Travelling

Travelling …

On your journey
You have choices, responsibilities
There right in front of you
Everyday, never going away

Foot-steps you take maybe a mistake
Or maybe they’re where you’re meant to be
Right here, right now
Sit for awhile, take in the view and smile

Moving on the search or discovery
Night and day, summer or spring
Chances pass by to be taken, or not
Hear the song

Jump into the future, grab change
Accentuate the infinite possible thought
All the way until its gone, gone, gone
Travelling …

Abbot Dr. Burkhard Ellegast, OSB

"We tend to want to capture things because we usually see freedom as something that has no borders or responsibilities. And because of this we also end up trying to enslave all that we love – as if egoism were the only way to keep our world well balanced. Love does not limit, it broadens our horizons, we can see clearly what lies outside and we can see even more clearly the dark places in our heart."

I am the Song of Amergin

I am the wind which breaths upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
i am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance in battle,
I am the God who creates in the head the fire.
Who is it who throws the light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where crouches the sun?

Bring on the revolution ...

... it's all about the love.

"Paulo Freire says, 'I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love'. He goes onto quote the enigmatic Che Guevara, who wrote in Venceremos: 'Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality'. Freire then states a truth that is the utmost importance and, for the campaigning activist, the greatest challenge. He says:

This then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

'All life entails violence', says Gandhi. We cannot walk across a field of grass without causing hurt to the creatures that live there. However, he concludes, our duty is to minimise the violence we personally exert. And to forgive and ask forgiveness: for as William Blake says, 'The cut worm forgives the plough.' Mutual continual forgiveness liberates the ongoing expression of life.

Hearing truth spoken inevitably troubles the chrome-plated peace of the oppressor. Stirring things up like this, however, is a duty, even an act of love. If done right, which is so hard to acheive as to be rare, it will speak to the oppressor's own deep self as well as on behalf of those who they oppress. A social activist cannot expect to be loved by the ego of the oppressor. But if they fail to speak to and remember the soul, then that activist will fail in the greater work that liberation is about."

Alistair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, Autum Press, 2002, p.277

What matters?

In the 'Secret Life of Bees' Sue Monk Kidd writes, "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the colour of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

"When you're unsure of yourself, when you start pulling back into doubt and small living, she's the one inside saying, 'Get up from there and live like the glorious girl you are.' She's the power inside of you. And whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that's her too, not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love - but to persist in love."

Winnie-the-Pooh I Love You

Us Two

Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

Whatever I do, he wants to do,

"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:

"Well that's very odd 'cos I was too.

"Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.

"Let's go together," says Pooh.

'What's twice eleven?' I said to Pooh,

('Twice what?' said Pooh to Me)'

I think it ought to be twenty-two.

''Just what I think my self,' said Pooh.

'It wasn't an easy sum to do,

But that's what it is,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what it is,' said Pooh.

'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh.

'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me.

We crossed the river and found a few--

'Yes, these are dragons all right,' said Pooh.

'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.

That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what they are,' said Pooh.

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

'What would I do?' I said to Pooh,

'If it wasn't for you,' and Pooh said:

'True,it isn't much fun for One, but Two

Can stick together,' says Pooh, says he.

'That's how it is,' says Pooh.

- A A Milne -

Trees Need Hugs Too!

The Wishing Tree
by Kathleen Jamie

I stand neither in the wilderness
nor fairyland

but in the fold
of a green hill

the tilt from one parrish
into another.

To look at me
through a smirr of rain

is to taste the iron
in your own blood

because I hoard
the common currency

of longing: each wish
each secret assignation.

My limbs lift, scabbed
with greenish coins

I draw into my slow wood
fleur-de-lys, the enthroned Britannia.

Behind me, the land
reaches towards the Atlantic.

And though I'm poisoned
choking on the small change

of human hope,
daily beaten into me

look: I'm still alive -
in fact, in bud.

Trust In The Process

Brian Keenan met a women whilst travelling in Alaska, "she spoke of worlds that are hidden from the eye. Such worlds are often difficult to reveal, and many a life is lived in the shadows from a lack of such validation, but when we live close to our intutitions and emotions we can if we wish find companions in the strangest places" (Four Quarters of Light, p.112).

Ask yourself this ...

Where has all the wisdom gone?

Huston Smith said 'we have never been so informed and never more confused about what is important'. In the modern world we have technology, such as the Internet, which maybe an excellent tool, a vehicle for transporting data, information and ideas, but it is nothing without content and even less without a filter or screen to devine the knowledge and wisdom that will point us to what is important. The more content, the more information we have the more we become overloaded, lost, ignorant and confused.

You can go all the way back to 1934 and the words of T S Eliot in the poem 'The Rock' to hear more or less the same message;

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Risky Business

... you wanna know something?

Every now and then say,"What the fuck."

"What the fuck" gives you freedom.

Freedom brings opportunity.

Opportunity makes your future.

Beloved Sisters

Sisters are such special people. They can out think, out do and love us better than anyone in the world. They stand with us in difficult times, and talk to us with loving words to lift us up. The Cherokee call these special people - beloved sisters. Sisters never complain when we get lost in time and space; never forget to welcome us home. Sisters don't have to be blood kin; for what does that matter when the relationship is stronger than ancestry. Love transcends so many dry places and makes us family by choice. What could be better than to be a beloved sister?

- Sent to me by my beloved sister Hayley and now passed on to you -

Have you ever had that thought that whatever you do it won't turn out right or it won't be as you expected? Never fear failure or be defeated by its possibility. It is from our mistakes and the things that go wrong in life that some of our greatest lessons and opportunities emerge. Samuel Beckett writing in Westward Ho (1983) summed it up perfectly: "All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

The Purpose of Myths

... is to tell us to follow our bliss, to adventure forth, take the challenge and to find one's Essence. To remind us that life is to be experienced. It's a journey; a transformative journey. As the Sufi philospoher A H Almaas says, "This level of experience is so deep and profound, so full and packed with a live significance, so moving and so powerful that it is not possible to communicate it in words. Words can describe some aspects of the experience, but they fail actually to deliver the whole impact. Words can communicate the experience to somebody who already has had it or is right on the verge of it. But not to somebody who does not know" (Quoted in Houston, J. A Mystic Life, p.123).

We are in need of new myths to help us understand the coming planetary civilisation, women in full partnership with men, the world connected through media, the new understanding of human capacities like our ability to play God with biological and ecological systems. Without a planetary mythology we fall further into chaos and violence until finally we will self-destruct out of a sense of meaninglessness. Who brings this new myth? Those who are awakened to the imagination, to the invisible - the artists and poets and the dancers. The way of the artist is to join their craft to their imagination in order to speak to the world they live in and the conditions of that world. Campbell argues, we no longer live in societies within a bounded field of geography or culture. Today there are no boundaries. The only mythology that is valid today is the mythology of the planet - and we don't have such a mythology (Campbell, J. The Power of Myth).