Wednesday, March 27, 2024

languages we have yet to learn







Mycorrhizal fungi form partnerships with plant roots. 
These partnerships connect neighboring plants 
through extensive networks in the soil. 

Much like social networks or neural networks,
 the fungal mycelia of mycorrhizas allow signals 
to be sent between trees in a forest. 

These networks are effectively an information highway,
 with recent studies demonstrating the exchange of nutritional resources,
 defence signals and allelochemicals.

New research by computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky
 at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory of the University
 of the West of England, suggests this ancient kingdom
 has an electrical “language” all of its own – far more complicated 
than anyone previously thought. According to the study,
 fungi might even use “words” to form “sentences”
 to communicate with neighbours.

Despite lacking a nervous system, fungi seem to transmit
 information using electrical impulses across
 thread-like filaments called hyphae. 
The filaments form a thin web called a mycelium 
that links fungal colonies within the soil. These networks
 are remarkably similar to animal nervous systems.
 By measuring the frequency and intensity of the impulses, 
it may be possible to unpick and understand the languages
 used to communicate within and between organisms
 across the kingdoms of life.


~ Amanda Carroll

inhabit the situation you happen to be in now

.




Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, 
this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.
Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit 
the situation you happen to be in now.
You are not some disinterested bystander.
Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.
Ask yourself often, How may I
 perform this particular deed
such that it would be consistent with
 and acceptable to the divine will?
Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut 
and your room is dark you are not alone.
The will of nature is within you 
as your natural genius is within.
Listen to its importunings.
Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, 
the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.
There must be time.

Give your best and
 always be kind.




~ Epictetus 

Monday, March 25, 2024

a special kind of grace

 






The specific forms that love take in our lives arise and pass in time, 
for this is the way of form. Time is the great dissolver. 
But love itself is that which never comes and goes.

We never know what form love will choose to take in the future, 
for there is no love in the future. Love is only now.
 But it can take a cleansing of perception to see through the veil,
 behind the scenes where love is always at work…
 giving birth to one of its forms, one of its children,
 while recycling and dissolving another.

If we become too fused with a specific form we believe 
we need love to take—a particular person or way 
of finding purpose and meaning—our heart will inevitably
 break when love obliterates that form for something new, 
which it always will. This shattering is the great gift of form,
evidence not of error and mistake,
 but of wholeness and profound compassion.

This dissolution and reorganization is a special kind of grace
 that the conventional mind struggles to know.
 But the heart knows. The body knows.




~ Matt Licata
from A Healing Space
art by Michael Nelson Tjakamarra






known through love but not through thought







Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart.
Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes
Lives in the Self.  He is the source of love
And may be known through love but not through thought.
He is the goal of life.  Attain this goal!

...
In his robe are woven heaven and earth,
Mind and body.  Realize him as the One
Behind the many and stop all vain talk.
He is the bridge from death to deathless life.

Where all the nerves meet like spokes in a wheel,
There he dwells, the One behind the many.
Meditate upon him in the mantram.
May he guide us from death to deathless life!

...
The Lord of Love is before and behind.
He extends to the right and to the left.
He extends above; he extends below.
There is no one here but the Lord of Love.
He alone is; in truth, he alone is.



~ excerpt from The Mundaka Upanishad
translated by Eknath Easwaran
art by Jeff Metal


Saturday, March 23, 2024

the simple joy

 





The time of judging
Who is drunk or sober,
Who is right and who is wrong
Who is closer to god, and who is farther away
All that is over

This caravan is led instead by a great delight,
The simple joy that sits with us now

That is the grace





~ Hafiz


Friday, March 22, 2024

how unique are humans really?

 



Photo from Air and Science Magazine


Primatologist Frans de Waal has spent his lifetime 
studying the lives of animals, especially our closest cousins, 
the chimpanzees. de Waal has observed their shifting alliances
 and the structure of their political ranks. He has seen bitter conflicts
 break out, only to be mended by peaceful, respected mediators.
 And he has witnessed chimpanzees grieve for, 
and attempt to comfort, their dead and dying.

But one of the most touching reflections in his new book, 
Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves
is the story he tells of a female chimp who didn’t produce enough milk
 to feed her young. When de Waal taught her to feed her baby with a bottle
 instead, she repaid him with what most of us would recognize as gratitude
: holding both of de Waal’s hands and whimpering sadly if he tried to leave.

The book explores many stories of animal emotions from across
 the animal kingdom, and it might leave you wondering 
how unique humans really are.

Mama, the matriarch and oldest of the chimpanzee colony
 of the Royal Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, 
expressed affection towards behavioral biologist Jan van Hooff
 as she gave him her last hug before she died in 2016.
 Credit: Jan A R A M van Hooff



~ Frans de Waal
from Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions 
and What They Tell Us About Ourselves
with thanks to Science Friday





there is a grace approaching









There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.
 
 
 
~ Stephen Levine 
from Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace
 
 
 

the naked awareness of your self


.





... imagination and reason have taught you all they can 
and now you must learn to be wholly given 
to the simple spiritual awareness of your self and God....

he told his disciples, who were loath to give up his physical presence
 (just as you are loath to give up the speculative reflections of your subtle, clever faculties),
 that for their own good he would withdraw his physical presence from them, 
 He said to them, "It is necessary for you that I go,"
 meaning, "It is necessary  for you 
that I depart physically from you."  

St. Augustine, commenting on these words, says:
 "Were not the form of  his humanity withdrawn from our bodily eyes,
 love for him in his Godhead would never cleave to our spiritual eyes."  
And thus I say to you, at a certain point it is necessary
 to give up discursive meditation and learn to taste something of that deep,
 spiritual experience of God's love.

...  always and ever strive toward the naked awareness of your self, 
and continually offer your being to God as your most precious gift. 
 
 Inasmuch as this awareness really is naked, 
you will at first find it terribly painful to rest in it for any length of time
 because, ... your faculties will find no meat for themselves in it. 
 
 Let them fast awhile from their natural delight in knowing, 
It is well said that man naturally desires to know.  Yet at the same time,
 it is also true that no amount of natural or acquired knowledge 
will bring him to taste the spiritual experience of God,
 for this is a pure gift of grace. 
 
 And so I urge you: go after experience rather than knowledge. 
 On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you,
 but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. 
 
 Knowledge tends to breed conceit,
 but love builds.  
 
Knowledge is full of labor,
but love, full of rest.






~ from The Book of Privy Counseling
written anonymously in the fourteenth century 
art: from Arnhem Land



red brocade







The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he's come from,
where he's headed.
That way, he'll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you'll be
such good friends
you don't care.

Let's go back to that.
Rice?  Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That's the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.




~ Naomi Shihab Nye
from 19 Varieties of Gazelle



lute music

 





The Earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents—
A small franchise indeed.
Right now we have lives,
Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,
Like everybody had once—


Here at the year’s end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.




~ Kenneth Rexroth
from Sacramental Acts
NASA photo



Wednesday, March 20, 2024

it's whisper can be heard

 




Grace is always present. You imagine it is somewhere high in the sky,
far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart.
Grace is the Self. . . .You are never out of its operation.


-~ Sri Ramana Maharshi


 Grace is a manifestation of the cosmic free will in operation. 
It can alter the course of events in a mysterious manner
 through its own unknown laws, which are superior to
 all natural laws, and can modify the latter by interaction.

It is the most powerful force in the universe.

It descends and acts only when it is invoked 
by total self- surrender. 

It acts from within, because God resides in the Heart
 of all beings. Its whisper can be heard only in a mind
 purified by self-surrender and prayer.

Rationalists laugh at it, and atheists scorn it, but it exists.
 It is a descent of God into the soul’s zone of awareness. 
It is a visitation of force unexpected and unpredictable.
 It is a voice spoken out of cosmic silence - 
It is ‘Cosmic Will which can perform 
authentic miracles under its own laws’.




~ D.C. Desai
 from Divine Grace Through Total Self-Surrender
art:  from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
with thanks to love is a place


till you yourself are a sail








The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally
that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash,
cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort
that might lead to madness. 

Instead you must allow the muddy river
to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness;
you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging
its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into
the realm of the real where subjects and objects act
and rest purely, without utterance.
 
.
The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.
Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail,
whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.






~ Annie Dillard
excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
art by Olivia Maria Chevallier

 
 
 
 

Monday, March 18, 2024

prayer happens

 







Prayer is something that happens to you (Romans 8:26-27), 
much more than anything you privately do.

 It is an allowing of the Big Self 
more than an assertion of the small self.

 Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say,
 “Prayer happened, and I was there”
 more than “I prayed today.” 

All you know is that you are being led, 
being guided, being loved, being used,
 being prayed through—
and you are no longer in the driver’s seat.

God stops being an object of attention
 like any other object in the world,
 and becomes at some level your own “I am.” 
You start knowing through,
 with, and in Somebody Else.

Your little “I Am” becomes “We Are.”

Please trust me on this. 
It might be the most important thing I could tell you.





~ Richard Rohr
from The Naked Now
art by Debra Nangala McDonald
with thanks to love is a place

Sunday, March 17, 2024

great and small








When we look at things in the light of Tao,
Nothing is best, nothing is worst.
Each thing, seen in its own light,
Stands out in its own way.
It can seem to be "better"
Than what is compared with it
On its own terms.
But seen in terms of the whole,
No one thing stands out as "better."
If you measure differences,
What is greater than something else is "great,"
Therefore there is nothing that is not "great";
What is smaller than something else is "small,"
Therefore there is nothing that is not "small,"
So the whole cosmos is a grain of rice,
And the tip of a hair
Is as big as a mountain -
Such is the relative view.

You can break down walls with battering rams,
But you cannot stop holes with them.
All things have different uses.
Fine horses can travel a hundred miles a day,
But they cannot catch mice
Like terriers or weasels:
All creatures have gifts of their own.
The white horned owl can catch fleas at midnight
And distinguish the tip of a hair,
But in bright day it stares, helpless,
And cannot even see a mountain.
All things have varying capacities.

Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong,
Order without disorder,
Does not understand the principles
Of heaven and earth.
He does not know how
Things hang together.
Can a man cling only to heaven
And know nothing of earth?
They are correlative: to know one
Is to know the other.
To refuse one
Is to refuse both.
Can a man cling to the positive
Without any negative
In contrast to which it is seen
To be positive?
If he claims to do so 
He is a rogue or a madman.

Thrones pass
From dynasty to dynasty,
Now in this way, now in that.
He who forces his way to power
Against the grain
I called tyrant and usurper.
He who moves with the stream of events
Is called a wise statesman.

Kui, the one-legged dragon,
Is jealous of the centipede.
The centipede is jealous of the snake.
The snake is jealous of the wind.
The wind is jealous of the eye.
The eye is jealous of the mind.
Kui said to the centipede:

"I manage my one leg with difficulty:
How can you manage a hundred?"
The centipede replied:
"I do not manage them.
They land all over the place
Like drops of spit."
The centipede said to the snake:
"With all my feet, I cannot move as fast
As you do with no feet at all.
How is this done?"
The snake replied:
"I have a natural glide
That can't be changed.  What do I need
With feet?"
The snake spoke to the wind:
"I ripple my backbone and move along
In a bodily way.  You, without bones,
Without muscles, without method,
Blow from the North Sea to the Southern Ocean.
How do you get there
With nothing?'
The wind replied:
"True, I rise up in the North Sea
And take myself without obstacle to the Southern Ocean.
But every eye that remarks me,
Every wing that uses me,
Is superior to me, even though 
I can uproot the biggest trees, or overturn
Big buildings.
The true conqueror is he
Who is not conquered
By the multitude of the small.
The mind is this conqueror -
But only the mind
 Of a wise man."




~ Chuang Tzu
translation by Thomas Merton


gratitude







The sounds of engines leave the air.
The Sunday morning silence comes
at last.  At last I know the presence
of the world made without hands,
the creatures that have come to be 
out of their absence.  Calls
of flicker and jay fill the clear
air.  Titmice and chickadees feed
among the green and the dying leaves.
Gratitude for the gifts of all the living 
and the unliving, gratitude which is
the greatest gift, quietest of all,
passes to me through the trees.


~ Wendell Berry
from Leavings