Sono Ra (Agave and Rice)
Sono Ra (Agave and Rice)
Coyote awakes from a night
Of tequila and sake
Sits with his glass
It’s empty he says
All is empty
The desert runs out
To the Sea of Japan
I cannot swim he says
But I can fly
©
Bob Schwartz
January 18, 2018
January 17, 2018
Turning Back: Good News from Today’s I Ching (Hexagram 24)
Today’s I Ching hexagram (Hexagram 24, Fu/Turning Back) brings good news, for individual lives and for any bigger concerns we might have about the way some things seem to be going in the world:
“During the time of decay, the dark forces proceed one after another until they reach the uppermost position. The situation seems hopeless. However, the Chinese believe that turning back and starting again is a universal and everlasting truth. When decaying has reached its extreme, a turning point comes. Then the light shines in the darkness, and the bright situation begins again….
This gua indicates that, through the influence of King Wen and King Wu, decaying was corrected in a short period of time. The social norm was reestablished. The courtesy and etiquette created by the Duke of Zhou was put back in place immediately. King Wen was happy about the situation; he claimed that turning back brought success. There was no harm for people going out and coming back. There was no harm in people of different kingdoms arriving and departing.”
Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching:
䷗
Hexagram 24
Fu • Turning Back
Earth
over
Thunder
Fu plays an important role in the I Ching. It is one of the twelve tidal gua used to explain the cosmology of the changing of the seasons—to go around and begin again….
Things cannot go beyond the extreme. When they reach the limit, they turn back to the origin. Thus, after Falling Away comes Turning Back.
The situation seems hopeless. However, the Chinese believe that turning back and starting again is a universal and everlasting truth. When decaying has reached its extreme, a turning point comes. Then the light shines in the darkness, and the bright situation begins again….
This gua, together with the preceding one, displays the truth of changing. When things proceed to their extreme, they alternate to the opposite. Thus, after the period of falling away comes turning back. The light that has been banished returns. The change is not brought about by force—it accords with the law of Nature. The turning back arises spontaneously, like a bright spring returns after a severe winter. It is a matter of circumstance due to the appropriate time and situation. Because it is the law of Nature, no human force can alter it….
The Commentary on the Decision says, “From this gua, Fu, one can see the heart of Heaven and earth.” It reveals the cosmology of the Confucian school. Once Confucius said, “Heaven and earth have a heart fond of creating and propagating.” Confucian scholars advocate that one should follow the Tao of Heaven and Earth, that is, to be creative and propagate without ceasing. But the Taoists embrace a different view. Lao Tze says,
Attain the highest void;
Maintain the deepest stillness.
When ten thousand beings rise and fall,
Watch their turning back.
Taoists accept the idea of the cyclic motion of Falling Away and Turning Back and Falling Away again and Turning Back again, but they hold that existence originates from nonexistence and motion from nonmotion. Only when one reaches a state of total nonattachment is one able to see the heart of Heaven and earth. In Chinese culture, the Confucian and Taoist schools constitute a yin-yang complement. The philosophy of the Confucian school is moving and doing. That of the Taoist school is retreating and doing nothing. Yet both philosophies originate from the I Ching.
This is an auspicious gua, because the yang energy returns. Yet the Decision does not mention its auspiciousness because the yang energy is still weak. Its achievement depends on effort. But the first line bodes supreme good fortune. In reality, no one is perfect. If one is able to turn back from not going too far toward the evil, it brings supreme good fortune….
This gua indicates that, through the influence of King Wen and King Wu, decaying was corrected in a short period of time. The social norm was reestablished. The courtesy and etiquette created by the Duke of Zhou was put back in place immediately. King Wen was happy about the situation; he claimed that turning back brought success. There was no harm for people going out and coming back. There was no harm in people of different kingdoms arriving and departing. Falling away and turning back moved in accordance with the Tao of waxing and waning.
January 17, 2018
“Dozens of U.S. Jewish Activists Stage Sit-in on Capitol Hill in Protest of Trump’s Threat to Deport Dreamers”
It was starting to appear that many faith communities might not be taking their place in standing up and resisting the daily assault on the deepest American, Judeo-Christian and human values. In fact, it appeared that some of those communities were not only silent but hypocritically complicit.
This morning’s protest at the Capitol is one of the latest rays of light. From Haaretz:
Dozens of U.S. Jewish Activists Stage Sit-in on Capitol Hill in Protest of Trump’s Threat to Deport Dreamers
‘Let my people go,’ chant a group of Dreamers alongside coalition of Jewish groups and members of Congress
WASHINGTON – Dozens of Jewish American activists demonstrated on Capitol Hill Wednesday calling on Congress to pass legislation in protection of “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as children.
A coalition of Jewish groups organized the demonstration, including the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, Bend the Arc, the Anti-Defamation League and others.
A group of Dreamers also joined the demonstration, chanting “Let my people stay.” Members of Congress Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who are both Jewish, also arrived at the scene to express their support as activists were arrested….
After handing a petition signed by over 5,000 people thus far to members of Congress, the protesters sat on the floor of the Russel Senate Office Building and chanted “we will not be moved.”
“As Jews, we recognize the dangers of President Trump’s inhumane policies and scapegoating of immigrants,” the petition states. “We’ve seen this before. We stand with our immigrant neighbors on the side of justice, not oppression, of liberation, not deportation.”
A number of protesters, including Reform rabbis, were arrested by Capitol Hill Police officers.
Barbara Weinstein of the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center told Haaretz that dozens of the protesters were arrested, but that most of them are being released. “It’s long past time for Congress to pass legislation for the Dreamers,” she stated. “We need this bill immediately. We had a lot of members of Congress, from the House and Senate side, who told us they were determined to solve the crisis. It’s important to Democrats and Republicans alike.”
Weinstein added that “welcoming the stranger is an important part of our identity. We are all descendants of immigrants. It’s on all of us to support these Dreamers. They grew up here, this is the only country they’ve ever known, many of them serve in the military, this is their home. We’re going to remain focused on this issue until we see a bill reach the president’s desk and signed by him. This is not over today.”
January 16, 2018
The Interdependent Economic Technological Political Social Cultural Ecology of America
Think about all the things you love and enjoy in modern American life in 2018.
Think about all the things you don’t like—you might say hate—about modern American life in 2018.
Think about the popular concept of ecology, that there is an inescapable though sometimes subtle interdependence between all the elements of our life and our world—the good, the bad and the ugly.
Now think that the things you love and enjoy are unbreakably related to the things you hate. That, for just one tiny example, the developments in American life you most regret have been existentially dependent on the social media you lovingly embrace. If you think more, you may find that lots of the developments and capabilities you love and hate are interdependent.
Something to think about.
January 15, 2018
James Baldwin—My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation
You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free.
James Baldwin, My Dungeon Shook (1962)
It would be obvious and appropriate to quote Martin Luther King Jr. today. Instead, though, I offer an excerpt from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, one of the great literary works on black America by one of America’s greatest writers. (For those who keep track of such things, the book has earned 343 Amazon reviews, with a rating of 4.8.)
The book includes a brief essay entitled My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation. Written in 1962, before the Civil Rights Act and the forward but fitful evolution of American society, its power is undiminished in the face of unfinished business.
Excerpts:
Dear James:
I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times. I keep seeing your face, which is also the face of your father and my brother. Like him, you are tough, dark, vulnerable, moody—with a very definite tendency to sound truculent because you want no one to think you are soft. You may be like your grandfather in this, I don’t know, but certainly both you and your father resemble him very much physically. Well, he is dead, he never saw you, and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him….
I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime….
This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that, for the heart of the matter is here, and the root of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do (and how you could do it) and where you could live and whom you could marry. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying, “You exaggerate.” They do not know Harlem, and I do. So do you. Take no one’s word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear….
For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off.
You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James, and Godspeed.
Your uncle,
James
January 13, 2018
“Trump allies see his involvement in shooting as overblown.”
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Donald Trump, 23 January 2016
There is no evidence that Trump has shot someone on 5th Avenue or elsewhere—or more likely that he has had someone shot, since he probably wouldn’t do it himself.
Whether or not he would lose voters if that happened, it is certain that he wouldn’t lose the support of his circle of self-serving sycophants or Republicans in Congress.
It was almost two years ago, on the campaign trail in Iowa, that Trump announced his immunity from the norms of politics, or for that matter the norms of civil behavior. Rather than concern that this might be the ranting of a disturbed and anti-social individual, it was shrugged off as the rhetoric of a colorful fringe candidate, as “Just Trump being Trump.”
That fringe candidate is now president. “Just Trump being Trump” is a mantra that is now repeated in the wake of whatever he says or does. Anything, anytime, anywhere. Even if that crazy Iowa rhetoric turns from fantasy to fact.
January 12, 2018
Most Republicans in Congress Are Political Cowards. And They Know It.
Note: As this was being readied, it was announced that two Republican Senators who attended yesterday’s infamous White House meeting released a statement saying that they “didn’t recall” Trump making the reported comments about immigration from “shithole countries”—meaning Haiti and all of Africa. As if anyone at the meeting could forget.
During the day, Republicans in Congress do their work, self-satisfied that they are doing the people’s business with conscience and integrity, serving the best interests of the nation and their constituents. They may even be considering the next election, which will allow them to continue that good work and care.
But at night, when their heads hit the pillow, how do they really feel, what do they really think? One guess is that in the dark, alone with themselves, all rationalizations and excuses fly away, for these are not necessarily bad people. They think about the courage it would take to say what they really believe and do what they really think is right. There at night, alone in the dark, they consider the value of courage, how admirable but difficult and costly it is to stand up and speak out. At that point it may be hard to get to sleep—and some may even weep in frustration and self-recrimination. The next day will undoubtedly bring another test, and they know they will not pass.
January 11, 2018
Merton: Events and Pseudo-Events
“Nine-tenths of the news, as printed in the papers, is pseudo-news, manufactured events. Some days ten-tenths. The ritual morning trance, in which one scans columns of newsprint, creates a peculiar form of generalized pseudo-attention to a pseudo-reality. This experience is taken seriously. It is one’s daily immersion in ‘reality.’ One’s orientation to the rest of the world. One’s way of reassuring himself that he has not fallen behind. That he is still there. That he still counts!
My own experience has been that renunciation of this self-hypnosis, of this participation in the unquiet universal trance, is no sacrifice to reality at all. To ‘fall behind’ in this sense is to get out of the big cloud of dust that everybody is kicking up, to breathe and to see a little more clearly.”
Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence
January 7, 2018
Grist for the Mill
Grist for the Mill
This mill does not live
By wheat alone
Barley spelt corn
Amaranth rice
Welcome and ground
Wherever whoever
Cultivates and harvests
This mill is for all
Who bake cook and eat
And might be hungry
©
January 7, 2018
Wakers and Woken
Wakers and Woken
No hand shakes my cover
No voice whispers or insists
Some are wakers
Some are woken
The birds sages
And morning remind me
Of the chaos and order
Awaiting beside my bed
Sleep over
©
