www.theburninghand.com

Robert Daniel Smith
Author, Resplendent In Rags
Writing: The Shifty-Mystic and
Subtle River, Subtle Moon (New Poems)

  Everyday: Chop Wood, Carry Water
-- Chinese Taoist Sage
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai

Subtle River, Subtle Moon

   Subtle River flows
carrying the entire world
like the Grand Tortoise
   of ancient memory
   carrying the Earth on
   its back through empty
space until coming to
   rest here in the Milky Way
   circling a golden Sun
   like a prayer
   before a Humble God
   frail and no longer devout

   Subtle Moon rides
   the gravity horse of Earth
   like the Mystic Maiden
   of mountain hermit
   plucking tea walking
   with back to the wind
   with nowhere to go
   with nothing better to do
   perhaps further into wonder
   perhaps return to clean robe
   perhaps humble Subtle Moon
   is the one lasting devotion


  Iona House
Divine Mother, Celtic, Tao, Catholic Worker
   Praxis

The churches, religions, and systems of transmission
   are all revealing their bankruptcy in the face of the catastrophe
we are enduring. -- Andrew Harvey

   Humanity is being taken to the point where it will have to choose between suicide or adoration.
-- Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

   No definitions of the Mother could ever be adequate. The Mother is beyond all dogmas, all definitions, all
   qualifications of any kind. One of the questions I kept asking Bede Griffiths in our final conversation as he was
dying was "What is the Mother to you now?" He would smile and always say, "There are no words for her."
The experience of the Mother, of the Mother-aspect of the Godhead, of the Motherhood of God, is an
   immense, vast, constantly expanding experience of the presence of calm and blissful unconditional love as the ground
   of being. Everything is in the Mother, everything is the Mother and the Mother is beyond everything, constantly drawing
   everything deeper and deeper into the fire of her always transforming love. She is at once the ground, the energy and
   the always changing and flowering goal of evolution, the spider that spins the great cosmic web and lives
in it, the web itself and the dark luminous womb and void out of which both spider and web are constantly being born.
-- Andrew Harvey

   Surrender to the Mother! -- Fr. Bede Griffiths
   Serve the growing Christ! Serve the growing Christ! Serve the growing Christ! -- Fr. Bede Griffiths

   "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? Is it not true that the Surrender to the Mother is the most efficacious means of cultivating the Conscious Evolution, the Growing Christ, required by this 21st century?
     -- Iona House, Core Questions / A Way of Life in Community

Vow of the Order of the Sacred Earth:
"I promise to be the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be."

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

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

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

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