When I walk, I try to remember to bring my notice-cope along (say it out loud). That way I notice all the fun and flaws along the way, and it helps me cope. What do you notice, just above the bottom slat?

A Year With Thomas Merton - May 21

It appearing the world has not yet ended, I will continue with today's meditation from Thomas Merton:

My Train's Old Song

Early morning. Blessed rain, cooling the air, making the woods wet, where there was fire and danger of burning for weeks, since before Easter. Fire on the lake side, fire over across the creek in a hollow, fires down the valley. Now all is wet. God be praised for the rain.

Fresh green of the valley. Lovely yellow tulips surprised me outside the hermitage. I thought the rabbits had eaten them all but the rain brought them out. A pure and lovely yellow, purer than that of buttercups.

I regret the time I have wasted here this winter working at books. What moments have been lost--moments of realization, lost in the flux of obsession and work. Statements to show, for what?

A train in the valley--that old song.

"Those who have the dharma should devote themselves only to its practice. Disputes arise from the desire for conquest and are not in accordance with the Way" (from the T'an Ching of Hui Neng).

Unrest, action, protests here and there since atomic testing was renewed. Note the symbolic part taken by milk in the protest. Other foods (wheat = bread) get as much or more strontium-90 in them. Milk is the American symbol. Mother is full of strontium-90. Mothers protest. Motherhood undermined by the bomb. Sex symbolism of the bomb, and question of genetic effects. The sex life of America, Kinsey report, and H-bomb were contemporary.

There is a plan to launch a Polaris submarine called The William Penn!!


May 1 and 4, 1962, IV.216-17

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 1

I have neglected this blog. Let's try again. Just began reading Mysticism, by Evelyn Underhill, a reward for having turned in my Spiritual Formation Immersion Experience spiritual autobiography. Ten pages of soul-searching, and now I plunge into Ms. Underhill's classic work that revived interest in and helped define that somewhat scary word "mysticism."

My first note on it comes from the introduction to the 12th edition: "the distinctness of the Spiritual Order." The truth expressed in spirituality is distinct and cannot be assessed by scientific methods.

You gotta talk to the one who made you,
talk to the one who understands,
talk to the one who gave you all the light in your eyes,
all the light in your eyes.

--Sheryl Crow, "Light In Your Eyes"

In a Mr. T phrasing, "Pray, fool!"

Three words came to me today on the way to the top of Kennesaw Mountain: subtlety, grace and endurance. Subtlety of light hinting its way through the green, green trees. Subtlety of gradation in the sky. Subtle power and grace in just being a rock, a fallen tree, a squirrel, a cicada, a mountain that has endured in this same place, before the bloody Civil War battles, and will endure long after my grandchildren's generation.

Les cieux racontent la gloire de Dieu, Et l'etendue celeste annonce l'oeuvre de ses mains. Ps. 19:2

By the Lake Where Hardly Anyone Goes

Greeted by a territorial goose (is that redundant?). Feed it tortilla chips left over from my Chipotle's dinner last night. Sit in the somewhat trashed gazebo. Small fish flitting near the sunlit surface. Cool breeze. Watching a fisher bird dive and snag a bug? A small fish? Watching the fisher bird nibble up its wriggly treat. Goose swims up to the gazebo. Feed it some more tortilla chips. Spot a turtle sunning itself on a log about twenty yards away. Birds chirping. Faint aroma of honeysuckle. Goose swims over by the turtle. Turtle swims away. Goose starts hollering rather urgently. Thought maybe goose was calling for friends. Later on, turns out goose was calling for mate. Goose and mate glide along the water, away from me, making a swimming sandwich of their four fuzzy taupe goslings. Train: CSX, Hamburg Sud, Schneider, stackers. FedEx Ground. Someone's very important package is in there. Where is it going? Finishing up The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Good read, but not my favorite all-time novel. People have dreams, some realistic, some fantastic, some they live out. People have those dreams on afternoons like this.

Perseverance

Oscar William "Bill" Rabensteiner, Jr., my father, contracted polio in 1925, at the age of 7, long before Drs. Salk and Sabin developed their vaccines. He told a story of sitting in his wheelchair, pulling himself up with the porch railing, then walking the length of the porch gripping that railing like a toddler on the verge of unassisted walking. His disease could have put him on his back or in a wheelchair for life, but combining his and his mother's determination, through sheer will he learned to walk again and strengthened his arms with weight training. He went on to express an incredible artistic talent at Jesuit High School in New Orleans and throughout his 30+ years as artistic director of New Orleans Recreation Department. When I am asked to name qualities my parents instilled in me, I will always proffer perseverance as the top quality my father taught me. Against seemingly impossible odds, he overcame the crippling potential of polio and gave the world his art--powerful, richly colored, emotional, and truth-telling. As illustrated in this image from his Head of Christ, modeled in part on his own face, Bill knew suffering, but knew how to transform it by means of oil paint into a word of truth about what our separation from the Word of God meant for humanity.