I think of the Zen Masters, after having lost themselves in Satori for the first time, bursting with spontaneous smiles, laughter, in the world’s joy. At the moment of enlightenment, the newly enlightened ones, at one with the moment, smile or laugh. And then the damndest thing—they write poetry or draw perfect circles near the water at low tide and laugh at you when you try to build castle walls to preserve that precious, infinitesimal moment. I mean, what is there to say in that moment? They laugh and go off into the misty mountains.
Ben Leichtling
On This Day…
Pablo Neruda born in Chile in 1904, died 1973: poet, diplomat and politician – author of many volumes of poetry Quotes: “I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees.” “Love is short, forgetting so long.” “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.”
My search for You is certain death unless I seek to die. Answers stand in stagnant pools while unknowing fuels a living fire. Burn up the words I worship yet infuse me with their passion. Unfasten me from my finding that I might be naked in my seeking. Kindle my death, O God, that life may quicken in my wake.
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.
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
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.
