THE GRACE OF HIDDEN BEAUTY

Rain on Old Window 1

We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person's taste is different.  The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger.  The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything.  When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.

John O'Donohue

Beauty: Rediscovering The

True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope 

Rain on Old Window 2

. . . AND THE NEED FOR SILENCE

From yesterday's post on the creation of a sacred place in one's home to something closely related and equally important — the need for a modicum of silence in one's life.

Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation . . . tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.  His anxiety subsides.  His inhuman void spreads monstrously like gray vegetation.

Jean Arp 

Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.

Rilke

The quieter you become, the more your can hear.

Ram Dass 

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.  Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Gandhi 


Now all my teachers are dead except silence.

W.S. Merwin 
(from "A Scale in May")

ON HAVING A SACRED PLACE

The Astronomer
by
Johannes Vermeer

I have been re-reading The Power of Myth, which is essentially a transcript of conversations that the acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers had with Joseph Campbell in 1985 and 1986.  Every page of the transcript is rich in thought-provoking wisdom. As I leave a rather chaotic year, however, I find myself thinking more and more about a particular colloquy concerning the importance of not only creating, but defending, a sacred place in one's home. 

Bill Moyers: You write in The Mythic Image about the center of transformation, the idea of a sacred place where the temporal walls may dissolve to reveal a wonder.  What does it mean to have a sacred place?

Joseph Campbell: This is an absolute necessity for anybody today.  You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you.  This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.  This is the place of creative incubation.  At first you may find that nothing happens there.  But if you have a sacred place and use it, something will happen.

Happy New Year  to Everyone!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Best Wishes To Everyone

During the Holiday Season

And The Coming New Year

THANKSGIVING

As the sun rose this Thanksgiving morning, gradually warming the fields and woodlands that surround our new home in South Carolina, I remembered a Denise Levertov song of praise that I recently discovered.  It's an excerpt from Levertov's long poem, Mass For The Day of St. Thomas Didymus, and it expresses much of what I feel on this day — a deep sense of gratitude for the daily unfolding of life; for simple, overlooked things like light and shadow; and for the mysterious forces that continue to give meaning to our lives through "flow and change, night and the pulse of day."  Perhaps you, too, will be inspired by the poem.

                                                            ii Gloria

by Denise Levertov

                                Praise the wet snow

                                         falling early.

                                Praise the shadow

                                         my neighbor's chimney casts on the tile roof

                                even this gray October day that should, they say,

                                have been golden.

                                                 Praise

                                the invisible sun burning beyond

                                     the white cold sky, giving us

                                light and the chimney's shadow.

                                Praise

                                god or the gods, the unknown,

                                that which imagined us, which stays

                                our hand,

                                our murderous hand,

                                                     and gives us

                                still,

                                in the shadow of death,

                                             our daily life,

                                             and the dream still

                                of goodwill, of peace on earth.

                                Praise

                                flow and change, night and 

                                the pulse of day.

                       HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVERYONE!

NEW WATERMARKS IN OTHER HEMISPHERES

ALL THE HEMISPHERES

 HAFIZ

                            Leave the familiar for a while.  Let your senses 

                            and bodies stretch out

                             like a welcomed season onto meadows and

                             shores and hills.

                            Open up to the roof.  Make a new watermark 

                            on your excitement and love.

                             Like a blooming night flower, bestow your vital

                             fragrance of happiness and giving upon our 

                             intimate assembly.

                             Change rooms in your mind for a day.  All the 

                             hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator 

                             in your soul.

                             Greet yourself in your thousand other forms as 

                             you mount the hidden tide and travel back home.

                             All the hemispheres in heaven are sitting around 

                             a campfire chatting, while

                             stitching themselves together into the great circle

                             inside of you.

Translation by Daniel Ladinsky, A Year With Hafiz: Daily Contemplations

TABLE ROCK AND PINNACLE LAKE

After seemingly endless months

of selling a house, buying a house, moving from one state to another, 

and trying to retain some measure of order in my life, 

I left the the household chaos early this morning and drove 

an hour northward to enjoy some of the myriad offerings of autumn

 in the Southern Appalachians.

My destination was Table Rock and Lake Pinnacle, 

a tranquil and pristine body of water that lies at the foot of the cliffs.

  When I arrived, the lake was just emerging from the morning fog. 

 In fifteen or twenty minutes, however, the skies began to clear . . . 

. . . and Table Rock greeted the morning sun with all of its glory.

Below the sheer cliffs of Table Rock, 

the trees seemed to create an impressionist painting of the fall colors . . .

Circling Lake Pinnacle, which was flat as a mirror,

 offered amazing views of the skies, mountains, and foliage

 being reflected in the still waters.

This was the finest day I've enjoyed in many months, 

and I'm truly excited about the infinite possibilities of exploring this part of my new world on foot.  There are trails in every direction and the scenery is nothing less than sensational!

These particular photos are best viewed at full screen (click on center of each photo).