gospel of light is crossroads indolence action be ignited or gone
Adapted from What I Have Learned So Far by Mary Oliver.
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world? Because, properly attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion. Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.
Writing about belief polarization, on these opposed certain views, Mr. Edsall wrote: Perhaps the most salient recent illustration of belief polarization is the diametrically opposed views of Trump loyalists and of their Democratic adversaries over the legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump supporters are convinced it was stolen; Democrats and independents are certain that Joe Biden is the legitimate president.
Mr. Edsall then recounts the trials and travails voting in a democracy and he ends with this warning: These developments — or upheavals — and especially the reaction to them have tested the viability of our democracy and suggest, at the very least, an uphill climb ahead.
don’t cheat yourself out of life be not simply good be good for something
The full quote is: “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.“
And it deserves a better haiku and if time allows, I will work on it.
This appears in a letter written by Henry Thoreau on March 27, 1848, to Mr. Harrison Blake.
The text of the letter appears in the Familiar Letters Of Henry David Thoreau – Part II The Golden Age Of Achievement, Edited, With An Introduction And Notes by F. B. Sanborn, Houghton, Mifflin And Company, 1894.
I was struck by the words, as anyone would be, but me more so on this occasion due to earlier haiku’s I recently posted.
beach initially was deemed the most useless space undesirable
I was struck by this passage:
The lords of the beachfront were late to the coastal real estate game. The beach was initially deemed the most useless, undesirable space on the North American continent. (Imagine rushing past the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard in your haste to stake a land claim in Ohio.)
Back in the day I had a job interview with the Federal Government.
On the application there was a spot where I could list places where I could not work.
I listed California, Florida and Ohio.
The interviewer asked a lot of questions then said, “Where you can’t work. I certainly understand Florida and California, but what do you have against Ohio?”
Naming my Alma Mater answered his question.
I like the beach.
I can’t remember a time I did not like the beach.
I love the line in the movie Superman II, where Gene Hackman, as only Gene Hackman can, informed General Zod that, “Well, General … the world is a big place. Thank goodness my needs are small. I have a certain weakness for … beachfront property.“
I guess the idea that Ohio was populated by folks who rushed past the coast to get to Ohio pretty much says as much about Ohio as anyone needs to know.
If anyone needs anything more to know about Ohio, just consider the pantheon of personalities you meet when you name the 6 Ohio Presidents.
Grant.
Hayes.
Garfield.
McKinley.
Taft.
Harding.
Now there’s a Mount Rushmore no one ever proposed.
Three died in office and of those, two were shot dead and the other was poisoned by his wife (well that’s what I was told).
Talk about some sort of intervention.
But I digress.
I like the beach.
I like what Mr. Thoreau said when he said about the beach that, “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”
I hope I would have stopped at the beach.
But right now, I like where I ended up.
Again as Mr. Thoreau says, The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
The wealthy eventually realized their error. They put property markers on perpetually shifting sand, built expensive homes and called in the Army to keep their beaches from drifting away. It’s hard to see how, exactly, they will hold on to much of this sea-level paradise in the face of rising waters and carbon-charged superstorms. But it’s not hard to guess who will end up covering their losses.
The wise man built his house upon the rock but he didn’t have the view and he still, most likely, didn’t have a basement.
I saw a tie in a shop window for sale for three hundred dollars
Ultimately finance is no more interesting to some of us than lazy bowel syndrome, and certainly far less intriguing than the godlike intricacies of a toad or the sprightly roach in the pantry. It is far more sensible to send your kid to a cheapish community college than one of our vaunted Ivy League universities that will cost you fifty grand a year that could be better used for food and wine. Ultimately all that is learned at these so-called best institutions is to wear a necktie, which is a characteristic the financial evildoers have in common: they wear neckties. On a trip last year to the gated community of Manhattan I saw a tie in a shop window for sale for three hundred dollars. If you fail to figure out this satanic connection I can’t help you.
This was written in 2009 in an essay titled, Food, Finance, and Spirit, in the Toronto literary publication, Brick, written by the late Jim Harrison.
Many of Mr. Harrison’s essays like this were pulled together in a posthumously published in the book, A Really Big Lunch.
The front piece states: The pieces collected in this volume have originally appeared in Smoke Signals, the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant newsletter, Brick, New Yorker, Martha Stewart Living, Playboy, Edible Baja Arizona, Big Sky Cooking by Meredith Brokaw and Ellen Wright, The Montana Writers’ Cookbook by the Montana Center for the Book and the Montana Committee for the Humanities, and Molto Italiano by Mario Batali.
As Mr. Harrison wrote, “... I saw a tie in a shop window for sale for three hundred dollars. If you fail to figure out this satanic connection I can’t help you.“
Just want to say if you can’t figure out the satanic connection here and about so much else in today’s world, I can’t help you either.
No Haiku For You 