“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
― Rumi
Even if destruction and tribulation rain down upon your life, hope remains with life. From the ruins, despair or determination or acceptance or all three can grow. As long as determination is there, in even slightest amount, it will soon overwhelm the other two, for life is insistent and clings tenaciously to the most precarious foothold, and transforms dust into soil, rock into shelter, and hope into the future.
Fearing what may be can bring upon you, in your precaution and desperate maneuvering, that which you are hoping to avoid. Building fortresses to ward off potential doom leaves less resources to create a life worth protecting.
You are only finished when you give up or your dead and everything looks darkest before the dawn, and all that. When you start to dance just keep on movin’ til the music stops and then make your own music out what you can salvage from the debris.
“you have experienced fear without being destroyed….
The choice is yours.
You can always leave the realm of your nightmares.
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
–Charles Bukowski
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
― Charles Bukowski
Eagle Poem
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
–Joy Harjo
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi
When all your desires are distilled; You will cast just two votes: To love more, And be happy.
–Hafez
What if you make the wrong choice, choose the wrong path? How can this be? if you are committed to living with all the passion you can muster, life will be in any place you find yourself. At some point you must give fear the slip and come out laughing no matter the outcome.
Be what you are when you are filled up with what you love.
This can take many forms. That of a strong connection with the soil and practical matters and love of working directly with the means of survival in attentive and scientific ways.
Or, a person focused on physical fitness and the body, who maintains an actively concrete and empirical approach to nutrition and exercise.
A grounded person who considers every problem or issue with deliberation, usually of conservative nature favoring traditional solutions if they are efficacious and the least risky of the alternatives.
A person good at fixing or making practical items that have to do with getting work done or a handyperson usually not interested in extending ideas beyond local and utilitarian uses.
Practical matters or matters of health may need to be a focus, or a more limited scope of inquiry or input from someone pragmatic with more of an applied technology approach might be helpful in resolving a problem.
This is just the beginning. So many people in this country think that democracy is about winning, but so much of making improvements in government is getting people to pay attention to issues that might look as if there is only one way to deal with them when there are alternatives and room for questions. If you give the opposition the idea that you can win, they have to take you seriously, and if you get people on the edges to pay attention to a different side of the issues you might end up winning. But, this is a slow process and you have to get close enough to get some attention in places where there are considerable cultural barriers to comprehension of the issues from a broader point of view. There are so many people locked into tunnel vision points of view that need to be given a little shake so they will look outside their little shells.
A few things to remember for those fretting and not celebrating last Tuesday’s election results.
There was not a single pollster who gave the Democrats any chance of retaking the Senate. The question was always about the margin by which they would lose. Anything within 4 percentage in states which Trump carried by double digits would be a sign of growing strength that would prevail in 2020;
Taking the House in spite of gerrymanders, Voter ID laws, and other voter suppression tactics would be a huge victory because it would signal the down ballot power to change and reverse many of these anti-democratic measures. This is no pyrrhic or illusory victory. To win the House in this environment is akin to winning a marathon when your ankle has been broken by your opponent;
Florida and Georgia are still dominated by the politics of the old South. The…
This is about using all of your resources to push through a challenging situation. You might be fighting for your survival or trying to get through the final stages of a project you have been putting your heart and soul into. You will need to give every ounce of your energy and draw on all your reserves.
There is a destination you are resolved to reach. You must arrange your vehicle, tools and supplies and plan your route. You should not leave anything to chance. Be thorough and judicious in your preparations.
You may be asked take the lead on a project that will demand single minded devotion and you will need to use all of your charisma and motivational skills to get the most out of your colleagues.
This can represent devotion to duty, that which is not coerced or forced, but freely and honestly given.
In intellectual or spiritual matters it represents the focused search for truth or breaking through barriers to hidden knowledge by perseverance and intense study or training.
There is a job to do and your the one most capable of completing it, but you must own it and see through no matter what obstacles you meet. Where the will leads the way opens. Drive on!
There are many kinds of idleness, many of them useful and necessary for making your way through life. There can also be actions that are blocked, currents that dammed or choked, and projects or engines that have stalled. There is a message in this card to examine the reasons why things aren’t moving or slowed to a crawl.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek:
To be consoled as to console;
To be understand as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
–Prayer of St. Frances of Assisi
Nostalgia and sentimentality can lead to a belief that the past can be remade creating a wall against the next step to resolving problems, especially when the future is unknown and includes possible hardships, we want to put on the brakes and stall the process. But often this leaves us ill prepared for what comes along and we wallow in denial and avoidance while real issues go unaddressed.
There may be a need to seek a situation that allows you to be more freely who you are and express love and create relationships that are more fulfilling.
Sometimes it is wise to pause and inspect our motives for rushing forward with actions that will have potentially huge effects on our lives. Sitting idle in contemplation is not a waste of time if it prevents future waste and confusion, though it may appear indecisive, lazy or apathetic.
Idleness can be caused by illness which can include depression or anxiety which can grind any action to a halt or freeze people with fear and prevent life from flowing in a beneficial way. There may be a way to get assistance to deal with these obstacles in order to resume the flow of an active life.
Sometimes it feels like you are moving up a steep slope or against the current and are exhausted by your daily grind, and need to relax and recoup your spirit in order to make progress, instead of giving up entirely.
You may have intended to return to your path, but have idled long and have lost your desire to move. You may need to find a way to force yourself on to your feet again. Motivation is needed to rebuild the will.
You may think that all has been lost through your idleness, that you have let too much time pass, but with the breath of life is hope even though you may not recover all the lost ground, you may not need to if you can find a path that suits you better.
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― Lord Byron
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel
Wonder alone; bearing the Light and thy Staff.
And, be the Light so bright that no man seeth thee.
Be not moved by aught without or within:
keep silence in all ways.
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
“We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.”
Dr. Stephen Ray
