"Temet Nosce": The Incredible Lightness of Being

"...Another great difference between our civilization and yours is ...you admire the person who pushes their way to the top in any walk of life or endeavor. while we admire the one who abandons their ego."

      - Seven Years in Tibet, H. Harrer

Daniel Berrigan , priest-pacifist and social justice activist, once noted Dorothy Day ( a converted Catholic pacifist and social justice activist ) saying that "We may never see the good outcome of the work we do", adding, as Day taught,  "that we must do it anyway."

"...Spirits are using me, larger voices calling

What heaven brought you and me

Cannot be forgotten ..."

 - Southern Cross, S. Stills

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game

 in this big field of rye and all...I have to catch everybody if 

they start to go over the cliff. I mean they're running and they

 don't look where they are going. I have to come out from 

somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just 

be the catcher in the rye and all."

 - Catcher in The Rye,  JD Salinger

"...It is OK to think about what you want to do until it is time to 

start doing what you were meant to do"

     - The Rookie, J. Morris

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."

   - A.Einstein

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"Temet Nosce" : The Incredible Lightness of Being

In the beginning he misunderstood - completely.

A wimple covered petite post noviate 

Stood him up as the first interrogation would commence,

"So,what do you want to be?", she demanded.

His  sweat flowed like rain from his forehead not realizing that

Not one gathered in the post industrial classroom

Had considered the essence of the query.

(In a different land a few years prior

A Fab-man responded to a similar examination.

"Happy" , the future icon retorted.)

But the seeker in training offered up an off the cuff retort

To the teacher's challenge...

"Truck Driver." Travel, experiencing the country, 

Meeting all types of people

What could be better?

In truth he had no aspirations.

An  established construct concerning goals,

Individualism and "success" brainwashed everyone

Believing that they "must" have a defined role to be worthwhile...

Winning an undefined prize that still remains a mystery while

Keeping the sheep in line and on the prescribed  socio-economic train track. 

At one illuminating moment an Obe Wan in disguise, well practiced

In shaking up the status quo, - posed an often avoided consideration:

"...Is the purpose of education to prepare children to plan

What to do for a living or to teach them about life and how to 

Be authentic and contribute to the greater good? Temet Nosce.

Do we really desire to be known by what we own?

Why is there a concerted effort to  squash

 The excitement , joy , enthusiasm 

And the blessed creative instincts of children? "

A springtime awakening arrived with his becoming present and mindful..

525,600 minutes and repeat...

Retrospective reflection birthed confirmation, affirmed 

Every encounter, every turn , every place , every moment,

Every breath, every storm and calm sea , 

Every aspect of creation,

Every season - are not coincidences or accidents...

Anyway , everything has purpose...

Mystical wind whisperers write - 

"It is not one's name or what one does ...

That defines us . The truth is ...

We  are measured  by how we love ."

                   - JF Sobecki

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And here's some music ... your listening pleasure and reflection. 

Seasons of Love 

https://youtu.be/UvyHuse6buY

Leave something Behind

https://youtu.be/yPt8FkCoObQ

One of These Days - N. Young 

( Thank you for standing up)

https://youtu.be/XtRTA4u5QkU

Love is The Answer - T. Rundgren

https://youtu.be/IjMKz0wCGmw

Happy - P. Williams

(For the Children of all ages - Just be, sing , dance and

Clap along....)

https://youtu.be/ZbZSe6N_BXs

Post Script: This is a secret.... gifted this book by a friend,

Reading it a spark ignited the flame.

Coda: 

Get Back - The Beatles

https://youtu.be/yPbJSLWSWk8

amdg

Copyright 2022 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

Resolver

                          

“You have no right to tie yourself in knots because you want to know the outcome of what you are doing. Don’t, no, no. Let it go. Let it go into history. Let it go into Christ. Let it go into generations. Let it go into the children. Play it and pray it well…. as (Dorothy) Day taught we may never see the good outcome of the good we do - that we must do it anyway".
 - D. Berrigan SJ

Sitting on the starting line of another year

There were a couple of basic questions yet unresolved.

Journal and pen in hand the questions flowed to fill the virgin spaces between the lines.

Do we really believe that B.F. Skinner is the primary

student of the divine who disclosed

the secret to serenity and the purpose of life itself?

Is the intention of faith, religious practice and good works

All part of some insurance policy concerning the afterlife?

Do we believe that serving the poor refugee, the poorest of the poor and the sick are part of some social experiment that if we get it right we win two tickets to paradise?

Are we to love another and our children only if they love us in return or do we wait until they love us first before we return the love?

Is making ourselves great really a result of isolation and self-centeredness?

If the divine insisted on consistency and subscription to only one path to grace then why is all existence in the universe so diverse?

The questions suddenly ceased. Then silence  …. A long pause and the words on the pages evaporated. The mystic voices of Berrigan, Day and the poets whispered sweetly as he let it all go.

Simple isn’t it?

Keep it Simple - V. Morrison

https://youtu.be/nXXFKhyrq7w

Tomorrow Never Knows – Beatles

 

https://youtu.be/nNQIpUmTdXE

Soul of a Man – B. Cockburn

https://youtu.be/xUqFP3kGMZg

                                                

                                  Practical Reasons to Welcome Poetry into our lives

                                                                  ( Click link)

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-practical-reasons-to-welcome-poetry-into-our-lives

Where Many Rivers Meet

All the water below me came from above
All the clouds living in the mountains
gave it to the rivers
who gave it to the sea, which was their dying.

And so I float on cloud become water,
central sea surrounded by white mountains,
the water salt, once fresh,
cloud fall and stream rush, tree root and tide bank
leading to the rivers' mouths
and the mouths of the rivers sing into the sea,
the stories buried in the mountains
give out into the sea
and the sea remembers
and sings back
from the depths
where nothing is forgotten.

David Whyte 2004

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

    - Mary Oliver

Wild geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

       - Mary Oliver

amdg

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple”

        - Jack Kerouac

“The only truth is music”

       - Jack Kerouac

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC

Labor Day : Sencillos Meditaciones

Dorothy Day

Faded hand scripted notes flew around the room as a bad moon storm of memories began to deluge the wandering spirit. It was almost a forever ago that a retreat on the theme of Spirituality and Work found it’s way from inspiration to implementation. A voice kept whispering,  “It’s never been about the money!” 

The pilgrim teacher didn’t listen as the whirlwind almost brought down the house. His heart was a beat from being seized up from all the desire and pressures to fill the siloes. A nephew of Richard Cory whose heroic last attempt at salvation was to rescue the pilgrim eventually suffered the same fate as his infamous uncle. Meanwhile Dickens’ spirits continued to work overtime on the pilgrim.

Waking to a morning of the Second Chance Dance the pilgrim teacher could be heard singing,  “ I don’t know anything, never did know anything…” and asked, “What day is this?” He recalled how Ebenezer’s first acts on his day of redemption sought forgiveness from family and friends as he commenced the practice of Ignatian generosity. The pilgrim has been a little slower to respond to the illumination and amazing grace.

One portrayal of the “Carol” classic has Fessiwig proclaiming that labor is “… an opportunity to use one’s gifts to provide for one’s family.” Then there is Thomas A‘Kempis depressing the pilgrim teacher with the proclamation, “At the Day of Judgment we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done."  

“But I have read so many books!” The pilgrim teacher protested.

Sociologists and economists can’t shoot straight and constantly miss the point .The movement of weights or the execution of activities have very little to do with the nature of work. It’s been said one’s labor is the expression of authenticity. Albert Camus’ observation then becomes even more haunting…“Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” The pilgrim frets, “ Is Freud right that ‘love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness?’ ”

Off in the tall distance a retired Jersey Johnny breaks out the blues harp attempting a new song in a new key. He mutters in between breaths “This is work!”

 ++++++++

^"As the rain and the snow
 come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
 without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
 so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
 It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
 and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
¹² You will go out in joy
 and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
 will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
 will clap their hands. 

Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

This will be for the Lord’s renown,
 for an everlasting sign,
 that will endure forever.”

       

                    Isaiah 55:10-13

+++++++

“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him….
 The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him….
 This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do….
 The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.
    The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.
    This leaf has it own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and their beauty and their strength canonize the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river.
    The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance.
    The great, gashed, Half-naked Mountain is another of God's saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity….
 for me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
    Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied.
    With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!
    Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny….
 The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God's will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity….”

       Thomas Merton, The Seeds of Contemplation

amdg