, and he had decided to be a Tigger, alight with fire and enthusiasm, and to spend the rest of his days building memories for his three children.
Dr. Barbara Dalberg
There was a spiritual teacher in the 70’s that I felt had some wisdom. I went to hear him speak, and afterward he allowed people to ask questions. A guy down front stood and, at length, talked about the fact that an opportunity had come into his life, but he was having trouble “getting it together” to do something about it. Finally, he said that he had decided it didn’t matter. If he blew the opportunity, the universe would find a way to give him another one because that’s how the universe worked. The teacher looked at him silently, lengthily, then said, “No, man. It doesn’t work that way. If you blow this opportunity, this gift, then it’s blown. Forever.”
Donna Piper Leichtling
