Confidence

 

'Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing being wrong.'.. Peter McIntyre

Rumi - The Sunrise Ruby

 The Sunrise Ruby

In the early morning hour,

just before dawn, lover and beloved wake

and take a drink of water.
     

She asks, "Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell the absolute truth."
   
 He says, "There is nothing left of me.
 I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
 Is it still a stone, or a world
 made of redness? It has no resistance
 to sunlight."
    
 This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
 and told the truth!
     

The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.
   
 Completely become hearing and ear,
 and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
   
 Work. Keep digging your well.
 Don’t think about getting off from work.
 Water is there somewhere.
   
 Submit to a daily practice.
 Your loyalty to that
 is a ring on the door.
   
 Keep knocking, and the joy inside
 will eventually open a window
 and look out to see who’s there.

Passing Time by Maya Angelou

PASSING TIME

Your skin like dawn

Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning.

• Ann Petrie Shaw's - First Unitarian Church of Des Moines -  sermon on 12.13.2020
• Circle Game - Joni Mitchell's song
• Live LIke a Hero: Tecumseh, 
• Sing a song of gratitude -- not approach life/death as something to do over if only the chance be given

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - July 2020

 

May we sing together, always. May our voice be soft. May our singing be music for others and may it keep others aloft. Sing gently, always. Sing gently as one. May we stand together, always. May our voice be strong. May we hear the singing and May we always sing along. Sing gently, always. Sing gently as one. – Eric Whitacre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InULYfJHKI0&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=EricWhitacre%27sVirtualChoir

The bloom of youth scatters steadily away

In Reply to Jia Peng of the Mountains

Sent Upon seeing that the pine he planted 

Outside my office Has begun to prosper - Liu Zong-Yuan (773 - 819), David Hinton , Translator

Flourish and ruin keep leaving each other

But no-mind stays, dark enigma's fruition.

The bloom of youth scatters steadily away.

And grandeur crumbles to its tranquil end.

But mountain streams continue here 

in this green pine you brought to this courtyard.

Deep snows showing off its radiant beauty

And cold blossoms its kingfischer greens.

At dawn, even a pure recluse must yearn

Now, I just invite clear wind for company. 

Our world, Can't step outside it

When you live on a round planet, there's no choosing sides. ~ Wayne Dyer

Pandemic

Pandemic

What if you thought of it

as the Jews consider the Sabbath—

the most sacred of times?

Cease from travel.

Cease from buying and selling.

Give up, just for now,

on trying to make the world

different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those

to whom you commit your life.

Center down.

 

And when your body has become still,

reach out with your heart.

Know that we are connected

in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.

(You could hardly deny it now.)

Know that our lives

are in one another’s hands.

(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.

Reach out your heart.

Reach out your words.

Reach out all the tendrils

of compassion that move, invisibly,

where we cannot touch.

 

Promise this world your love–

for better or for worse,

in sickness and in health,

so long as we all shall live.

 

–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

wholeness

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth. ~ Norman Cousins

One hut holds it all.
So what's the sense in Great or Small.
Precious, it is, hermit!
An empty vault, without a speck of dust.

--Han Shan Te Ch'ing

Deep in the mountains

At night, deep in the mountains
I sit in meditation.

The affairs of men never reach here.
Everything is quiet and empty.

All the incense has been swallowed up by the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.

Unable to sleep, I walked out into the woods.
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.

-- Ryokan (?)

birth - death - Tagore

The night kissed the fading day, with a whisper: I am death, your mother. From me you will get new birth. ~ Rabindranath Tagore