Be still. Listen to the stones of the wall. Be silent, they try to speak your name. Listen to the living walls. Who are you? Who are you? Whose silence are you? Who (be quiet) are you (as these stones are quiet). Do not think of what you are. Still less of what you may one day be. Rather be what you are (but who?) be the unthinkable one you do not know.
O be still, while you are still alive, and all things live around you speaking (I do not hear) to your own being, speaking by the unknown that is in you and in themselves.
"I will try, like them to be my own silence: and this is difficult. The whole world is secretly on fire. The stones burn, even the stones they burn me. How can a man be still or listen to all things burning? How can he dare to sit with them when all their silence is on fire?" from The Strange Islands: Poems by Thomas Merton
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Listen to carrion - put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind,lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. from The Country of Marriage, by Wendell Berry
The murals of the Imam Reza Shrine in the city of Mashad, Iran
Justice is simply righting wrongs. It is connected with the reality that God
We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us..The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world -as if we were somehow in outer space - but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world. From Love and Living by Thomas Merton
Vinicio Capossela - The Story-Faced Man His voice seems to emerge from the shadows, a low honeyed whisper cracking with emotion and hinted memories from lost corners of culture, some of them historical and some mythological. Ovunque Proteggi Che coss'e l'amor
Oh my love for the first time in my life my eyes are wide open. Oh my lover for the first time in my life my eyes can see. I see the wind, oh I see the trees everything is clear in my heart. I see the clouds, oh I see the sky everything is clear in our world. Oh my love for the first time in my life my mind is wide open. Oh my lover for the first time in my life my mind can feel. I feel the sorrow, oh I feel the dreams everything is clear in my heart. I feel life, oh I feel love everything is clear in our world. John Lennon
In the great rhythmical laws of the universe truth and beauty are reunited. Poetry playing its part in the reconstruction of a shattered world, where it is worthy of its high destinies to help to carry on the purer fire, and to express in new terms those eternal ideas which must ever be the only sure stay of the human race. Watchers of the Sky
Steve Tibbetts, Marc Anderson and Choying Drolma collaboration in an album entitled, "Selwa" which represents some of Buddhists practices that support the notion of "spontaneous expression" and luminosity that also spawns creative music and thought.
Our bodies always contain old cells that are dying and new cells that are emerging as replacements. Our familiar ways of seeing and thinking and feeling are constantly atrophying, even as fresh modes emerge. Both losing and winning are woven into every day; sinking down and rising up; shrinking and expanding. In any given phase of our lives, one or the other polarity is usually more pronounced. Rob Brezsny
ای قوم به حج رفته کجاييد کجاييد معشوق همين جاست بياييد بياييد The subject of the this poem is that God is everywhere, no need to travel the sands of Arabia to seek God when God is your neighbor or within your soul. If you are willing to see God or His house, cleance the mirror. Ahmad Zahir sings a Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi Poem
Everything around us is constantly changing. Every day, the sun shines upon a new world. What we call routine is full of new proposals and opportunities. But we do not perceive that each day is different from all the others. Today, in some place, a treasure awaits you. It may be a fleeting smile, it may be a great victory -it doesn't matter. Life is made up of large and small miracles. Paulo Coehlo
"Maktub": It is written. It was the pure language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe need none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only women in his life, and that, with no need for words. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning. The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.
Dig Out Your Soul In The Streets Street musicians coming from all parts of life with a variety of different ethnic, musical and creative backgrounds, rehearsing and then performing the previously unheard new songs
There are those who think that love comes with a lifetime guarantee, but we know from those around us, that this may not always be. It's the simple things that come between a father and a son, but when they try to talk, the knives are out before. they have begun. Well that was me, and I have seen the light that shines for eternity, because I learned to say the words I love you. Chris De Burgh - Nori Ta Abadiat (Dostet Daram)
IN THIS WORLD HATE NEVER YET DISPELLED HATE. ONLY LOVE DISPELS HATE. THIS IS THE LAW, ANCIENT AND INEXHAUSTIBLE. Buddha
Last surviving Zapatista fighters. Who were these people? They were idealistic men and women who left their few belongings behind to follow the heroic figurehead of Emiliano Zapata. I guess what I could see in them was that they were people who'd had nothing to lose. Between dying or living as they were, there was not much difference. That's what made them the fearsome fighters that they became-and after meeting them, I look at life in a different way, that's for sure. Jon Bertelli's Memories of a Great Journey
The purpose of education is to show us how to define ourselves authentically and spontaneously in relation to our world-not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of ourselves as individuals. The world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: that is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living and fruitful relationship with each other in it. The world is, therefore, more real in proportion as the people in it are able to be more fully and more humanly alive: that is to say, better able to make a lucid and conscious use of their freedom. Basically, this freedom must consist first of all in the capacity to choose their own lives, to find themselves on the deepest possible level. A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here and there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions... is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of "choice" when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses. It is not free because it is unwilling to face the risk of self-discovery. from "Learning to Live" in Love and Living by Thomas Merton. .
When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. And when you are invited by someone to a banquet sit down at the lowest place, for all who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 14:1, 7-14 on Humility and Hospitality
In her new book, The Four Walls of My Freedom, Donna Thomson gives a moral, philosophical and economic examination of how we assess the value of a life, especially one that seems, in our price-tag culture, to lack worth.
Different ways of measuring well-being and potential, especially among people at the margins - the very poor, the disabled: What if a life was judged not by its monetary worth or possible economic benefit to society, but as a series of complex and rewarding relationships? What if the act of caring - for an elderly relative, a neighbour or a disabled son - could be seen not as a burden, but as a gift?
The capability approach is a method of assessing the potential of the lives of the world's poorest, devised by Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen. Think and Act (the big difference that a minimal amount of action can make in the world.)
I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and the moon, the syllable om in the Vedic mantras; I am the sound in ether and ability in man. Knowledge of the Absolute Bhagavad Gita 7.8
Folk musician and social activist Pete Seeger Pete Seeger's life, music, and legacy encapsulate nearly a century of American history and culture. He has immersed himself in folk music and used it to plant the seeds of a better tomorrow. The songs in this collection of 139 American Favorite Ballads narrate tales of ordinary people and their extraordinary deeds, and show Pete at the crossroads of the past and the future putting his own stamp on America's folk song heritage while bequeathing it to generations to come. Buffalo Gals
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from each other, forgive us. In times of temptation and test, strengthen us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. (1988, Jim Cotter)
Buena Vista Social Club - Omara Portuondo Veinte Anos What does my love mean to you if you no longer love me? We should not dwell on love that is past. I was your life´s desire one day long ago. Now I´m history. I can't face the change. If only we could make our dreams come true. If only you would love me as you did twenty years ago.
Hafez's ghazals operates at the limits of discourse playing with human comprehension and redirecting thoughtful attention to the faulty or limited structures of thought. Like so many Hafez's confusing paradoxes, this journey does not have a clear end. There is no choice but to accept the twists and turns, constructing one's own view with the aid of imagination. Somewhere during the process of being puzzled, however, it becomes clear to the reader that it is the whole notion that has mattered all long.
This paradoxical challenging of identity and creativity is only one example of many such experiences that the Divan offers. One technique that Hafez uses to capture the attention of the reader is to repeat the word "del" (heart). Watching this noun in action and observing its progress through the poems of Hafez is stunningly confusing. whilst its profound meaning sooths the reader, yet its true meaning is embedded within its shell. This arises from the reader's impression that Hafez regards the heart as a treasure in which the gems of honor and secrets of love are buried; a heart that through all eternity is enchained by the hair strings of the beloved. In other words, the motion that this metaphor provides is the manifestation of a mirror in which the reflection of inner beauty can be apparent.
ما چشم عقاب و پر شھباز نداريم. ديدن دگر آموز و پريدن دگرآموز
Then he (Kai Kaous) chose out four eagles strong of wing, and bound them unto the corners of this chariot. And when it was done, Kai Kaous seated himself in the midst thereof with much pomp. And the eagles, when they smelt the flesh, desired after it, and they flapped their wings and raised themselves, and raised the framework with them. And they struggled sore, but they could not attain unto the meat; but ever as they struggled they bore aloft with them Kai Kaous and the throne whereon he sat. And so long as their hunger lasted, they strove after the prey.
Kai Kaous's mind was dimmed that how far is from here (Earth) to the moon? What is the nature of the sun and moon, how is the day (light) and night (dark)? nor wherefore the planets roll. Who is art master of all the earth!? What's the secret of sun and how is the roll and motion of the sun? I heard that Kai Kaous up to sky and went to find the secret of heaven and visit the sun and moon, and count the stars one by one. Kai Kaous fliyth myth (935-1020),from Shahnameh
I see the entire universe as you and this is not surprising. To whom else should I see when you have given vision to my eye? Iraqi - 14th-century A.D
Haris Alexiou-To tango tis Nefelis (Tango to Evora) The two boy angels dreamt of feeding Nefeli with pomegranates and honey to cloud her memory, to forget what she wants. They tempted her away. Her perfume of Hyacinths and lilies they stole and wore it themselves. The gods of love fired arrows. They bewildered her. But the kindly God Zeus takes from her the water of youth, he turns her to cloud and scatters her around So they cannot find her.
Looking back it is easy to see patterns in events of your life that at the time had no pattern; they just happened. Looking back at my life it does seem that strangely, mysteriously, I too, like Van der Post, have been following the flight of a bird.
It has taken me from financial analysis, specialty money management and, perhaps most mysteriously of all, back to a first love, lost early, poetry; and along the way it has taken me back to vibrant, suffering Africa, first introduced to me in a meaningful way in the many books of Laurens van der Post, mentor and friend. Van der Post's Africa was larger than life, colourful, and even in its late-colonial days, full of passion for life that we in the West might only marvel at and envy. Today, the dire scenario in Africa that Van der Post foresaw but hoped could be forestalled, has happened with a devastating ferocity that even he could not have imagined through war, drought and disease.
Written out of the deepest poem that might be that bird, my life speaks no longer, primarily, out of a business world but out of a world of language that has married loves of Africa and poetry in a way that I never expected. But looking back, the journey that bird has taken me on has been one of exquisite, symmetry and coherence. Even though the events and scattered parts of it seemed, at the time, so different and disconnected.
I began to try to understand all my experiences of Africa in the past five years through poetry. It seemed the only language left that could capture the competing tensions of that impossible place, still pulsating with an urgency for life and song in spite of its lengthening shadow of suffering and death.
The result of that marriage of Africa and poetry has been my little book, Again, No More, Poems of Africa and this website which profiles two of my main passions these days, the ones that great mysterious bird has led me to, Africa and poetry. Richard Osler
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu -History (I Was Born Blind) - Wiyathul. A haunting, searching, soothing voice that leaves us with need to contemplate our lives. It lifts us and makes us feel elated but at the same time a hint of sadness.
The stone in the human heart shall melt away
I am an Impressionist in the sense that I am too impatient and emotional for carefully planned formula renditions. I respond intuitively and I am interested in strong essentials, which for me are perspective, color, spontaneity, passion, power and poetry. Daniel Izzard Retrospective
Art is more than painting, it is emotion...inspiration. When I am totally engrossed in what I am doing, as if nothing else exists... painting can be a spiritual experience. Daniel Izzard
But you are this beautiful love story that I have never stopped reading, Words are easy words fragile it was too good. Are you of yesterday and tomorrow? As always my only truth? But it's over time dreams. Memories fade also when you forget. You are like the wind that makes violins sing, and carries off the scent of roses, caramels, candies and chocolates. Sometimes I do not understand you. Thank you, but not for me. You may well offer another Who likes the wind and the scent of roses; words wrapped in a soft sweetness land on my mouth.
You are for me the only music that makes the stars dancing on the dunes; caramels, candies and chocolates. You may well offer another Who loves the stars on the dunes; words wrapped in a soft sweetness land on my mouth. Zap mama - Paroles Paroles.
Hold me close and hold me fast, The magic spell you cast This is la vie en rose. When you kiss me heaven sighs and tho I close my eyes I see la vie en rose. When you press me to your heart I'm in a world apart A world where roses bloom And when you speak angels sing from above everyday words seem to turn into love songs Give your heart and soul to me and life will always be La vie en rose - Louis Armstrong - Edith Piaf
Edith Piaf's life was a constant battle to sing and survive, to live and love. Raised in abject poverty, surrounded by hookers and pimps, Edith's magical voice made her a star on both sides of the Atlantic. Her passionate romances and friendships made her a household name as much as her memorable live performances and beautiful renditions of songs she made famous internationally. But in her audacious attempt to tame her tragic destiny, the "Little Sparrow" - as she was nicknamed - flew so high that she could not fail to burn her wings.
Kevin Neish & Catherine Simard. "I wanted to respond peacefully and seriously to the protester, but she was thrown out by security officials. They pushed her, you know, and she fell. I tried to stop the thing, but I was late... They treated her very roughly". Nelson Mandela
"The whole weekend, generally what you saw was a massive abuse of rights. This pre-emptive raids during Toronto’s G20 summit weekend without a warrant, would be one of them, picking up people who are asleep in gymnasiums, picking up people when you don't have a warrant on university campuses, all these things are well over the line." Julius Grey
Immaculee Ilibagiza is a living example of faith put into action. He life was transformed dramatically during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor's house. Immaculee entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115-pound university student with a loving family - she emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find her most of her family had been brutally murdered.
Immaculee credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculee instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers.
