little systems of care

snowflakes under microscope

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My starting point is the fundamental initial fact that each one of us is perforce linked by all the material organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

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Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, 
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.


—Ted Kooser
Flying at Night

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there is a livingness

 

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There is more to our world than inanimate matter and human beings, there is a livingness in nature. [The world] can be seen in an entirely new way, perceiving the rocks we pass by without notice each day as alive and aware.


—Stephen Harrod Buhner
Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers

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Carefully placed upon the future, 

it tips from the breeze and skims away, 

frail thing of words, this valentine, 

so far to sail. And if you find it 

caught in the reeds, its message blurred, 

the thought that you are holding it 

a moment is enough for me.


—Ted Kooser
This Paper Boat

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Just now

A rock took fright

When it saw me.

It escaped 

By playing dead.


—Norbert Mayer


 

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the world is a phenomenon

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You see various scenes passing on a cinema screen: fire seems to burn buildings to ashes; water seems to wreck ships; but the screen on which the pictures are projected remains unburnt and dry. Why? Because the pictures are unreal and the screen real.

Similarly, reflections pass through a mirror but it is not affected at all by their number or quality. In the same way, the world is a phenomenon upon the substratum of the single Reality which is not affected by it in any way.

Reality is only One.

Talk of illusion is due only to the point of view. Change your viewpoint to that of Knowledge and you will perceive the Universe to be only Brahman. Being now immersed in the world, you see it as a real world; get beyond it and it will disappear and Reality alone will remain.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

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In essence, the ideas of space and time are creations of the mind that serve as the screen upon which we project the contents of the depths of our mind, both conscious and unconscious.

Being constructs of consciousness as well as the receptacles for its projections, space and time serve as consciousness’s own way of providing a context for its contents so that they can be revealed, brought to light, reflected upon, and contemplated by a consciousness that is forever getting to know itself in new ways.


—Paul Levy
Quantum Revelation

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Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye 

makes, but the soul is light

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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how to love the world

  

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The first of a year’s abundance of dandelions
is this single kernel of bright yellow
dropped on our path by the sun, sensing
that we might need some marker to help us
find our way through life, to find a path
over the snow-flattened grass that was
blade by blade unbending into green,
on a morning early in April, this happening
just at the moment I thought we were lost
and I’d stopped to look around, hoping
to see something I recognized. And there
it was, a commonplace dandelion, right
at my feet, the first to bloom, especially
yellow, as if pleased to have been the one,
chosen from all the others, to show us the way.


—Ted Kooser
Dandelion
How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope

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Two days of an icy prairie fog
and every blade of grass, and twig,
and branch, and every stretch of wire, barb, post and staple,
is a knot or a thread in a lace
of the purest white. To walk
is like finding your way
through a wedding dress, the sky
inside it cold and satiny;
no past, no future, just the now
all breathless. Then a red bird,
like a pinprick, changes everything.


—Ted Kooser
Hoar Frost

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Today I celebrate with all of you, 

The miracle of sunlight, 

The humble joy of being and breath 

And the mystery and grace of each new day.

—Vincent van Gogh

The Field Next to the Other Road

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