Brisk fall afternoon
beautiful slanting sunshine
day of remembrance.

My encouragement is not to look back on what has happened, not to have any regrets. Regret is from the world of conditioning. What happened happened. We start over in each moment, here and now.
- Cheri  Huber

“If we can’t find God right here, in this space, then we will not find God by going anywhere else.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated and Explained

Enlightenment is simply intimacy with all things. Not knowing is most intimate.
- Dogen

I Said to the Wanting Creature

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is nobody, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence, you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
 

I Said to the Wanting Creature, by Kabir, trans. Robert Bly

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.
— Terry Tempest Williams

"A complementary metaphor for pilgrimage is that of art-making as a vessel or sacred space. A tabernacle is a dwelling place for the holy. The arts help us to make space for an encounter with God while also creating a safe container in which to experiment and explore new possibilities.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD & Betsey Beckman, MM Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction

To Autumn

By John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.