Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
With trees reflecting back.
Thunder clouds pelt rain
Strewing winds reveal beauty’s
Soft ephemera.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I received the following email last night from Move-On. I pass it on to all of you, who, I am sure are also grieving deeply and praying for those who were the direct victims of these hideous violence, and who also are concerned for all who have been and continue to be impacted by the policies and mindsets that contribute to the environment in which such acts arise:
Dear MoveOn member,
This is a tragic day for America.
As you may have already heard, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 other people were shot today at an event near Tucson.
Right now, Rep. Giffords is in critical condition, and there are reports are that at least five people have been killed, including a young child of about nine years old and Justice John M. Roll, the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.
Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this terrible tragedy. We’ve created a Facebook page where we can all post prayers and thoughts for Rep. Giffords, the other victims and their families. You can find it here:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205705&id=25753-1983776-0_o0QGx&t=1
Gabrielle Giffords is an up-and-coming, shining star in Congress. Anyone who’s been around her will tell you that she’s smart, passionate, and one of the hardest working members of Congress. Robert Reich, one of her mentors, once said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the first or second female president of the United States.”1
Judge Roll started his legal career as a bailiff in the Pima County Superior Court and worked his way all the way to the federal bench. He was appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and began serving as presiding judge in 2006.
This is such a terrible, confusing, awful thing. Please join us in sending your prayers and wishes to those who are suffering tonight. Here again is the link:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205705&id=25753-1983776-0_o0QGx&t=2
–Justin, Adam, Amy, Anna, Annie, Carrie, Christopher, Daniel, David, Duncan, Eli, Emily, Gail, Ian, Ilya, Ilyse, Kat, Laura, Lenore, Mariana, Marika, Matthew, Melanie, Michael, Milan, Nita, Peter, Robin, Ryan, Susannah, Stephen, Steven, and Tim
I spent a few hours this weekend reading Joseph Campbell’s Baksheesh and Brahman, which is Campbell’s journals from a year in India from 1954-55 (I’m now about a third of the way through). Campbell writes that he went to India to find Brahman and instead found politics. He approached his visit from the perspective of a mythologist. In contrast to Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, who went to India to find God, Joseph Campbell went to observe religious practices. Although the journals evidence his own perspective and prejudices, he makes cogent observations on the difference between religiosity and spirituality (not all that dissimilar to the distinctions made in the Bhagavad Gita about the difference between rigidly practicing ritual and truly believing). He also makes very interesting and still timely and cogent comparisons between the relationship of Hinduism and to the then rather new Indian nationalism and American Protestantism to democracy.
Ultimately, though, it is evident that this year was important for Campbell’s life path and work, as it was for the Beats, and has been for many of my friends who have gone, though not for all. I think about going to India. It will be when I have several weeks and don’t have a venerable and ancient cat who cannot be left behind for a long stretch of time. In the meantime, reading of such journeys can stimulate thought and can be applied to other aspects of my life, though reading and studying (especially in the yoga tradition), is never a substitute for experience. Just reading of spiritual experiences, but not doing the practices to open the door to one’s own experience is like reading cooking or gardening books, but never going into the kitchen or the garden.
It can be sweet to notice the little ones.
