Our everyday world may have gotten more restricted; This does not necessarily mean less rich.
A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life.
The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon:
The mind must be full of light.
Hong Zicheng, Chinese Philosopher, 1572-1620
They don’t grieve over the past,
Nor do they yearn for the future
They live only in the present
That’s why their face is serene
Its from yearning for the future
And grieving over the past
This is how fools become withered
Like a fresh reed that’s been hacked down
The Buddha, Collected Discourses, 1.10
A poem for this Easter Monday, traditionally in Italy “Lunedì dell’Angelo”, (Monday of the Angel), a day for going for a walk, remembering the road to Emmaus story in the New Testament
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light.
Wendell Berry, Now you Know the Worst
The period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday shows us all the aspects of human life, from darkness to light:
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth
If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word,
if it does not draw us into his superluminous darkness,
if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths ...
we have misunderstood the words of Christianity.
For they all speak of the unknown God who only reveals to give himself as the abiding mystery.
Karl Rahner sj., 1904 – 1984 Jesuit Theologian, Poetry and the Christian.
In these days it can be just small things, like the song of a bird….
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from
all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.
William Stafford, Cutting Loose
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