Dayle in Limoux – Day #44

August 18, 2022

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We are not alone. The wise ones who walked before us have left luminous footprints for us to follow in our own apocalyptic time.

 ‘It takes a contemplative mind to spend months living and working in relative isolation because of a devastating pandemic—and not lose hope.’

♡

-Mirabai Starr

Julian of Norwich

John of the Cross

More from Mirabai.

‘Mystics see through a lens of paradox: dazzling darkness, beautiful wound, the longing that is the remedy for longing. Paradox points beyond itself to a truth that both transcends and includes logic, a truth that is alive, generative, and whole. Such a dynamic mode of knowing demands our complete attention. . . . 

What does a religious woman who dwelt in an anchor-hold during the Middle Ages have to do with you and me today? Julian endured a long and cruel pandemic. The disease ravaged her community and carried off the people that she loved. She learned to shelter in place, focusing on cultivating her interior landscape and sharing the fruits of her wisdom through the window that opened from her cell onto the busy streets of her city (think computer screen and Zoom), where she offered counsel to visitors . . . each day.

And how could a renegade monk, who survived the Spanish Inquisition despite the Jewish and Moorish blood that flowed through his veins, have anything to teach us about flourishing in our own dark nights? John of the Cross illumines the transformational power of radical unknowing. He rekindles our latent longing for union with the Beloved and, through sublime poetry and precise prose, blows on the flames so that they dance back to life in our
beleaguered hearts. 

He reminds us that when everything in us wants to rush out and fix the problem of our brokenness, both individual and collective, the wisest and most loving thing to do is to be still, letting go of our attachment to the way we thought the spiritual life was supposed to feel and the sense we assumed it should make.

Once we step out of our own way, into the dark and empty vessel of the soul, “an ineffable sweetness” will begin to rise, permeating and nourishing the quiet earth, uncovering a resurrection we never dreamed possible: a dazzling darkness, a radiant night, a revolutionary newness
of being.’

(This essay, and others, is included in the Oneing/Unveiled book illustrated above.)

Our ancestors, on standby and ready for our inquiry. Reading earlier this morning from YES! Magazine:

Defenders of the system [Capitalism/Philanthropy] cannot rightfully claim they were not warned. There are warnings against overreach and hubris in the founding myths, literature, poetry, and scriptures of nearly every culture on Earth. In Western literature, for example, the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), for one, is not the creature but its creator, who refused to take responsibility for what he’d done. Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick (1851) is a further warning about the penalties that accompany uncontrolled obsession in pursuit of ignoble ends. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor gave a further warning about the perverse logic of necessity; in The Brothers Karamazov (1879), the Grand Inquisitor says to a silent Christ: “In the end they [the people] will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, ‘make us your slaves but feed us.’ They will understand at last that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together … they can never be free for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious.”

Good essay.

‘Sometime after Adam Smith published ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1776, the logic of brute force infected Western economics, informing its underlying proposition that all men (mostly) have insatiable wants that justify tearing up the earth, polluting it, or frying it to death. By this logic, human survival is deemed uneconomical. But why would any even modestly sane person run the risks of destabilizing the Earth’s climate? It is impossible to comprehend the depth of nonsense in waters so turbid.’

The Disaster of Philanthropy and Capitalism

by David W. Orr

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B R E A K  D O W N

Reading about the fires in Algiers, 38 have perished thus far in this rapid and large burning fire. The planet is burning. Gaia is crying for our help.

France 24:

‘Forest fires that ravaged 14 districts of northern Algeria—a country with an already limited amount of forest.’

The country is south of Spain and east of Morocco.

Everyday I feel as though all news and information should rake away anything that doesn’t deserve what should be the planet’s number one priority: C L I M A T E. Imagine if the media focused on climate like they do president #45. I mean, if we don’t have a planet that is inhabitable, and vast majorities of people are migrating to simply live, it probably won’t matter a whole heck of a lot what he did, what he’s going to do, or what he blabbered about at a rally.

Learning that we can all do our part, however small our gesture or effort, like eating less meat, driving/flying less, removing lawns, reuse, change out older appliances (CFC’s), and lastly, hugely, V O T E for candidates who 1. Believe in climate breakdown and 2. Will work to save our planet, release the grip on U.S. fossil fuels, and amplify every step of progress that could heal our planet, collective micro efforts will create shift. WE MUST ‘LOOK UP.’ From YES! magazine:

100 Things You Can Do to Help in the Climate Crisis
In case you needed help getting started.
A New Social Justice: Solutions We Love

[YES! Magazine]

‘To heal ourselves, we must remember that we are a small part of a much greater whole.’

-Adrienne Maree Brown.

~

Buying real estate is France. Some incredible finds and quite affordable, especially when comparing housing prices in the u.s.a. right now. This is fun. A couple of guys bought a village (!) in France.

More from Julian of Norwich, lyrics based on her well-known and often shared quote:

 “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Receive the gift of healing
from the well of tears;
be washed anew
by grief and sorrowing.

Receive the gift of healing
from our mother Earth,
her deep and dark
and secret verdancy.
Receive the gift of healing
from the shaman’s touch:
the wounded healer’s power
to revive.

Receive the gift of healing
in the arms of love,
embraced in passion
and compassioning.

—

Covid. It is not over. 500 people are still dying every day in the United States. Here in France absolutely no mitigation. Many people are out and about coughing, congestion; could all very well have Covid. Even the woman who own my building, back from the hospital after two weeks, being in a coma and on respirator, will not wear a mask. Or her family. She is getting stronger, her breathing more fluid. Thank, Gaia. Yet she has not fully recovered. So. Doubling down. Again. My heart is so sad knowing how many immune compromised stay in isolation, many away from friends and co-workers…families…because they can not chance being ill. There is still so little known about the disease and it’s long-term effects. From Axios:

‘A new large-scale Oxford University study finds that people who’ve had COVID face increased risk of neurological and psychiatric issues — brain fog, psychosis, seizures, dementia — for up to two years after infection.

• The study found anxiety and depression are more common after COVID, though typically subside within two months of infection, Axios’ Rebecca Falconer writes.

Why it matters: The study, published yesterday in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, is the “first to attempt to examine some of the heterogeneity of persistent neurological and psychiatric aspects of COVID-19 in a large dataset,” an accompanying editorial says.

And Monkeypox, reportedly can infect asymptomatically. And now polio is back due to lack of vaccines in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan; travelers/migrants can bring those viruses into another country, and many parents have opted not to vaccinate. A man in New York who contracted the polio virus is now paralyzed. Apparently, some of the vaccines…not in the U.S….vaccinate with a ‘live’ virus and that can be problematic when they do travel. This is what reportedly happened in New York, according to one doctor. And with our climate breakdown, will be seeing, and contracting, more viruses. The CDC’s choice to basically eliminate precautions, i.e., physical distancing and isolating when testing positive, is baffling. 

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VUELTA❗️ Starts tomorrow in S P A I N! 🚴🏻

CyclingNews:

‘The 2022 Vuelta a España starts on August 19 in Utrecht, Holland, and ends in Madrid, Spain, on September 11. The 21 stages include a team time trial, an individual time trial, several flat stages and nine of the often-steep uphill finishes the Vuelta has become known for. 

Two years after the pandemic caused a postponement of the Vuelta a Espana’s Dutch start, Utrecht will finally become the first city in the world to organise the opening stage of all three Grand Tours after the Tour de France in 2015 and the Giro d’Italia in 2017.’ 

Jusqu’à demain.

✿

Saturday, January 22, 2022

January 22, 2022

The Earth is everywhere. You may be used to thinking of the Earth as only the ground beneath your feet. But the water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the Earth. Everything outside us and everything inside us comes from the Earth.
—Thich Nhat Hanh

[Image: Center for Action and Contemplation]

“Thank you” is a simple phrase, but one that carries a lot of meaning. So many people act in ways big and small each day that help others for no expected monetary or other return other than the satisfaction that comes from the act itself.

Inn times of struggle, sadness, and fear, let us all remember the helpers in the world, and try to be helpers to others. Let us be kind and generous. And let us not take all that is good out there for granted. -Dan Rather

For our ancestors. 
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness.”
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

From Father Richard Rohr:

“Our very suffering now, our condensed presence on this common nest that we have largely fouled, will soon be the one thing that we finally share in common. It might well be the one thing that will bring us together politically and religiously. The earth and its life systems, on which we all entirely depend might soon become the very things that will convert us to a simple lifestyle, to necessary community, and to an inherent and universal sense of reverence for the Holy. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. There are no Jewish, Christian, or Muslim versions of these universal elements. All water is “holy water” even before the benefit of a priest’s waved hand. It is always and everywhere two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and voilà—we have the absolute miracle of liquid water, absolutely necessary for all that lives.

This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God’s Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is.”

And…

Francis of Assisi called animals “Sister” and “Brother” and viewed humans as one part of a wider family of creation. Franciscan writers Ilia Delio, Keith Douglass Warner, and Pamela Wood recommend adapting a historic Christian practice of “examination of conscience” to focus on how we have harmed or helped our relationships with the Earth:

1. Do I seek to eliminate from the world whatever keeps all creatures from their full development intended by their Creator: pollution, greed, overconsumption, loss of habitat, disease, war, extinction of species, oppressive laws and structures? . . .
2. Have I encouraged others to take care for creation seriously? . . .

Active Fractals

May 13, 2021

“Fractals can be found throughout nature; they are a complex network of patterns and relationships that portray the incremental growth of life. Found in snowflakes, trees, oceans and clouds, it can be used to understand rules and formulas that govern the environment at various scales.

Active fractals can be used as a model for the endlessly morphing network of modern behaviors in cities over time, from local to global scales. By defining the parameters and limits of fractal infrastructures, we can start to change spatial systems while still accommodating for individual variety and temporal growth.” –Sirenia Yookyung Kim

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Rilke

Four our ancestors, a house, a fountain, even clothing, a coat, was much more intimate. Each thing, almost, was a vessel in which what was human found and defined itself.

Now, From America, empty, indifferent things sweep in…pretend things, life-traps…a house, in the American sense, an American apple, a grapevine, bears no relation to the hope and contemplation with which our ancestors informed and behold them.

November 13, 1925

Dorothy.

March 31, 2021

 

On either side of the river is the tree of life…and the leaves of the tree are for healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more.- Revelation 22:2-3

• Community

• Ancestors

• Gaia

7th Generation Principle

Communion of Saints

March 15, 2021

Richard Rohr and The Center for Action & Contemplation

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

January 31, 2021

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, “Are we bing good ancestors?”

-Jonas Salk

 

What did you do while the earth was unraveling?

-Drew Dellinger, PhD/Poet

 

When you look at electrical things you can see that they are made of small and big wires, cheap and expensive all lined up. Until the current runs through them there will be no light. Those wires are you and me and the current is God. We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us and produce the light of the world or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread.

-Mother Teresa

 

 

Thought man has acquired the power to do almost anything, he has at the same time lost the ability to orient his life toward a spiritual goal by the things that he does. He has lost all conviction that he knows where he is going and what he is doing, unless he can manage to lunge into some collective delusion which promises happiness (sometime in the future) to those who will have learned to use the implements he has discovered.

-Thomas Merton

✿

I ask all blessings,

I ask them with reverence

of my mother and the earth,

of the sky, moon, and sun my father.

I am old age: the essence of life,

I am the source of all happiness.

All is peaceful, all in beauty

all in harmony, all in  joy.

-Anonymous Navaho, 19th-20th century

Jennifer Rose.

December 6, 2019

‘Conversations like these.’