- Nan Shepherd (1893 - 1981)
The Living Mountain
Thursday, April 03, 2025
The Morning of Creation
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Copse of Birch
There is a copse of birch trees that I know;
And, as in Eden Adam walked with God,
When in that quiet aisle my feet have trod
I have found peace among the silver trees,
Known comfort in the cool kiss of the breeze
Heard music in its whisper, and have known
Most certainly that I was not alone!"
- Andrew M. Greeley (1928 - 2013)
Monday, March 24, 2025
Stillness
"When I am liberated by silence,
when I am no longer involved in the measurement
of life, but in the living of it,
I can discover a form of prayer in which
there is effectively, no distraction.
My whole life becomes a prayer.
My whole silence is full of prayer.
The world of silence in which I am immersed
contributes to my prayer."
- Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Nature's Elegance #2
is that in fundamental physics a
beautiful or elegant theory is
more likely to be right
than a theory that
is inelegant."
- Murray Gell-Mann (1929 - 2019)
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Inner Space
Stillness is where creativity and
solutions to problems
are found.
Just look and just listen.
No more is needed.
Being still, looking, and listening
activates the non-conceptual
intelligence within you.
Let stillness direct your
words and actions.
you may become aware of a subtle and at
first perhaps hardly noticeable sense of calm.
Some people feel it as a
stillness in the background.
Others call it peace.
When consciousness is no longer
totally absorbed by thinking,
some of it remains in its formless,
unconditioned, original state.
This is inner space.
But then, it is not really a thing,
and it is not of this world.
state of 'not knowing.'"
- Eckhart Tolle (1948 - )
A New Earth
Monday, December 16, 2024
Worlds Born
world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting
that a new world is born."
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Mitote Maya
- Miguel Ruiz (1952 - )
The Four Agreements
Sunday, December 01, 2024
Ancient Rhythms
- John O'Donohue (1956 - 2008)
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Monday, November 11, 2024
Curious Stillness of Autumn
swaying the branches of the trees,
and the windfalls dropped to
the ground with soft thuds.
Frost was in the wind,
and between gusts the curious
stillness of autumn."
- Richard Adams (1920 - 2016)
Watership Down
Friday, November 01, 2024
Awareness
- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
Finding the Still Point
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Transcending the Subject
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Form and Content
- Paul Rand (1914 - 1996)
Paul Rand: A Designer's Art
Monday, December 18, 2023
Be Still With Yourself
first be still with yourself until the object
of your attention affirms your presence.
Then don't leave until you have
captured its essence."
- Minor White (1908 - 1976)
Sunday, December 03, 2023
Morning Fog
aspects of the same thing.
The same no-thing. They
are externalization of inner
space and inner silence,
which is stillness: the
the infinitely creative womb
of all existence."
- Eckhart Tolle (1948 - )
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Nature's Simplicity
"I should like to propose that we look at this element of freshness, of newness, of strangeness, as a thread along which to place the activities of the consciously creative artist, the conscious patron and critic of the creative artist, and the common man — common in the sense that he has no specified part in creation or criticism. If we make one criterion for defining the artist (as distinct from the craftsman and the trained but routine performer of dance, drama, or music) the impulse to make something new, or to do something in a new way — a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good — then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity."
Friday, April 23, 2021
Abide in Quietude
- The Mahavagga of the Vinya Pitaka,
The Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order,
by Herman Oldenberg (1854 - 1920)
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Touchstones and Palimpsests
- Haruki Murakami (1949 - )
Kafka on the Shore
The panels of this triptych are "digital double exposures" of images taken at two very different times and places: the foreground consists of photographs of reeds in a pond and a tree basking in a warm sun one autumn day in 2003 at one of my favorite little parks near where my mom used to live on Long Island (before passing away in 2017); the background consists of splotches of paint I found on an old tire that was bobbing up and down in the Port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece in the summer of 2008 as my wife and I were waiting for a boat-ride to Santorini. The fusion of images serves as both touchstone and palimpsest, tinged with melancholy and hope. Melancholy, because ever since my mom's passing, the little park has become less a place to visit, and more a ghostly memory of times past; and the Athenian splotches of paint serve only to strengthen my wife's and my own longing for trips to "faraway places" that - before the pandemic - we used to take for granted. And hope, because though such memories of times and places are indeed ghostly, they also point to happy experiences yet to arrive. Memories fade, but meaning only deepens.
"It is as if the Caru'ee were able
to perceive an echo of the past,
and unconsciously, as they built
upon a palimpsest of books written
long ago and long forgotten,
chanced to stumble upon an essence
of meaning that could not be lost,
no matter how much
time had passed."
- Ken Liu (1976 - )
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Friday, January 29, 2021
Silence
(to remind myself)
- Wendell Berry (1934 - )
Given