1914 Truce Christmas Eve in the trenches of France, the guns were quiet. The dead lay still in No Man’s Land – Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank ... The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky. Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel, sparkled and winked. A boy from Stroud stared at a star to meet his mother’s eyesight there. An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a …
Art & Spirit
Exact, Deliberate Care
Reading, once again, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is like reconnecting with an old friend: a deep comfort and easy pleasure, rich with sweetness and joy. One of my favorite passages ... About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling …
Blissfully Unencumbered
This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. Understanding a bit about how human vision works provides a fascinating window onto the deeply conditioned nature of all perceptual processes: hearing, tasting, …
Acrobat’s Song
Acrobat's Song Who is it for whom we now perform, Cavorting on wire: For whom does the boy Climbing the ladder Balance and whirl— For whom, Seen or unseen In a shield of light? Seen or unseen, In a shield of light, At the tent top Where the rays stream in Watching the pin-wheel Turns of the players Dancing in the light: Lady, We are Thy …
On To The Fields Of Praise
The Lover Of God In the wake of learning about the binding problem, what has come to mind are some of my favorite poems, and in particular great turns of line, whose power has much to do with a sudden shift in how our mind is constructing meaning: a slide from one narrative construction to another, which renders the whole construction process transparent, allowing the freedom of the unconstructed …
Great Sky-Circles
The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they're given wings. ~ Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks) * * * I don't often suggest specific yoga asana or qigong sequences, but here's one—which I have explored and greatly appreciated—that aligns beautifully with …