…when I stare at the screen with good intentions. Words come, but never really settle in. This is (so far) one of those days. What comes to mind is a haiku jotted down some time ago:
when you desire more
you can go searching for more
or just desire less
One of the beauties of quiet time in the morning is its meandering nature. If I have the sense to allow it, I end up in places I could never had otherwise gotten. Today, through a long chain I won’t recount, I ended up at this, from Mississippi John Hurt, which gently settled in:
I shall not be moved.
Like a tree, planted by the water, I shall not be moved.
The vaguely familiar song is presumably derived from Psalms 1:3
“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.”
This house under construction in Galveston caught my eye. It is a small as it looks, a two-story “tiny house” that looked to be one room wide, two rooms deep.
Quote from a TED talk featuring Dan Gilbert. His primary point is that we consistently underestimate changes we will experience in our lives. To finish his thought: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you have ever been. The one constant in life is change.”
Given past experiences, one would think we’d have figured that out by now. But…
The runner up text was the opening line from Roger Miller’s great song — Husbands and Wives:
“Two broken hearts, lonely, lookin’ like houses, where nobody lives.” But that seemed like too much of a bummer today.
Photo taken on a recent early morning in Galveston. Thought came through an Anthony DeMello reading.
As an aside — damn, it is difficult to catch lightning in a photo. It helps one appreciate the phrase “catch lightning in a bottle.”
From Howard Thurman today, this reminder:
“It does not require the expert knowledge of the psychologist to discover that we live daily under conditions that undermine whatever tendencies there are in the human spirit that make for a relaxed way of life. Everyone is in a hurry.”
The solution – duh! Slow down. Or as Thurman puts it –
“All travelers, somewhere along the way, find it necessary to check their course, to see how they are doing.”
And I so love Thurman’s simple (?simple?) solution:
“Cultivate the mood to linger… Who knows? God may whisper to you in the quietness what He has been trying to say to you, oh, for so long a time.”
Photo taken on a beach in Galveston. Text based on a recently read article about how much more we learn from our setbacks than we do from our victories — Damn It!
From Howard Thurman, Deep Is The Hunger, on leisure:
“Time is of the essence in developing the inner life because, without a sense of leisure, the external world with its demands, emergencies, and crises, chokes the flowering of the mood of Presence.”
Boy, is there a lot there! Those “demands, emergencies, and crises” can damn sure get me focused on the “external world” to the exclusion of “developing the inner life.” Thurman, though, is ever the realist. He is not reaching for the stars, trying to achieve leisure, but only “a sense of leisure.” That is, as I read it, look up from those pressing demands of the external world from time to time and recognize the existence of and the need to nurture the “inner life.’ This is necessary to the (I love this phrase) “flowering of the mood of Presence.”
Photo taken on a recent run, text from a Mary Oliver poem. I run by (and enjoy) these roses on a fairly regular basis — “not needed” but “of inexplicable value.”
Photo taken recently in Galveston. Don’t know the couple in the photo, but was grateful for their presennce.
Okay, I’ve never really cared for Leonard Cohen, or for this song (I find The Neville Brothers version of it better), but apparently a lot of people do like the song and the song (and a flashback to Hitchcock’s The Birds) is what made me take the photo — so here it is.
It occurs to me... 