Thomas Merton

Saturday morning.

May 7, 2022

Respite from the tilt toward darkness our planet collectively shares.

Peace.

Compassion.

Love.

Our spiritual compass.

‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

[My thesis.-dayle ❀]

From poet Pádraig Ó Tuama:

“Friends, there are many things that crowd your attention. And many things deserve your attention. May you find the space to pay attention to what is important, to feel the feel of feelings, and to find ways to respond with action, care, justice, kindness, time, and whatever else is needed. Beir bua.” [Bring Victory]

Sharing a beautiful curation from journalist and author Dan Rather and his writing partner Elliot Kirschner. They title their compilation, ‘Smile for Saturday’ featured on their ‘Steady’ published on the Substack platform. Subscriptions are open. -dayle

https://steady.substack.com

Blackbird

Music has a way of speaking to us, across genres, across performers, and across the years. It is a conversation that builds from what was said before and evolves over time. All these thoughts flooded forth when we discovered a video of the brilliant musician Jon Batiste performing his version of the Beatles song “Blackbird.”

The occasion for the 2016 performance was the 52nd anniversary of the Beatles’ television debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and Batiste was appearing on the very same stage as they had. As many of you likely know, the Ed Sullivan Theater is now home to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where Batiste serves as musical director.

https://youtu.be/H46yXW4qR_M

Batiste plays “Blackbird” on the piano, whereas the song’s co-writer Paul McCartney (John Lennon shared the writing credit) played his version on the guitar. The musical style also differs, and so does the delivery of the lyrics. But there is a kinship of evocative musicality linking this version to McCartney’s that brought a big smile to our faces. Batiste’s Juilliard-honed abilities as performer and arranger are on full display. So, too, is the genius of the original.

At a time when we are fractured, this song made us feel whole. At a time when we are unmoored, this feels rooted. At a time when we see far too many acts of hate, this feels like a tribute of love.

Left in awe of this performance, we decided to dig a little more into the history of “Blackbird.” And things got even more interesting. It turns out the lineage of the song goes back well before the 1968 White Album on which it first appeared — as in centuries back. “Blackbird” was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach — more specifically, his famous “Bourrée in E minor.” We will let Sir Paul himself tell you the story.

Bach’s piece was originally written for the lute but has since become a staple for classical guitar. If you are still with us and want to continue this musical journey, here is a performance of the piece on its original instrument.

Through our research we became a bit obsessed with Batiste, his story, and his music. We encourage you to listen to more from this remarkable talent.


‘Innocent bystander.’ Thomas Merton: I am no longer smiling … for I do not think the question of our innocence can be a matter for jesting, and I am no longer certain that it is honorable to stand by as the helpless witness to a cataclysm, with no other hope than to die innocently and by accident, as a nonparticipant. ♀︎



 

Beautiful prompt.

March 17, 2022

How should we celebrate your day?

If today was a holiday in your honor, what would it be about?

If we had to examine everything about you, your work, your impact, your reputation–what would be the positive caricature we would draw? What sorts of slogans, banners and greetings would we use to celebrate you and your work?

It’s never accurate to boil down an organization or a person’s work to a simple sentence or two, but we do it anyway.

What’s yours?

-Seth Godin

https://seths.blog/

We can create this honor in any moment, and shift our lives to live that honor. What will your day be about? -dayle

Mother Teresa, 1985

“Make your life a little less difficult to another.”

A. Stoddard:

“Don’t quite before the finish line. Walking away from something that is bad for you is not quitting.”

Horace, ‘Never despair.’ Winston Churchill, ‘Never, never.’

Thomas Merton:

“The history of the world, with the material destruction of cities and nations and people, expressed the interior division that tyrannizes the souls of all men, and even of the saints.” -New Seeds of Contemplation

From Merton’s The Sigh of Jonas

“Sooner or later the world must burn, and all things in it…for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe, and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with.

And here I sit writing a diary.

But l o v e laughs at the end of the world, because love is the door to eternity; and, before anything can happen, love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door, and he won’t bother about the world burning because ehe will know nothing about love.”

“Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. […] Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed i proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. […] Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindest and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.”

“Mother Earth and culture, the mother of mothers, are both a state, even as reverence toward Pachamama is on the rise.”

[Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous peoples of the Andes.]

“Let us apply Julian’s teachings on motherhood to Mother Earth. As we saw in chapter 4, Hildegard was explicitly in her language about Mother Earth, demanding that ‘the earth must not be destroyed.’ The destruction of the earth is the destruction of the feminine. Matricide is ecocide, and ecocide is matricide. Invasion of indigenous lands and destruction of their cultures, the spreading of viruses that killed millions of indigenous peoples…the outcomes were the same. History is filled with matricides of all kinds Genocides, too” (p. 95).

[…]

“The ancient Hindu sages, we are told, ‘predicts the age in which we are now living.’ For them Kali Yuga represents the collapse of every kind of inner and outer coherence and personal and institutional forms of compassion, concern, and justice” (p. 95).

Matthew Fox, ‘Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic-and Beyond.’

Thursday, February 17th, 2022

February 17, 2022


‘Our minds our like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all the metal in them.’

-Thomas Merton, 1961, Seeds of Destruction

Apropos for contemporaneous news cycles and destruction of social media. -dayle


For the thousands who die everyday from the pandemic still, whose deaths are only felt in numbers, not souls…1,000,000 total as of today. -dayle

‘Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life.’

-Joseph Campbell

‘What is to give light must endure burning.’

-Victor Frankl


A prayer from Marianne:

‘I place my relationship with him in your hands. May my presence once again be a blessing in his life, and my his be blessing in mine. May my thoughts toward him be those of innocence and love, and may his toward me be the same. Amen.’

Dirty Laundry

February 9, 2022

“It’s all about big dirty money.”

-Adam McKay

(Producer, screenwriter, ‘Don’t Look Up!’)

Corporate owned media. Pretty much all of it. -dayle

The Daily Poster

https://www.dailyposter.com

Corporate Media Is The Misinformation Problem

BY DAVID SIROTA

“Misinformation” is all the rage these days — it’s the topic du jour. Pollssuggest we all agree that it’s a problem, and lately liberals appear most mad at it — but seemingly only at certain kinds of misinformation that originate outside the corporate media sphere.

Notably, the ire is rarely directed at a corporate media machine that systematically rewards and praises the purveyors of misleading propaganda, and continues to flood the country with information sewage.

This selective outrage is a huge problem — because the only way to systematically combat misinformation is to construct a Fourth Estate that develops some trust with the audience. That trust will never be rebuilt if liberals pretend to hate misinformation while they patronize a media establishment that fortifies the pathologies that originally created a credibility crisis.

Consider the past week of media news, while the Joe Rogan controversy dominated headlines:

NBC News hired Stephen Hayes, one of the key architects of Iraq War misinformation, to serve as a political analyst across all of its properties amid a media drumbeat for a war with Russia. Despite Hayes publishing the seminal book amplifying one of the most egregious lies of the Iraq debacle, NBC’s Chuck Todd lauded him as “a principled reporter and analyst who always puts truth and facts above emotion and sentiment.” Meanwhile, CNN just hiredanother Iraq War proponent, right-wing propagandist Jonah Goldberg.

Speaking of CNN, its employees effusively praised their network’s recently deposed president, Jeff Zucker, even after Zucker oversaw the lionization of Andrew Cuomo while the New York governor was shielding his health care industry donors from legal consequences amid a massacre of nursing home residents. Rolling Stone reported that one source said Zucker was personally involved in engineering the Cuomo promotion — and even helped write talking points for the governor.
Corporate media began touting a comeback for Cuomo and his brother, Chris, with no mention of the nursing home catastrophe, as if nothing bad happened over the last two years.

An MSNBC-platformed Washington newsletter blasted out propaganda touting Kroger’s “great pay and benefits” — even as thousands of its employees are struggling to afford basic necessities, and even as the grocery chain bankrolls lobbying groups working to kill union rights legislation.

The New York Times told its readers that President Joe Biden’s “big climate goals depend on Congress” — somehow not mentioning that they also depend on Biden, who has been using his executive authority to expand drilling at a faster pace than President Donald Trump.

Less than two years after the New York Times told its readers that 100,000 pandemic deaths under Trump was “incalculable,” the newspaper has now decided that 900,000 deaths is now a ho-hum story that Americans are bored with. “Though deaths are still mounting, the threat from the virus is moving, for now, farther into the background of daily life for many Americans,” the paper wrote.

MSNBC aired an interview with a New York Times columnist blaming inflation on workers getting COVID relief money, rather than on corporations using their monopoly power to fleece consumers with higher prices that then fund giant executive pay packages and shareholder dividends.

Obviously, multiple wrongs don’t make a right. Rogan platforming public health nonsense and environmental misinformation — and using racial slurs — is not somehow absolved by corporate media concurrently immersing the world in an ocean of self-serving bullshit. His behavior is bad on its own merits. Full stop.

But corporate media doesn’t get to lie the country into a war and a financial crisis, continue enriching right-wing fabulists, offer up news literally “presented by” corporate villains, and then pretend that a podcaster is the singular source of misinformation. And it sure as hell doesn’t get to feign surprise when after decades of lies, almost nobody ends up trusting corporate media about anything.

Despite crocodile tears about “free speech,” none of the central players in the hullabaloo are heroes or victims — they are all making a mint off selling controversy, garbage, and fake outrage. And it’s hardly a surprise that the loudest of them screaming about censorship have had little to say about the most pervasive censorship of all: corporate media’s near-complete erasure of economic and anti-corruption reporting that might offend business sponsors.

The real victim here is the general public.

We need a Fourth Estate that does not reward peddlers of the most outrageous lies — like, say, a Saddam-Al Qaeda “connection” — with prominent gigs.

We need television networks whose anchors don’t run out onto the airwaves to defend top brass amid reports that they helped politicians and political operatives effectively cover up a public health disaster.

And we need an information infrastructure that preferences accurate, verifiable, and indisputable facts so that the public can make informed decisions.

We don’t have much of that right now, in part because political tribalism has taught audiences to selectively love and hate misinformation based on whether it comes from “their” team.

Many liberals love monikers like “believe science” and see themselves as dispassionate protectors of the truth. But let’s be clear: If you’re a liberal who purports to hate misinformation but also cheers on Liz Cheney or Bill Kristol or some other war propagandist as a beacon of integrity just because you see them defending Democrats or bashing Donald Trump on your favorite TV network, then you don’t actually hate misinformation — you just happen to like your misinformation colored blue (even if that misinformation was previously colored neocon red).

Likewise, if you are a Rogan fan or a Fox News maven who purports to want the “real truth” while you cheer him or Tucker Carlson peddling climate denial and vaccine misinformation, then you don’t actually care about truth at all.

And if you’re in corporate media and think it’s OK for your news outlet to routinely skew and cover up the crimes of politicians and business, then you’re not actually interested in journalism’s mission to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

The difference between “media” and actual journalism is the root of the misinformation crisis. We’re drowning in content that is increasingly valued only for its potency in the political wars, rather than judged on its factual merits and its choice of targets. That kind of media content strays farther and farther from reality because it’s about entertaining and inflaming rather than educating and informing.

The answer to misinformation, then, is not some censorship regime, and it’s not more intense fan culture around individual media icons so that everything is a self-enriching culture war between cable TV pundits and Spotify hosts.

The answer is an audience that actually values accurate and necessary information, even if it offends their preconceived notions — an audience that runs away from corporate media outlets that force-feed them lies and liars, and runs toward news organizations that report hard truths.

That’s the kind of news organization we’re working to build here. And we know it’s going to take a long time to build a true independent and trustworthy Fourth Estate in the wreckage of a corporate media landscape, where the flames of bullshit smolder and suffocate the discourse.

But that’s the only way forward.

#

From David.

“Friends:

Yesterday, I learned that I am a nominee for an Academy Award in the best original screenplay category for my work on the film Don’t Look Up. The fact that the film, a climate allegory, has achieved such critical and popular success is a testament to the growing demand for efforts that buck corporate media narratives and challenge power. I am stunned and truly grateful for this Oscar nomination. To celebrate this honor, we are making the replay of our Don’t Look Up live chat with director Adam McKay free for all members — please click here to watch. https://www.dailyposter.com/1-5-live-chat/ Thanks again for your support, and if you are able to financially support our mission, please consider becoming a paying subscriber or donating through our tip jar. Onward!

Rock the boat,

Sirota

“I want to dedicate this song to Rupert Murdoch.”

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Q8ldj7TKQ&list=RDAMVMJ_Q8ldj7TKQ

Darrell Lee, this is for you. {xo}

~

Dirty Laundry

The Eagles

I make my livin’ off the evenin’ news
Just give me somethin’, somethin’ I can use
People love it when you lose
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda’ been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

We got the bubble-headed bleached-blonde, comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
It’s interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry

You don’t really need to find out what’s goin’ on
You don’t really wanna know just how far it’s gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Dirty little secrets, dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry

We can do “The Innuendo”, we can dance and sing
When it’s said and done, we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!


“As a nation, we have begun to float off into a moral void, and all the sermons of all the priests in the country (if they preach at all) are not going to help much. We have got to the point where the promulgation of any kind of moral standard automatically releases an anti-moral response in a whole lot of people. It is not with them, above all, that I am concerned, but with the “good” people, the right-thinking people, who stick to principle, all right, except where it conflicts with the chance to make money. It seems to me that there are very dangerous ambiguities about our democracy in its actual present condition. I wonder to what extent our ideals are not a front for organized selfishness and systemic irresponsibility. If our affluent society ever breaks down and the facade is taken away, what are we going to have left?”

-Thomas Merton, 1961

Sunday, January 30th, 2022

January 30, 2022

New Moon

New Moon in Aquarius is Monday, January 31 at 10:46PM Mountain Standard Time (MST)

Also known as the Black Moon, this Aquarius moon opens many possibilities for change, innovation, new ways of thinking, and an expansion of consciousness. Curiosity and questioning the status quo as well as a willingness to dig deep and root out anything that is keeping you imprisoned in any limitation is the way to embrace the gifts of this new moon. It will be a combination of highs and lows as you navigate emotional content, the past, present and future. Make it personal. There is no room for fear, blame or regret. You have the authority to make the time a productive, higher-centered experience, or get totally mired in depressive thoughts of futility and pessimism. Your choice. We also suggest that you take disciplined time to do your practices and set your intentions from the place of gratitude. Compassion goes a long way as well. What if you were emotionally free?

Blessings,
Lena

Power Path


Thomas Merton

A Need for Truth

“Man today has lost consciousness of a need for truth. What is sought is power. Truth is made to serve the ends of power. Truth is of no value unless it is expedient.

When truth is  not expedient, then it is deliberately manipulated and twisted to serve the aims of the powerful.

Objective truth is considered irrelevant. It is derided by the powerful, who can change truth to suit themselves, and and bend it this way and that for the sake of ambition and fortune.”

Seasons of Celebration, 1965


Seneca

As an adult, many lives are lived.

Open table.

January 26, 2022

Father Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation:

God’s major problem in liberating humanity has become apparent to me as I consider the undying recurrence of hatred of the other, century after century, in culture after culture and religion after religion.

Can you think of an era or nation or culture that did not oppose otherness? I doubt there has ever been such a sustained group.

It seems we ordinary humans must have our other! It appears we don’t know who we are except by opposition and exclusion. “Where can my negative energy go?” is the enduring human question; it must be exported somewhere. Sadly, it never occurs to us that we are the negative energy, which then sees and also creates that negative energy in others.

The ego refuses to see this in itself. Seeing takes foundational conversion from the egoic self and most have not undergone that transformation. We can only give away the goodness (or the sadness) that we ourselves have experienced and become.


“I rest in the grace of the world and I’m free.”

Wendell Berry, born August 5th, 1934, is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. In 2015 he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. [wikipedia]


Thomas Merton

1965

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“I pray to have a wise heart, and perhaps the rediscovery of Lady Julian of Norwich will help me. I took her book with me on a quiet walk among the cedars. She is a true theologian with greater clarity, depth, and order than Saint Teresa: She really elaborates, theologically, the content of her revelations. She first experienced, then thought, and the thoughtful deepening of her experience worked it back into her life, deeper and deeper, until her whole life as a recluse at Norwich was simply a matter of getting completely saturated in the light she had received all at once, in the ‘shewings,’ when she thought she was going to die.

One of her most telling and central convictions is her orientation to what might be called an eschatological secret, the hidden dynamism which is at work already and by which ‘all manner of thing shall be well.’

To have a ‘wise heart,’ it seems to me, is to live centre on this dynamism and this secret hope…this hoped-for secret. The wise heart lives in Christ (consciousness).”

p. 44

“…we are part of empires today that are killing rainforests and oceans and countless species […] We engage in the killing of the Christ when we engage in the killing of others who are all ‘other Christs.’

Those others may be other human beings or generations to come of species of animals, birds, bees, finned ones. Standing by while global warming happens is killing the Christ. Ecocide is a form of killing Christ. This is what it means to recognize…as Julian does…that ‘Christ too was part of nature.'”

p. 46

“One hundred yeas before Mechtild, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1181) tells us that ‘divinity is…like a wheel, a circle, a whole, that can neither be understood, nor divided, nor begun, nor ended.’ She speaks of our relationship to the divine as something round and compassionate when she tells us we are ‘surrounded with the roundness of divine compassion.'”


More from Thomas Merton:

“Man has lost Dante’s vision of that ‘love which moves the sun and other stars,’ and in so doing has lost the power to find meaning in the world.

Yet, though humans have acquired the power to do almost anything, have at the same time lost the ability to orient their lives toward a spiritual goal by the things that they do.”

[Image: NASA]

2021’s end.

December 18, 2021

Rilke:

I have seen for some time

how everything changes.

There is that which arises and acts,

kills and causes grief.

[…]

Now it is empty where I stand

and look down the avenue.

Almost as far as the farthest ocean

I can see the heavy

forbidding sky.