"Leaf by Leaf" by Rebecca Ziegler

"Leaf by Leaf"

Yesterday, at my feet,
an autumn leaf –
unique, breathtaking splendor:

flame-red, separated
from spirit-of-sun
by a jagged, glowing brown streak –

a Bradford pear leaf.
I nearly retrieved it
to press – to preserve its ghost.

But I thought again –
knew, in my scrapbook,
it would become its own pale shadow.

I passed there today
in a different mood,
gluttonously collecting glories

to press – a hint
of the season’s riches –
for ghosts are more than nothing –

my hands full of fragments
of the red-orange-gold shift –
individual segments of the spectrum

mottled, dappled,
streaked and various –
each leaf, uniquely marvelous.

But yesterday’s leaf
lay there no longer –
blown away, shredded, or faded.

When humans paint autumn,
they tend to impressionism,
laying on bright color in blurs,

or abstraction: color-fields
starkly juxtaposed,
barely discernable as foliage.

But God the Artist
(or Nature, or Whatever)
paints uniquely, leaf by leaf,

a radiance almost frightening –
so touched with splendor,
we soon look away, or generalize.

In despair of perceiving
their myriads, we snatch
at eternity, by painting or pressing.

God, unlike us,
craves no immortality.
God sees each leaf, then lets go.

"Strangeness" by Rebecca Zeigler

This rock was once at the bottom of the Sea
of Iapetus, says the geologist; it sounds so otherworldly,
so alien – another planet, or a realm of fantasy!

But the continents have no firm roots: they glide
about the surface of the Earth; they collide
to form new landmasses; they subdivide.

The seas of the Earth do not stay curled
in their own abysses; they come unfurled
to drown mountains. New trenches crack the world.

Here, just under my feet, lies strangeness.
No need to dream of alien worlds; this
rock, at hand, immensely old, records histories,

which, contemplated, make this, our own world, uncanny.
We’re not at home here; this fellow entity,
so familiar, so commonplace, embodies strange memory.

To this knowledge, one can only respond with awe.
Take your shoes from off your feet: you tread on something raw
with altering, metamorphosis – shaped by alien law.

-Rebecca Ziegler

Isabel Allende, who envisions the future world like this:

"I see a more feminine world, a world where feminine values will be validated, the same as masculine values are. A more integrated world. I see that in the future, things that we have lost in the past will be recovered. There's a search for those things, a search for spirituality, for nature, for the goddess religions, for family and human bonding. All that has been lost in this industrial era. People are in desperate need of those things. I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it."

Alan Ball/ Charlaine Harris on Vampires

“I understood after I talked to Alan that he knew what I was doing with the books,” she said. “My original conception was about exclusionism and how we’re often most afraid of the things that make us look at ourselves too closely.”

Mr. Ball said: “When I pitched the show to HBO, they asked me what it was about, and I said, it’s about what it really means to be disenfranchised, to be feared, to be misunderstood. It’s a metaphor for the terrors of intimacy. I sort of made that up on the spot, but now that I think about it, it does sort of work. That’s one of the reasons vampires have been such a potent metaphor and mythological motif for centuries. They show up in pretty much all cultures. It’s the notion of separating that part which keeps us safe and separate from another person, both emotionally and physically. And how there is a certain loss of self that takes place when there is true intimacy. And I think that’s really healthy. But it doesn’t mean it’s not scary.”

From "In Praise of Being Cut Off" by Roger Cohen

I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories. To find stories you must give yourself to the moment. Time must weigh on you, its lulls, accelerations and silences. The life within, the deeper story, does not yield itself with ease.

"A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Study War No More

Dear All Who Have Been Born of Mothers,

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons.

The following is the original Mother's Day Proclamation written by Julia Ward Howe in Boston, 1870:

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have heart, whether our baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly:
'We will not have our great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'"

How To Fight Evil

Meditation from the book Less Than One, by Joseph Brodsky: "The surest defense against evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality -- even if you will, eccentricity . . . Evil is a sucker for solidarity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balance sheets."

Pronoic Intentions by Rob Brezney

At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: You can have anything you want if you'll just ask for it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.

If I ever produce a self-help manual called The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want, it will discuss the following paradoxes:

a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you’re not greedy or grasping.

b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you’ve already achieved them.

c. Whatever you’re longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It’s not the same as it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. In order to make it yours, then, you will have to modify your ideas about it.

d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn’t foresee.

"Finding Her Here" by Jayne Relaford Brown

I am becoming the woman I've wanted
grey at the temples, soft-bodied, delighted
cracked up by life,
with a laugh that's known bitter
but past it, got better,
who knows that whatever comes, she can outlast it.
I am becoming a deep weathered basket.

I am becoming the woman I've longed for,
the motherly lover with arms strong and tender,
the growing up daughter who blushes surprises.
I am becoming full moons and sunrises.

I am becoming this woman I've wanted
who knows she'll encompass
who knows she's sufficient
knows where she's going
and travels with passion,
who remembers she's precious
but knows she's not scarce
who knows she is plenty . . .
plenty to share.

"To That Younger Brother" by Rainer Maria Rilke

Now pray,
as I who came back from the same confusion
learned to pray.

I returned to paint upon the altars
those old holy forms,
but they shone differently,
fierce in their beauty.

So now my prayer is this:

You, my own deep soul,
trust me.
I will not betray you.
My blood is alive with many voices
telling me I am made of longing.

What mystery breaks over me now?
In its shadow I come into life.
For the first time, I am alone with you --

You,
my power to feel.

From "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens

1

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

From "Bobby Jean" by Bruce Springsteen

Now we went walking in the rain, talking about the pain from the world we hid
Now there ain't nobody nowhere nohow gonna ever understand me the way you did
Maybe you'll be out there on that road somewhere
In some bus or train traveling along
In some motel room there'll be a radio playing
And you'll hear me sing this song
Well, if you do you'll know I'm thinking of you and all the miles in between
And I'm just calling one last time, not to change your mind
But just to say I miss you, baby
good luck, goodbye, Bobby Jean

A Spring Not of Our Own Invention

What cheers me, though, is the thought that spring isn’t a human season, not like the seasons we create for ourselves. It comes without caring what you make of it. It may find you unprepared, ill at ease, in a state of erosion. It makes no difference. It will stir your blood anyway, once the freezing rain goes away at last.

From "Officially Spring"by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Eddie Vedder - "Guaranteed" from Into the Wild

On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup, I ask silently
All my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe...

Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
A mind full of questions, and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes...

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

Everyone I come across, in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering, but I'm never what they thought
I've got my indignation, but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive...

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead
Overhead...

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting
I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed

"Riveted" by Robyn Sarah from A Day's Grace

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious dénouement
to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

Here is what I would tell you about love:

Living your life as a gift to those who love you is one way to go. It will get you up in the morning. Desire will do this too, but most desire is temporary and specific. Duty works, works well, but it is work, and it will wear you after a while. Only if you make your life a gift will you find a reason to live that won't fall away with time.

You first must love yourself to do this. This is the beginning and end of it all. You must realize that you are a love letter to the universe. You must present yourself to be read and consent to it, open yourself line after line. You must give yourself away, extravagently, and with no regard for return, even though there will be return, there is always return. But you must be empty to receive it fully. Otherwise parts of it will overflow and lap down the sides.

Love yourself enough to give yourself away to a universe that loves you so ridiculously that it has created itself just to receive you in so many ways, in so many arms, in so many hearts.

From Ursula Goodenough’s “The Sacred Depths of Nature.”

Used as the introductory reading for Rev. Jane Page's sermon "The New Atheism" delivered on Sunday, January 27, 2008.

"As a cell biologist…I experience the same kind of awe and reverence when I contemplate the structure of an enzyme or the flowing of a signal-transduction cascade as when I watch the moon rise or stand in front of a Mayan temple. Same rush, same rapture.

But all of us, and scientists are no exception, are vulnerable to the existential shudder that leaves us wishing that the foundations of life were something other than just so much biochemistry and biophysics. The shudder, for me at least, is different from the encounters with nihilism that have beset my contemplation of the universe. There I can steep myself in cosmic Mystery. But the workings of life are not mysterious at all. They are obvious, explainable, and thermodynamically inevitable. And relentlessly mechanical. And bluntly deterministic. My body is some 10 trillion cells. Period. My thoughts are a lot of electricity flowing along a lot of membrane. My emotions are the result of neurotransmitters squirting on my brain cells. I look in the mirror and see the mortality and I find myself fearful, yearning for less knowledge, yearning to believe that I have a soul that will go to heaven and soar with the angels.

William James said, “At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.”

The manner of our acceptance. It can be disappointed and resentful; it can be passive and acquiescent; or it can be the active response we call assent. When my awe at how life works gives way to self-pity because it doesn’t work the way I would like, I call on assent -– the age-old religious response to self-pity -- as in “Why Lord? Why This? Why ME?” and then, “Thy Will Be Done.”

As a religious naturalist I say “What Is, Is” with the same bowing of the head, the same bending of the knee. Which then allows me to say “Blessed Be to What Is” with thanksgiving. To give assent is to understand, incorporate, and then let go. With the letting go comes that deep sigh we call relief, and relief allows the joy-of-being-alive-at-all to come tumbling forth again.

Assent is a dignified word. Once it is freely given, one can move fluidly within it."

"Anthem" by Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah, the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove,
she will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again.
The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

The Part in the Middle that Doesn't Move

From NYT article on Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children:

“Charles spent 11 years trying to manifest a single vision on the page, with almost no support,” Mason said. “He’s totally committed to writing — it’s his whole life. His passions have sometimes led him to extremes, but where most people tend as they age to grow set in their ways, he’s become more flexible. He’s still extremely opinionated, but he also has the desire to be a decent human being. I think he’s learned to balance his capacity for great passion with a capacity for empathy, and that’s what you see in the book.”

From Year of the Dog

How do I explain the things I've said and done? How do I explain the person I've become?

I believe life is magical. It is so precious. And there are so many kinds of life in this life, so many things to love. The love for a husband or a wife, a boyfriend or a girlfriend. The love for children. The love for yourself. And even material things. This is my love. It is mine. And it fills me, and it defines me . . . and it compels me on.