The Burning Hand Beat
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Sapientia in plateis clamitat [Wisdom cries out in the marketplace]
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, compassion-action counterculture.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Catholic Worker, Dharma Bum, Broken-Vase Taoist,
Heart-Life Hippy, and Gandhian Personalist
"Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
Viewspaper
Sapientia in plateis clamitat [Wisdom cries out in the marketplace]
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, compassion-action counterculture.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Catholic Worker, Dharma Bum, Broken-Vase Taoist,
Heart-Life Hippy, and Gandhian Personalist
"Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
Ma turned the dough and stirred the coffee. "Listen to me," she said. "I'm gettin' cornmeal today. We're a-gonna eat cornmeal mush..."
"I been thinkin', long as I'm a outlaw anyways... I'll be ever'where -- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -- I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready..."
(The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Movie by John Ford)
"I been thinkin', long as I'm a outlaw anyways... I'll be ever'where -- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -- I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready..."
(The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Movie by John Ford)
Icon of the Catholic Worker Movement
The Burning Hand Beat
Viewspaper
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, compassion-action counterculture.
Wild-Thought Fueling Station:
We are Earthseed
The life that perceives itself
Changing.
-- Octavia Butler
When I was a child, I saw God,
I saw angels;
I watched the mysteries of the higher and lower worlds.
I thought all men saw the same.
At last I realized that they did not see...
-- Shams of Tabriz
If you want to become whole, first let yourself become broken.
-- Lao Tzu
(Thus, "Broken-Vase Taoism")
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely
free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
-- Albert Camus
Belief initiates and guides action -- Or it does nothing.
-- Octavia Butler
Poetry is the heart of the world. -- Tsung Tsai
The "Beat message" is still spreading its Word of dissent non-violent
crazy wisdom and beatitude in a world that needs it more than ever.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Beat doesn't mean tired, or bushed, so much as it means beato, the Italian
for beatific: to be in a state of beatitude, like St. Francis, trying to love all
life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance,
kindness, cultivating joy of heart... What are you searching for? they asked
me. I answered that I was waiting for God to show his face.
-- Jack Kerouac
All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm. -- Henry Miller
If you doubt mountains' walking, you do not know your own walking. -- Dogen
Beat: "Kerouac (in various interviews and lectures) was trying to indicate
the correct sense of the word by pointing out its connection to words like
'beatitude' and 'beatific' -- the necessary beatness or darkness that preceeds
opening up to light, egolessness, giving room for religious illumination."
-- Allen Ginsberg
Beat literature sings against cynicism, apathy, injustice, deception, compromise,
racism, consumerism, war, evils and cons of all kinds. -- Anne Waldman
Take courage, for human nature is divine. -- Pythagoras
Stop demonizing pleasure... love up on each other...
-- adrienne maree brown
I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one
else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and
visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else
has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human
functions...
every man / every woman carries a firmament inside
& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
-- Diane di Prima
There is a force in the universe -- call it God or spirituality or whatever you like --
that wants the victory of truth and justice. This force will help you if you are steady,
humble, brave, and patient. Never, ever give up, however bad things get.
-- Nelson Mandela
The time for the Birth of Sacred Activism on a global scale has arrived.
Everything is now at stake and everything is possible. -- Andrew Harvey
The greatest challenge of the day is:
how to bring about a revolution of heart,
a revolution that has to start with each one of us.
-- Dorothy Day
Be concrete be immediate! Imagine the world!
If you embrace a child, can you consent to the death of
a child? each human face leads you (follow!) to every face.
-- Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ
I am convinced that in spite of the complexity of life in our society
what will save man is to serve another, several others, freely; and
and to form with them a creative and liberating community... in the
certainty that we are playing the game of God, the interiorized
festival of life.
-- David Kirk
The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.
-- Lao Tzu
The cosmos is an infinite and eternal intelligence... The ultimate purpose
of human existence is to consciously foster and further the transmission of the
unifying, embracing, and all-encompassing intelligence of the cosmos into the
universe. -- Ervin Laszlo
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
-- Jesus
On the uneven floor
we all lie down in layers,
a hologram of lovers...
-- Hettie Jones
you are beautiful / you are beautiful
you are a hundred times beautiful...
-- Lenore Kandel
God is voluptuous and delicious! -- Meister Eckhart
The world would be better off
if people tried to become better.
And people would become better
if they stopped trying to become better off.
For when everybody tries to be become
better off
nobody is better off.
But when everybody tries to become better,
everybody is better off.
Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried to become richer.
And nobody would be poor
if everybody tried to be the poorest.
And everybody would be what he ought
to be
if everybody tried to be
what he wants the other fellow to be.
-- St. Peter Maurin, Catholic Worker
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist,
every minute a chance to save the world.
-- Dolores Huerta, UFW Organizer
There's a crack in everything... that's how the light gets in...
-- Leonard Cohen
Anywhere is the center of the world.
-- Black Elk
Love one another as I have loved you.
-- Jesus
I'm continually astonished that people really don't love each other.
How can they do it?
-- Jack Kerouac
One positive thought produces millions of positive vibrations.
-- John Coltrane
The world is pregnant with God.
-- St. Angela of Foligno
Our work today is evidence of the unfinished status of planetary
struggles for equality, justice and freedom.
-- Angela V. Davis
Emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex
systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our
inhertance as a part of this universe; it is how we change. Emergent
strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to
embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.
-- adrienne maree brown
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
-- Anais Nin
You -- special,miraculous, unrepeatable, fragile, tender, lost, sparkling
ruby emerald jewel, rainbow splendor person. It's up to you.
-- Joan Baez
The philosophy of Tao embodies a cosmology rooted in that most primal and
wondrous presence: earth's mysterious generative force... this venerable
generative force appears most explicitly in Lao Tzu's recurring references to the
female principle, such as "mother of all beneath heaven," "nurturing mother,"
"valley spirit," "dark female-enigma." -- David Hinton
We are clusters of vibration in-formed by the intelligence of the cosmos.
-- Ervin Laszlo
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience.
Let nations ally themselves no longer with death, but with life; not with
destruction, but with construction; not with hate, but with the creative
miracles of love. -- Paramahansa Yogananda
I was hungry and you fed me! -- Jesus
Every day: Chop Wood, Carry Water
-- Chinese Taoist Sage
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
The only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live
mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yearn
or say a commonplace thing... but burn, burn, burn...
-- Jack Kerouac
The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was
made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.
-- Edward Andrews
This may only be a dream of mine, but I think
it can be made real.
-- Ella Baker
Embrace simplicity.
Put others first.
Desire little.
-- Lao Tzu
Our power is in our soils. They sustain our every need. They are the starting
place when we return to the land with a seed in hand.
-- Poppy Okotcha
Make love. Take a bath. Make love again. -- Frida Kahlo
And then I ate hot bread. -- Gertrude Stein
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. -- Leonard Cohen
I am your Mother. -- Our Lady of Guadalupe
Nothing Immortal
There is nothing immortal
about these bones
that I wear under my skin
but the wandering clouds
above
ah as they dance through
the blue
surely they wear immortality
as the skin of the Tao
Simple Way-Ultimate Way
The kingdom of heaven within you
is the bare-naked admission
of no-thing out-side
but all-things jumping
through possibility
into here...
then returning
into there...
neither of which
is different or separate
from the other
always Mother
always birthing
always celebrating
always transforming
this is Simple Way
and
Is is the always-rising
from the empty-belly of Not
this is Ultimate Way
now-only
Wandering Cloud, Empty Mind
Wandering cloud empty mind
Counting trees
If Li Po drops by later today
I'll show him my winter-naked
Apple trees
Waiting for their spring-bloom
I'll ask him if he would like
A cup of tea
And a conversation on poetry
I know that I will also
Ask him to meet my wife
Later and stay for dinner
And who knows perhaps
He will
But for now I'll walk the dogs
-- Robert Daniel Smith
OK -- so I left the mosque and went to the alehouse! The sermon was interminably long, and valuable time was wasting away. -- Hafiz
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge. -- Rumi
What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to the All. -- Meister Eckhart
Creation was fashioned to be adorned, to be showered, to be gifted with the love of the Creator. The entire world has been embraced by this kiss. Limitless love, from the depths to the stars, flooding all, loving all. It is the royal kiss of peace. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. -- St. Hildegard of Bingen
Imagine Paradise, Practice Beauty
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
The Ultimate is experienced in the depth of the soul, in the substance or Center of its consciousness, as its own Ground or Source, as its very being or Self (Atman). This experience of God is summed up in the word saccidananda. God or Ultimate Reality, is experienced as absolute being (sat), known in pure consciousness (cit), communicating absolute bliss (ananda).
-- Fr. Bede Griffiths (The Marriage of East and West)
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how siomple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life. -- Zoe Saldana
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
Dissolving into the Primordial Ecstasy:
Into the breath,
Into the garden,
Into the water,
Into the silence,
Into the music:
Everything fits exceedingly well...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
(from The Jewel In The Lotus)
I am different from ordinary people.
I nurse from the Great Mother's breasts.
-- Lao Tzu
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
The Ultimate is experienced in the depth of the soul, in the substance or Center of its consciousness, as its own Ground or Source, as its very being or Self (Atman). This experience of God is summed up in the word saccidananda. God or Ultimate Reality, is experienced as absolute being (sat), known in pure consciousness (cit), communicating absolute bliss (ananda).
-- Fr. Bede Griffiths (The Marriage of East and West)
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how siomple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life. -- Zoe Saldana
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
Dissolving into the Primordial Ecstasy:
Into the breath,
Into the garden,
Into the water,
Into the silence,
Into the music:
Everything fits exceedingly well...
-- Robert Daniel Smith
(from The Jewel In The Lotus)
I am different from ordinary people.
I nurse from the Great Mother's breasts.
-- Lao Tzu