Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist …
Art & Spirit
Practice Notes: Hasty Generalization, Parasite & The Australian Open
Parasite Recently saw Parasite—a brilliantly whacky and over-the-top satire on class relations. If you haven’t already, I’d say it’s worth checking out. The title of the film points to its primary theme and central ambiguity, expressed nicely here in one review: Who are the real parasites? The poor who attach themselves to the rich or the rich who suck the marrow of the poor? Or is the system …
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Driving By
Sitting at a Dharma talk at Plum Village—in south-central France in the summer of 1996—I gazed for a few long seconds out of the large community tent, allowing Thich Nhat's Hanh's words to drift into the background of my attention. In the foreground now was a country road—maybe a football field's distance away—upon which passed a series of slow-driving cars. I thought: How sweetly poignant and …
Quietly
Meditation at Oyster River (excerpt) The self persists like a dying star, In sleep, afraid. Death's face rises afresh, Among the shy beasts, the deer at the salt-lick, The doe with its sloped shoulders loping across the highway, The young snake, poised in green leaves, waiting for its fly, The hummingbird, whirring from quince-blossom to morning-glory— With these I would be. And with …
By Thy Wide Grace
To the Holy Spirit O Thou, far off and near, whole and broken, Who in necessity and bounty wait, Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken, By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate. ~ Wendell Berry * …
Where The Air We Breathe Is Love
To a Singer My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside a helm conducting it, Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. It seems to float ever, forever, Upon that many-winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber …