Robert Daniel Smith
                                             Author, Resplendent In Rags
                                                         Writing: The Shifty-Mystic
                                                  
​                                                    Everyday: Chop Wood, Carry Water
​                                                                            -- Chinese Taoist Sage
                                            Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
                                                    Gardening is prayer offered to the earth. -- Patricia Monaghan
                              
                                                 
                                                                              Iona House                   
                                        Catholic Worker, Celtic, Tao, Contemplative, Sacred Feminine 

​                                                                Vow of the Order of the Sacred Earth:
                           "I promise to be the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be."
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                                                          "Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the
                                              ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for
                                                                         your souls." -- Jeremiah 6: 16

​                                          There's a crack in everything... that's how the light gets in... -- Leonard Cohen

                                                 The feminine is the matrix of creation... Without the intercession
                                     of the divine feminine we will remain in this physical and spiritual wasteland we have
                                     created, passing on to our children a diseased and desecrated world... A world that is
                                                 not connected to its soul cannot heal. -- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
                                                                                
​It is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him. -- Pelagius

​Beauty is unity in the diversity. -- Eriugena

The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How then shall we live?

Is there not an heretical imperative implicit in the Gospel?

Is it not true that the Gospel, and the Heart of Every Religion, is an invitation to build, with faith and hope, intentional communities rooted in Mystic-Action? Is it not true that the Gospel, and the Heart of Every Religion, calls us to live a life of prayer, compassion, service, justice, and nonviolence? Is it not true that the Gospel, and the Heart of Every Religion, calls us to save Planet Earth by living in such a way that we serve all species and the re-generation of our Home? Is it not true that the Gospel, and the Heart of Every Religion, calls us to gender / race / and class equality (equality of and in the personhood of all human beings) as the foundation of social transformation towards the just, the good, and the beautiful? Is it not true that the Gospel, and the Heart of Every Religion, calls us to live lives of contemplative prayer, gratitude of mind, availability and vulnerability of heart, and a harmony of body, mind, and soul? And finally, is it not true that the very Heart of the Gospel is, as it were, a roadmap of the Way -- into our surrender to the Divine Beloved and our growing / greening identification with Yeshua the Poet of Nazareth -- and then our ultimate transformation in and through the Cosmic Christ Consciousness?  -- Iona House, Core Questions / A Way of Life in Community

If you want to live life free,
take your time, go slowly.
Do few things, but do them well.
​Simple joys are holy. -- Donovan (from the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon)

Divinity is aimed at humanity. -- St. Hildegard

The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. -- St. Hildegard

Every creature is a word of God and a book about God. -- Meister Eckhart

There is no creation that does not have a radiance, be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty -- it could not be creation without it.
-- St. Hildegard

We find our souls all soaked in grace... -- Thomas Merton

Everything matters. Everything we do counts. Everything is prelude, stepping stone, and promise.
-- Matthew Fox

​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, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. -- Fr. Daniel Berrigan

​Nonviolence is the only credible response to the violence we're seeing around the world. -- Coretta Scott King

The world will be saved by beauty. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

We have been created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil

                                                                                                           
The Song of St. Francis

​Holy Moly! You are beyond my imagination!
You are praise, wonder, beauty and every blessing!
All good, every kindness, is your shining
And your Name is the secret of creation!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in dear Brother Sun!
He brings the day to enlighten our hearts!
Brother Sun is beauty shining
Shining as your Holy Moly sign!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in dear Sister Moon and Brilliant Stars!
In the sky they shine
Brilliant, precious, and beautiful!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in dear Brother Wind!
In every movement of air and cloud
In every movement in delight you Shine!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in wonderful Sister Water!
She is so precious and humble
in accepting the kiss of our lips!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in robust Brother Fire!
He is so vibrant and bold
to hold back the night for our praise!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in our sacred Mother Earth!
She holds us to her breast,
She lifts us up in our weakness,
She gifts us with fruits, flowers, and herbs,
in her embrace we are held by you!

I rejoice in my darkness to know your Light
in all persons who know the beauty
of a bended knee, can ask for forgiveness,
and who can lift up the harmed in the beauty of peace,
for it is in this living of peace, that is the crown of lasting Light
and the wonder of an endless Holy Moly!

-- Robert Daniel Smith

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Stunning love is where the soup boils. Justice and Mercy stand in the breadline. The Blissful Mother receives there Her bowl of soup and piece of bread. Kitchen theology is getting up out of the easy chair and going where the onions need to be chopped! Kitchen theology is the understanding that "salvation" is not the profession of a creed or a "personal relationship" with Jesus, Allah, Krishna, the Buddha, the Torah, the Way or even the Goddess. Rather, it is the radical commitment to not enter Paradise until everyone among us has found their fill of bread and roses, and entered first. -- Robert Daniel Smith   Resplendent In Rags


If we believe in the Incarnation of the Son of God, there should be no one on earth in whom we are not prepared to see, in mystery, the presence of Christ. -- Thomas Merton

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Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker Movement which continues to operate Houses of Hospitality throughout the world, with the workers publishing newspapers, building farms, serving and advocating for the poor, and witnessing for peace and justice.

​The price of the kingdom is the food you give to those who need it. -- St. Leo the Great

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system. -- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful

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                                                                                   I care, therefore I am
                                             I care, therefore I build community
                                             I care, therefore I practice beauty
                                             I care, therefore I build the New Creation

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

​Divinity is everywhere and within everything: it is the Holy of Holies, the Secret of Secrets. It is both above and beneath, within and without. It is before and it is behind: it lurks behind every veil -- always ready and waiting for the perfect moment, the surprise of the perfect pounce... -- Robert Daniel Smith   Resplendent In Rags
                                     

Every single act of kindness is a call into Being for the Divine Beloved -- the Source is born -- again and again throughout all of time -- by every moment and movement of Love from "one" to "another". We become the Mothers of G-d by our Love and through our Love! We give birth to G-d when through a thought, word, or action we exist -- in that specific and precious moment -- not for ourselves, but only for the "other"...

The whole universe is contained within a single human being... you.  
​-- Rumi

I raise up my voice -- not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard... we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.
-- Malala Yousafzai 

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