Yes, it’s true: life is precious.
But gold? Silver?
And what about diamonds?
Something to think about.
Peace & love
One Way to Look at Life
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Tag Archives: poverty
One Way to Look at Life
Peace & love
Yes, it’s true: life is precious.
But gold? Silver?
And what about diamonds?
Something to think about.
Seeking Justice: Commitments
This morning I was just sitting, or at least trying to just sit. You know, being quiet, relaxing the mind. All that kind of thing. And of course, an idea sprung into that not so cooperative mind, so I grabbed my notebook. Just as I went to put this latest brainwave on paper I noticed a very extraordinary note I must have made I don’t know when:
I’ve just looked it up: It’s a slight paraphrase of a verse from the Old Testament, from the prophet Micah. Where I read it, I can’t say (the note is at least several weeks old). But to quote another little note from some unknown source, I always like to:
Let the noble thoughts come to me from all corners of the universe.
unknown
I’m just like everyone else, always wanting the easy solutions and you can tell that can’t you? ‘How to live the good life? Simple!’. I mean really; hardly humble in my approach in that note was I? Well, let’s talk about what Micah says, not my own lack of humility.
Seek justice; practise kindness; and walk humbly with [your] God.
There are numerous versions online of this verse (Micah, 6:8), so I will leave it to you to check those out for yourself. I’ve added the word your because all those versions do say ‘your God’. But even in this paraphrase it’s easy to see there is nothing at all simple about any of these injunctions.
I discovered that this verse is often invoked in times of grave injustice, or crisis. I think it goes without saying that we would be hard pressed to think of a time that was not a time of grave injustice or crisis. Certainly, we are living in one of those times of injustice and crisis.
There’s no need to or purpose served by getting into how ‘grave’ injustice is now compared to some other time; there’s no need or point to weighing up the relative severity of one crisis versus another. Injustice is injustice; a crisis is a crisis.
In other words, the present is always the time to heed the injunctions of this verse.
So, what do we do if we are to seek justice? Running the risk of sounding flippant, I would say that there are as many answers to this question as there are people to answer it. Now, you would think this would make the task impossible; too many cooks and all that. But actually it’s perfect. Why? Because it means that whoever you are, whatever your situation, you can actively seek justice.
Or, I am sorry: I should say I, me. Not you. I can actively seek justice. But, you say, you are a hermit; you live in a cave (not literally but I know what you mean); you hardly ever even talk to people in ‘real life’. Yes, all true. And I would say that the action I take is by no means at the level I know I want it to be. I’m doing nowhere enough.
Does that mean I’m leaving the cave? Going out into the world, onto the streets to join other brave souls seeking justice? Believe me, I ask myself such questions constantly. But to speak truth to you now, I will say that I know absolutely, in my heart, that my role is something different.
If anything, I need to go deeper into the cave; I need to go deeper into the inner world of my own Self. I know that in this way I will join with so many others in what I’ve come to call the Invisible Community of people all over the world living lives of contemplation and prayer. Or, speaking for me personally, trying to live a life of contemplation and prayer.
By so doing I am at least in a tiny way supporting those millions of others out there on the streets, in the aid groups, running campaigns, writing letters, helping the victims of injustice, in all kinds of miraculous, brave, and innovative ways.
So that’s my commitment to you. To deepen my prayer; to intensify my contemplation; to more fully realise my union with all living beings; and to really join with the invisible community in its efforts.
And, you ask, this blog? What’s it about then? Well, notes, musings, thoughts and reflections all aimed at reminding me of my responsibilities. And hopefully along the way, solidifying my union with you and the rest of creation, just a bit.
Peace and love
PS I haven’t forgotten ‘practise kindness’ or ‘walk humbly with your God’. Maybe another time.
Just Passing Through … or Seeking Noble Truths: A Poetical Sharing
Greetings friends
In my last post I mentioned I would share a poem with you in this one. And here it is!
Just Passing Through … or Seeking Noble Truths, is, like the previous post, concerned with passing through, how as I go through life, I am always in some sort of passing through place. Before we get to the poem, just let me fill you in on a bit of the back story.
First, I wrote the poem as I walked home to our hermitage at the time in a town called Moama on the Murray River in Australia. Now, the Murray is the biggest river in the country and the then little town of Moama sits across the river from its bigger city sized sibling: Echuca, the biggest inland port in Australia.
Anyway, I’d just crossed the river bridge and the words just started coming to me. Not exactly as you read it here, but close. I am very lucky that I had only a few minutes walk left to get home, otherwise the whole lot could have been lost to memory.
The longer back back story? Well, as the poem suggests, I’d spent a lot of time hitchhiking, in Australia and a few other places too. It’s true what it says in the first lines: I’d done a lot of trudging through a rather large number of towns unknown to me then, and only some of which are better known to me now in much later years.
Okay, that’s enough back story to last a while, so let’s just present the star of the show. I share this, as I do all my efforts, with heart.
JUST PASSING THROUGH … OR SEEKING NOBLE TRUTHS
Many have been the nights
I’ve trudged (and less often, strode)
past illuminated windows framing.
families sharing sit down meals.
Or huddled worshipfully before
flickering and silent (to my passing by ears)
picture boxes in corners of cosy family rooms.
I am just one more invisible (to most), anonymous
drifter. Just passing through
the empty nighttime streets of one more
anonymous town.
Longing to enter the illumined frame.
Longing to share one of those sit down meals.
Longing to worship at the alter of the flickering picture box.
Longing is loss.
The edge of town roadside summons
this lonesome bodhisattva begging rides.
It’s just one more quiet and cold
semi desert night. A high moon in a clear sky
casts ghostly shadows through Eucalypts:
my only company as the waiting game begins.
Waiting to see headlights coming and going my way.
Waiting to be rescued from this lonely edge of town roadside.
Waiting for another ride, to another anonymous town.
Waiting is wasteful
Better to be here, now, on this
edge of town roadside. A place as good
as any. Illumined by the moon,
the ghostly gums create the frame
in which this bodhisattva rests.
And worships.
Thank you for allowing me to share these words with you. The road, as many of you will know, can be a teacher, a guru. I don’t hitch-hike anymore, but the road is still teaching me. And I am grateful.
Homage to The Cockroach Man. With thanks and affection
Notes from the Hermit’s Cave is what this blog is called. I promised to publish musings or notes of all sorts: your regular text blog; photos or other pictures; poems; and other assorted bit and pieces.
Well, I’ve rediscovered a poem that I think would be great to share with you.
Looking through some posts saved from old blogs no longer active, I came across theaforementioned poem. It’s about a guy I met in a cafe in India back in 2006. This person kept me and a crowd of other travellers spellbound for a couple of hours one monsoon afternoon. Not to mention the many conversations focused on him that followed in the next few days and the several pages in my Journal recounting the whole experience.
Anyway, as soon as I saw this poem again, I thought I just have to post it here. That trip was a big step for me in my own healing and spiritual journey. And meeting this guy has played a part in all that.
So, please join me in making this small offering of thanks to that guy, whose actual name I never learned, and who forever will be known to several very fortunate travellers as the Cockroach Man
THE COCKROACH MAN
This is what he said.
He’d lived many years in India,
and, in that time he’d done many things.
Even, he said, for a while he’d trained with a yogi, his guru.
This is what he said.
Yogic training is not easy, he said,
In fact, he said, one aspect made him sick
for a year.
This is what he said.
His Guru put beings in his head.
Beings like parasites he said.
Yes, yogic training, it made him sick.
This is what he said.
Parasites implanted in the head? A part of yogic training?
No. I don’t think so.
Actually, inserted was the word he used.
‘inserted beings in my head.’
This is what he said.
All gone now, save one, he said.
Only one remains—it’s like a cockroach.
And it’s still in him making him sick.
This is what he said.
At night, he said, there is sometimes relief.
The cockroach leaves and floats just below the ceiling.
Well, its astral body leaves his head and floats above his bed.
This is what he said
‘You’re a healer. You understand,’
is what he says as he turns to me.
Umm, no. Actually I don’t.
But this is not what I said.
Where is he now, the Cockroach Man?
‘It’s winter soon. I’m gonna give blankets
to the villagers.’
This is what he said.
He’s known suffering, he said.
And you could tell he was tired
from fighting the cockroach.
‘I’ll feed the poor.’
This is what he said.
Van Gogh: Mystic & Saint?
A few weeks ago I finished one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. Yes, I know: we live in the days of hype and the redundant superlative. Everything is the best, biggest, greatest. Or, conversely, the worst, most tragic, saddest; it goes on and on.
In this case however I am not exaggerating. This book was amazing. It’s Learning from Henry Nouwen and Vincent Van Gogh: A portrait of a compassionate Life, by Carol A. Berry. From this book I’ve learned as much and more about Van Gogh’s motivations, his vision, his art, and yes, his very nature and soul, than in everything I’ve read, seen or heard about Vincent until now put together. And that includes from several visits to the magnificent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.
The book had its genesis in a course the author sat in on in the 1970s put on by Henry Nouwen for Theology students. The course aimed at helping future ministers and pastors learn to connect with their future parishioners. Basically it was about accessing the compassionate sides of their own natures so they might better help others. Nouwen used Van Gogh as a the model of a person who had lived a life built on compassion for others.
The author has mined Vincent’s letters (mostly to his brother Theo) and studied deeply his paintings and drawings, in order to understand and demonstrate what it means to live a life of compassion, and to highlight the artist’s mission in life. For me that mission is summed up very nicely in a quote from one of Van Gogh’s letters:
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo
I had a vague sense of Vincent’s spiritual leanings (I knew he’d been a missionary living among poor miners and their families to better understand and help them), and he’d tried to become a preacher. But, before finding this book my thinking hadn’t gone much deeper than that.
But, through reading this book I discovered Vincent was really what many of us might call a mystic. The author goes further and after what i’ve learned, I tend to agree with her: she thinks Van Gogh is a saint.
A mystic in the sense that he tried to live a holy and compassionate life. He viewed all nature (of which he concluded humans are simply one equal part) as being expressions of the divine. And a saint in that he dedicated his life to making art that would inject light and colour into the darkness of people’s lives.
As I mentioned, Vincent had been a missionary for a time. But his radical way of living among the poor and sharing their lives in order to know and love them better was shocking and way too extreme for his bosses, and he had to move on.
So, he finally settled on full-on immersion in his art. His mission was to make paintings that offered comfort and consolation to those who are suffering. And that’s all of us to one degree or another isn’t it?
You can see by now that this supremely accessible (and pleasurable to read) work has had a profound impact on me. This book isn’t only for artists, nor is it a religious book; it is as I have said an inspiration and guide to living a compassionate and loving life.
I don’t want to just say ‘I can’t recommend highly enough that you read this book’; I want to say instead Please, please read this book. Then obviously act on what you have read!
I’ve always admired – loved – Vincent, now I think I know why. Or as Don McLean says in one of the most profound love songs (Vincent) in history (remember, I never exaggerate):
Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now
Perhaps.
Love and Peace from me to you
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 