onehouse

Christmas Lights: Day 8

Because Oliver Jeffers makes me smile.

                    From How To Catch a Star.

I believe life is endless...

I'm listening to an old Studs Terkel interview on Speaking of Faith and they read from his book on death called Will the Circle Be Unbroken? This excerpt is from Delbert Tibbs, a former death row inmate that was released after two years due to lack of evidence.

When I meet people now, if they try to make a big deal about me having been on death row, I sometimes gently remind them that we're all on death row. The difference is that here the state's going to do it, and at some point you're going to know the date and the hour, but that's the only difference.

I believe life is endless. We can't talk about life without talking about death. We can't talk about death without talking about life. I was listening to the Dalai Lama. I read his autobiography, and he says that Buddhists often meditate on death. That's total anathema to the Western mind, right? I think it has something to do with Greek culture, with its bifurcation of existence — this is life and this is death. I learned to meditate before I went to death row. That's one of the things that helped me get through, but it was very difficult.

What I've discovered is all of the holy books are marvelous, absolutely so, including the Bible. The Bible has the most beautiful language of any book I've ever read, not to mention the fact that there's something there. God is there. But I really do believe he's hidden. I believe the Jewish mystics who went into the kabbalah know that. The Bhagavad Gita is the Bible to 300 million Indians and others who are not Indians. Thoreau and Emerson read it. Krishna says there never was a time when you and I did not exist, and there will never be a time when we cease to be. He said, "This body wears out, like garments, and when a garment wears out, you take it off and you lay it down and you pick up another one and put it on."

One of the terrible things about executions is to jump people off into the universe like that. I think for a soul to be wrenched from the body is for the soul to be in anger and in pain and in hatred. I believe it impacts negatively on our world, that probably a lot of the calamities that happen are a result of that sort of thing. I mourn for the whole world because it's such a horrible place so often.

Fantastic Seashells

From the book I Asked for Wonder by Abraham Heschel (emphasis mine):

The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.

We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure of suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.

Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

Walking and Wooden Bowls

Quotes from the beginning of two books that I am reading:

From Planet Walker:

The geographic pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both. - Thomas Merton. 1964 

From The Wooden Bowl:

"The path forward seems to go back." - Tao Te Ching

Another Trip to the Library

For this book, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World by Wendy Johnson.

Zen Gardening slideshow: New York Times

This small hope

I'm getting rid of books and going through passages I marked with flags long ago. Some quotes no longer seem important and some I still want to remember. Like these ones:

I offer you this hope.
It is so small
The wind could blow it out.
Its feeble flickering
turns up in unexpected places
and seems to annoy those
with a big investment in dazzling light
or in measuring the strength of darkness.
If this hope lives
it will be like swallows' wings,
erratic, unpredictable,
always on the move.
If this hope dies,
it will be buried shallow
like grass seed.

- Corrymeela community member, Janet Shepperson
(emphasis mine)

History says don't hope
On this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.

Seamus Heaney, poet

From People Behind the Peace: Community and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland
Ronald A. Wells
(skimmed this book and these two bits popped out)

Anonymous armies.

On working in a crisis center:

I also learned about altruism and what an important part it plays in our emotions. You don't reach much about that in newspapers; we're taught that our species is mainly warlike. But now I know there are these anonymous armies of the day and night under the surface of every American city, performing acts of heroism and mercy for their neighbors whom they will never meet. In many ways it's analogous to the monastic or cloistered life. Whenever I was doing that counseling I was aware that it was like being in a confessional: the telephone, with its perforations, into which people were pouring out their heart in the most intimate way. You're all alone in that room, and the stories are pushed against your ear; it just feeds into your soul. I felt it was a sacramental transaction.

Diane Ackerman
A Messenger of Wonder
Going on Faith: Writing As A Spiritual Quest
Edited by William Zinsser

Bringing Down the Fire

"I had a scene where I wanted a Biblical allusion, and I was poking around in the Apocrypha in search of a nifty quote. In the Book of Esdras I came across this: "I shall light a candle of understanding in thy heart." And it impressed me. Not head, heart. Not cool intellect, but a flame of understanding. And I recognized that there was a theme hidden in my book as it then existed: the conflict between objective knowledge which is the product of analysis and logic and data, and belief, which has no data, no analysis and no logic. The synthesis was understanding--something that combines knowledge and faith."

David Bradley
Bringing Down The Fire
Going on Faith: Writing As A Spiritual Quest
Edited by William Zinsser

Marcellin Caillou

I'm re-reading a book I was given for Christmas called Marcellin Caillou. It is illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempe from the Petit Nicolas series which I read when I was learning French. I also read Sartre, Camus, the Bible, and Jacques Brel lyrics. I preferred Nicolas and Sempe's simple line drawings to them all.  Marcellin has a peculiar malady that causes his face to turn red for no reason at all.  Here's a little animation clip of Marcellin yelling to the world "Pourquoi je rougis?"

Picture Blogging: Day 27: The Arrival

The Arrival: Another beautiful Shaun Tan book that wordlessly draws the reader into an immigrant's experience of a strange new world. I spent a lot of time staring at these intricate landscapes. Book as art object and one to own.