Thoughts: Blind leaders, blind followers
Music: Come to the sunshine, with Joni
One of our favourite poets, singers, and life-livers – Joni, in a video from 1967 or so….
Now comes the morning
Wet with the kiss of midnight
Shadows stayed sulking in the way
Sunshine for dreaming
Blackest magic to believe in
Spectrums and rainbows and days
I never saw a sky so free
Never so blue
Morning with mystic pageantry
Unveils a time for sharing love with you
Come to the sunshine
Share in the quiet of knowing
No need for telling you sometimes
When all the answers are
So plainly showing
Teach me to tell you
All the feelings I’ve been learning
Tell me to teach you my heart
New words are crazy
Old love words keep returning
All words seem wrong from the start
So I will tell with my eyes
Say it with a kiss
Silence that asks and looks so wise
And needs no answer on a day like this
Come to the sunshine
Share in the quiet of knowing
No need for telling you sometimes
When all the answers are
So plainly showing
Joni Mitchell
Writings: The problem: Civil obedience, according to Dr. Zinn
Those of you who know me know that I am a huge fan of Howard Zinn (he made his transition in 2010, but his clear, easy-to-read writing will live in folks’ hearts for a long time, and hopefully will shape the way we do things.)
That’ll be clear as you listen to this short video, as actor Matt Damon reads a bit from one of Dr. Zinn’s essays, as he expands on what Jefferson was after when he said, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.” Martin Luther King overlays that with the necessity of speaking up & speaking out: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Some people find civil disobedience distasteful, but it’s pretty easy to see that unquestioning civil obedience has been pretty harmful to millions of people in the last century.
Over to you, Dr. Zinn. We miss you, but your flame still burns.
– Brother Ian
Starpeople: Canada’s ex-defence minister calls for open talk about UFOs
This interview is a bit long (26 minutes), so you may have to wait till you get off work to check it out…Paul Hellyer adds his credible (I think) voice to the chorus of people who call for opening government files about what we know & what we can learn. When asked why there are no “credible” scientific evidence of UFO/extra-terrestrial life or contact, he answers that any real researcher who reviewed the cases he’s found would have trouble proving otherwise.
(In the video, the lips sometimes are a bit off from syncing with the voices, just to let you know it’s not you & your computer).
Let me know what you think:
Thoughts: A little note from Rumi…
Your face is a beautiful sunny day;
More beautiful than the brightness of the day.
Brighter than the day.
Wine is good, but the cupbearer
Is better than the wine.
Every hidden thing opens today.
The heart reaches endless wishes.
Like a falcon catching a pigeon.
Every lover gets his deserved
Blessing from the Beloved.
Everyone who is thirsty
Sits by the side of Kevser.
Every moment, the Beloved offers
A new glass and says,
“Today our assembly is open,
Give this to the lovers.”
It is such a thin glass that
It appears as if the wine has become the glass.
Rumi
Music: Ludovico Einaudi, with “Leo”
My suggestion: Listen to this one twice. At least one time, close your eyes & see what comes to your quieter mind….
Whales: Hurting & killing whales, with sonar
You’ve heard about it – the US & Canadian Navies have conducted exercises in both oceans surrounding the countries that include ear-splitting, trauma-to-whales inducing sonar, and the efforts to bring injunctions to halt the procedure & policy & practice (they all tie together.)
Here’s a report from this week’s Earth Talk.
Thoughts: Over & over, with joy
When we complain of having to do the same thing over and over, let us remember that God does not send new trees, strange flowers and different grasses every year.
When the spring winds blow, they blow in the same way.
In the same places the same dear blossoms lift up the same sweet faces, yet they never weary us.
When it rains, it rains as it always has. Even so would the same tasks which fill our daily lives put on new meanings if we wrought them in the spirit of renewal from within–a spirit of growth and beauty.
— Helen Keller, from an Easter Message to the Boston Community Church, 1932
Thoughts: Hold on, but not too tight….
The lessons are all around us, and it’s neat to have a friend that catches them. I love this picture of the way things work, caught by my friend Ingrid in the post-winter solstice sun:
I was out in the yard the other day while my landlords were landscaping and planting saplings in anticipation of spring and the returning light.
Once in the ground, the young trees needed to be staked and my friend said, “Don’t stake them too tight. They need some support, but also need to be able to bend in the wind. If they are held rigid, they won’t grow strong enough roots to stay upright on their own.”
I reflected on how this is both true for trees and human saplings as well. We all need care and encouragement to sink deep stable roots in our lives. Roots that will feed compassion, love and community. But too much support can also leave us fragile and unable to bend when adversity or even change threatens to blow us down.
Life always seems to be seeking this delicate balance between holding on and letting go.
Ingrid Gabriel
Writings: Shane & beating weapons into plowshares…really
When I talk to friends in the United States about all the gun-related deaths in the country, they say, “That’s just the way it is.”
When I talk to friends in Canada about all the gun-related deaths in the US, they say, “That’s just the way it is, there.”
And I believe it. I reside in Victoria, BC these days, and I heard two veterans in line at the coffeeshop on Remembrance Day last year saying it’s too bad that weapons have been deified by some, as the answer & a necessary thing.
That’s why it’s wonderful to hear what Shane Claiborne (from Sojourners) says & does: They’re taking guns & forging garden tools & plows & farm tools out of ’em, and using them, and bringing life, in this way, from death.
Faith, he says, is about believing in spite of the evidence & with that faith, the evidence begins to change.
It will move you: Read Shane’s article in Sojourners here.
It will move you: watch this little video. It’s real & it’s the evidence we need to support our belief that the killing – our killing – must end. And can end. And will end.
Peace be with you. Make it so, Number One (you’re my number one!)
– Brother Ian
Thoughts: Five cents, more or less
Some of the parables of the day center on who is wiser among us, and who is the better trickster. Here’s one:
There’s a little fellow named Junior who hangs out at Tim’s Grocery Store. The owner Tim doesn’t know what Junior’s problem is, but the boys like to tease him.
They say he is two bricks shy of a load, or two pickles shy of a barrel. To prove it, sometimes they offer Junior his choice between a nickel and a dime. He always takes the nickel — they say because it’s bigger.
One day after Junior grabbed the nickel, Tim got him off to one side and said, “Junior, those boys are making fun of you. They think you don’t know the dime is worth more than the nickel. Are you grabbing the nickel because it’s bigger, or what?” And Junior said, “Well, if I took the dime, they’d quit doing it!”
Thoughts: Rumi, with both sides, now
Try not to resist the changes that come your way.
Instead let life live through you.
And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
Rumi
About Brother Ian
Over the centuries, Brother Ian has been collecting stories & information & discourses for the purpose of elevating the human condition as needed, dissecting it when necessary, and building the case for hope.
In the spirit of noting that organized crime, organized baseball, organized labour, and organized religion tend to engender controversy & occasional discord, I promise to be neither organized or critical of those who are.