p

Sabbaths 1999

 

VI

 

We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see

Ahead, but looking back the very light

That blinded us shows us the way we came,

Along which blessings now appear, risen

As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,

By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward

That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

 

        Wendell Berry

 

q

I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.

 

    Joanna Field

 

p

Fifteen

South of the bridge on Seventeenth

I found back of the willows one summer

day a motorcycle with the engine running

as it lay on its side, ticking over

slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.

I admired all that pulsing gleam, the

shiny flanks, the demure headlights

fringed where it lay; I led it gently

to the road and stood with that

companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.

We could find the end of a road, meet

the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about

hills, and patting the handle got back a

confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged

a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.

Thinking, back further in the grass I found

the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped

over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale--

I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand

over it, called me a good man, roared away.

I stood there, fifteen. William Stafford

q

One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.

        Henry Miller

 

p

The Layers

 

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which the scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not in the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

 

    Stanley Kunitz

q

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

     Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

p

Book of Hours, II, 16 -- Rainer Maria Rilke

II, 16

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

(Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

 

 

p

 

In a single cry

    the pheasant has swallowed

        the fields of spring

 

                    Yamei

bad news/good news

The bad news is that we all contribute to global warming.  But that is also the good news because it means that everyone of us can make a difference by reducing our contribution. 

 

So what then should we do?  Is it important to worry about plastic bags vs.. paper bags?  What will really make a difference?

 

Here are ten things that are among the MOST important that you can do to reduce your personal impact on global warming.

 

 One.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This brilliant triad says it all, but the greatest of these is REDUCE:  Avoid buying what you don't need.  Share what you have, borrow from friends.  Turn down the heat, turn off the lights.  Reuse: Buy used stuff, and wring the last drop of usefulness out of most everything you own. Repair what is repairable. Recycle: Do it, but know that it's the last and least effective leg of the triad. (Ultimately, recycling simply results in the manufacture of more things.)

 Two.

Stay close to home. Work close to home to shorten your commute; eat food grown nearby; patronize local businesses; join local organizations. All of these will improve the look, shape, smell, and feel of your community.

 Three.

Internal combustion engines are polluting and their use should be minimized, period. Use public transit, car pool, bicycle, hike.

 Four.

Watch what you eat. Whenever possible, avoid food grown with pesticides, in feedlots, or by agribusiness. It's an easy way to use your dollars to vote against the spread of toxins in our bodies, land, and water.  Buy locally grown food (shipping pollutes!) whenever possible.  Minimize purchases of processed foods ( you know, the stuff that comes in a box or can and has ingredients you can't understand.) Your food will taste better and you will feel better.

 Five.

Choose carefully when making purchases and even more carefully when voting. Think hardest when buying large objects; don't drive yourself mad fretting over the small ones. It's easy to be distracted by the paper bag puzzle, but an energy-sucking refrigerator is much more worthy of your attention. When you do get that dishwasher/lawnmower/toilet, spend the money up front for an efficient model.  Private industries have very little incentive to improve their environmental practices. Our consumption choices must encourage and support good practices.

 Six.

Vote. Political engagement enables the spread of environmentally conscious policies. Without public action, thoughtful individuals are swimming upstream.  Lobby, write letters, demonstrate: our political choices must support appropriate government regulation.

 Seven.

Join a local environmental group that is working for your community.  Working together we can accomplish so much more.  And it is a great way to meet people in your neighborhood.  Connect!

 Eight.

Support thoughtful innovations in manufacturing and production. (Hint: Drilling for oil is no longer an innovation.) Small is beautiful.

 Nine.

Don't feel guilty. It only makes you sad.  We are all in this together and we all need to work together.  It is hard to be effective if you are depressed.

 Ten.

Enjoy.  If you aren’t enjoying life, you are doing it wrong.  Those things that we cannot manufacture and can never own -- water, air, soil, plants and animals -- are the foundation of life's pleasures. Without them, we're nothing. Spend time outside; in the sun or rain, day or night, in all the seasons.  Find a place that speaks to you and return to it again and again for sustenance.

 

Stephen Wilder

How to compare this brief life? This morning a boat crossed the harbor, leaving no mark in the world. Mansei

p

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 

            Percy Bysshe Shelley

p

Chicken Killing

I was 5 and the chickens were my friends

I would pull an ear of corn from the crib
hack it against a brick and cry    here biddy biddy biddy

and they'd come running to peck between my bare
toes with beaks hard and smooth as sanded oak

when the crabapples rotted and fell off the tree into the yard
they would gobble them up and get drunk

then dance the crabapple dance  cluck
and strut, bump into each other, fly into the side

of the henhouse and stagger around laughing at chicken jokes

I laughed at their jokes    I partied
hard with those hens

one afternoon when we got back from
Hebron Baptist Church where you got to fan yourself
with funeral parlor fans

Uncle Wid went to the chicken yard with an ear
of corn    here biddy biddy biddy    he cried

and when the chickens ran up to peck
he grabbed two by the neck and swung them
over his head like sacks    wap    wap    and their heads
were off in his hands and their bodies were still

flying around the yard because no one had
told them they were dead
yet

Mary Mackey

 

 

p

How to compare this brief life?

    This morning a boat crossed

        the harbor, leaving no

            mark in the world.

 

                        Mansei

 

q

No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions are, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms.

 

     Wendell Berry

p

 

A Story of How a Wall Stands

 

At Aacqu there is a wall

almost 400 years old

which supports hundreds

of tons of dirt and bones –

it’s a graveyard built on a

steep incline – and it looks

 like it’s about to fall down

 the incline but will not for

 a long time.

 

My father, who works with stone,

says,  “That’s just the part you see,

the stones which seem to be

just packed in on the outside,”

and with his hands puts the stone and mud

in place.  “Underneath what looks like loose stone,

there is stone woven together.”

He ties one hand over the other,

fitting like the bones of his hands

and fingers.  “That’s what is

holding it together.”

 

“It is built that carefully,”

he says, “the mud mixed

to a certain texture,” patiently

“with the fingers,” worked

in the palm of his hand.  “So that

placed between the stones, they hold

together for a long, long time.”

 

He tells me those things,

the story of them worked

with his fingers, in the palm

of his hands, working the stone

and the mud until they become

the wall that stands a long, long time.

 

            Simon J. Ortiz