sey090

Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus (1266-1303) taught extensively on the absolute uniqueness of each act of creation.  His doctrine of haecceity is derived from haec, the Latin word for "this." Duns Scotus said the absolute freedom of God allows God to create, or not to create, each creature. Its existence means God has positively chosen to create that creature, precisely as it is. Each creature is thus not merely one member of a genus and species, but a unique aspect of the infinite Mystery of God.  God is continuously choosing each created thing specifically to exist, moment by moment. This teaching alone made Scotus a favorite of mystics and poets like  Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Merton, who considered themselves "Scotists" - as I do too.  ~ Richard Rohr from just this  

. No one knew the name of this day; Born quietly from deepest night, It hid its face in light, Demanded nothing for itself, Opened out to offer each of us A field of brightness that traveled ahead, Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps And the light of thought to show the way. The mind of the day draws no attention; It dwells within the silence with elegance To create a space for all our words, Drawing us to listen inward and outward. We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us. Somewhere in us a dignity presides That is more gracious than the smallness That fuels us with fear and force, A dignity that trusts the form a day takes. So at the end of this day, we give thanks For being betrothed to the unknown And for the secret work Through which the mind of the day And wisdom of the soul become one. ~ John O’Donohue,  from:   To Bless the Space Betw...

~ Janine Jansen Tchaikovsky's violin concerto performed and broadcast on April 19th, 2013.  With Paavo Järvi conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra     Tchaikovsky (right) with violinist Iosif Kotek    

~ John O'Donohue

Impermanence does not necessarily lead us to suffering. Without impermanence, life could not be. Without impermanence, your daughter could not grow into a beautiful young lady. Without impermanence, oppressive political regimes would never change. We think impermanence makes us suffer. The Buddha gave the example of a dog that was hit by a stone and got angry at the stone. It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence. If we are in good health and are aware of impermanence, we will take good care of ourselves. When we know that the person we love is impermanent, we will cherish our beloved all the more. Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us and inside of us. When we practice mindfulness of impermanence, we become fresher and more loving.  Looking deeply can become a way of life. We can practice co...

. 1. I built my hut near where people live and yet I hear no traffic noise or sound of wheels. Could you tell me what is happening? An aloneness gathers around the soul that is alone. I pick chrysanthemums underneath the east hedge, the mountains to the south are clear. The mountain air at sunset is so wonderful, and the birds coming home, one after the other. In all these details there are secret truths; but when I try to shift to language, it all slops away. 2. Such a strong color on the late chrysanthemums! The stalk sways stoutly, flower wet with dew, open. Wandering drunk in this beauty, who cares about my sorrows. I have left excitement behind, and what is not done. Alone, I take a drink. The bottle tilts by itself when the cup is empty. When the sun goes down, all bustle stops, and the birds on their return call from the leaves. I walk around my study shouting and proud because I can take up this life again. ~ Tao Yuan-Ming .

So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy.  But loneliness always remains; it is ever there, under cover.  But as it frightens me, and as I do not know what the inward nature of this loneliness is, therefore I want to find something to which to cling.  So I think that through something, through a person, I will be happy.  So our mind is always concerned with finding something.  Through furniture, through a house, through books, through people, through ideas, through rituals, though symbols, we hope to get something, to find happiness.  And so the things, the people, the ideas, become extraordinarily important, because through them we hope we shall find it.  So we begin to be dependent on them. But with it all there is still this thing not understood, not resolved; the anxiety, the fear, is still there....Is it not very important that I should understand this loneliness, this ache, this pain of extraordinary empti...

~ Gary Schmidt, Piano  https://youtu.be/bUhZrg7GQ2Q

As unlikely as it may seem, the contemplative moment can be found at the very center of such ontological crises . . . during the Middle Passage in the holds of slave ships . . . auction blocks . . . and the . . . hush arbors [where slaves worshiped in secret]. Each event is experienced by individuals stunned into multiple realities by shock, journey, and displacement. . . . In the words of Howard Thurman, “when all hope for release in the world seems unrealistic and groundless, the heart turns to a way of escape beyond the present order.”  For captured Africans, there was no safety except in common cause and the development of internal and spiritual fortitude. . . . The only sound that would carry Africans over the bitter waters was the moan. Moans flowed through each wracked body and drew each soul toward the center of contemplation. . . . One imagines the Spirit moaning as it hovered over the deep during the Genesis account of creation [Genesis 1:2]. Here, the moan stitches horro...

. Making room in your mind for life without your mind closed shut, allowing all you are to see you where you are, you feel the free light behind you is inside you, sensing Death, Mind, the Divine, are all the same. What's in a name? Death is the rest. Open up, give it room, let it breathe the fear right out of you; it is what's left of you, it is you, free of you, knowing you like the truth you know when laughing overcomes you. ~ V.B. Price from Death Self photo Bayon temple at Angkor Thom

Fr. Gregory Boyle Father Gregory Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, is an acknowledged expert on gangs, intervention and re-entry and today serves on the U.S. Attorney General's Defending Childhood Task Force.    Born in Los Angeles, one of eight children, Fr. Greg worked in the family-owned dairy, loading milk trucks to earn his high school tuition. An enduring memory of that youthful time is when "...these weathered old truckers would come up to me, put their arms around me and point at my father in the distance, on the loading dock, and say, 'Your dad is a great man.'" Lessons from that first job apply at Homeboy Industries today where employees come to change for themselves and their children. Homeboy Industries traces its roots to "Jobs For A Future" (JFF), created in 1988 by Boyle at Dolores Mission. To address the escalating problems of gang-involved youth, he and the community developed an elementary school, day care pr...

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls. - Robert M. Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What happens to the leaves after they turn red and golden and fall away? What happens to the singing birds when they can't sing any longer? What happens to their quick wings? Do you think there is any personal heaven for any of us? Do you think anyone, the other side of that darkness, will call to us, meaning us? Beyond the trees the foxes keep teaching their children to live in the valley. so they never seem to vanish, they are always there in the blossom of the light that stands up every morning in the dark sky. And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn't mind being a rose in a field full of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then...

Be with those who help your being. Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath  comes cold out of their mouths. Not these visible forms, your work is deeper. A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces. If you don't try to fly,  and so break yourself apart, you will be broken open by death, when it's too late for all you could become. Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots and makes them green. Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow? ~ Rumi   translation Coleman Barks

An ant hurries along a threshing floor with its wheat grain, moving between huge stacks of wheat, not knowing the abundance  all around.  It thinks its one grain is all there is to love. So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to. This body, one path, one teacher. Look wider and farther. The essence of every human being can see, and what that essence-eye takes in, the being becomes.  Saturn. Solomon! The ocean pours through a jar, and you might say it swims inside the fish!  This mystery gives peace to your longing and makes the road home home. ~ Rumi translation by Coleman Barks

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly writte...

. By closing the eyes and slumbering and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations ... I have read in a Hindu book, that "there was a king's son, who, bing expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived.  One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he know himself to be a prince.  So soul," continues the Hindu philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface...

All my body calls for something in this sleeping earth we call the spirit. But how from lifted arms where stars run through fingers and the night is like sand do I breathe a fragrance of its wisdom do I call its name or listen to the drops that trickle down to earth and hear life being given not only through the moving hands of the forest but through the hand that reaches in the dark unmoving regions of the chest and uncovers slowly the enormous indistinct shape of the ocean. ~  David Whyte 

~ Jean Vanier  

For too long, we have believed that the divine is outside us.  This belief has strained our longing disastrously.   This is so lonely since it is human longing that makes us holy.   The most beautiful thing about us is our longing;   this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom.   If you focus your longing on a faraway divinity, you put an unfair strain on your longing.   Thus it often happens that the longing reaches out towards the distant divine,  but, because it over-strains itself, it bends back to become cynicism, emptiness or negativity.   This can destroy your sensibility. Yet we do not need to put any strain on our longing.   If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground,  then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us. ~ John O'Donohue art by Odilon Redon

The world of the past has gone... Behold I am making all of creation new. (Book of Revelations) The new day deepens what has already happened and unfolds what is surprising, unpredictable, and creative... Presence is the way a person's individuality comes toward you.  Presence is the soul texture of the person... If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging.  Your longing is safe there.   Belonging  is related to longing .  If you hyphenate belonging,  it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth:  Be - Your - Longing.  Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity. You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away.  You...

A monk sips morning tea, it's quiet, the chrysanthemum's flowering. ~ Matsuo Basho translated by Robert Hass 

Each of the tragedies can be read as the tale of a single ripening self, every character part of one soul. The comedies can be included in this as well. Often the flaw is a flaw of self-knowledge; sometimes greed.  For this reason the comic glint of a school of herring leads to no plot line, we cannot imagine a tragedy of donkeys or bees. Before the ordinary realities, ordinary failures: hunger, coldness, anger, longing, heat. Yet one day, a thought as small as a vetch flower opens. After, no longer minding the minor and almost wordless role, playing the messenger given the letter everyone knows will arrive too late or ruined by water. To have stopped by the fig and eaten was not an error, then, but the reason for going. ~  Jane Hirshfield

. You are me and I am you. Isn't it obvious that we inter-are? You cultivate the flower in yourself so that I will be beautiful. I transform the garbage in myself so that you do not have to suffer. I support you you support me. I am here to bring you peace you are here to bring me joy     ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

. No one lives his life. Disguised since childhood, haphazardly assembled from voices and fears and little pleasures, we come of age as masks. Our true face never speaks. Somewhere there must be storehouses where all these lives are laid away like suits of armor or old carriages or clothes hanging limply on the walls. Maybe all paths lead there, to the repository of unlived things. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God art by picasso

Whether drifting through life on a boat or  climbing toward old age leading a horse,  each day is a journey and the journey itself is home.  ~ Basho art by Harlan Hubbard

Although from the beginning I knew the world is impermanent, not a moment passes when my sleeves are dry. ~ Ryokan When you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a glass cup, that, when it has been broken, you may remember what it was and may not be troubled… What you love is nothing of your own: it has been given to you for the present, not that it should not be taken from you, nor has it been given to you for all time, but as a fig is given to you or a bunch of grapes at the appointed season of the year. But if you wish for these things in winter, you are a fool. So if you wish for your son or friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know that you are wishing for a fig in winter. At the times when you are delighted with a thing, place before yourself the contrary appearances. ~ Epictetus from The Discourses of Epictetus with thanks to brainpickin...