www.theburninghand.com

The Writings of Robert Daniel Smith

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

  Iona House
The Catholic Worker Movement, Celtic and Creation Spirituality
The Primordial Tao, St. Hildegard, Rumi, Sts. Francis and Clare, Gandhi, Findhorn, Ram Dass, Matthew Fox and the World Mystics

"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

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, calls us to live a life of 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 equality 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 Jesus the Poet of Nazareth -- and then our ultimate transformation through the Cosmic Christ?
-- Iona House, Core Questions / A Way of Life in Community

"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

"Dynamic and erratic, spontaneous and radical, audacious and immature, committed if not altogether coherent, ecumenically open and often experimental, visible here and there, now and then, but unsettled institutionally. Almost monastic in nature, but most of all enacting a fearful hope for human life in society."
-- William Stringfellow

"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

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." -- St. Francis of Assisi

"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

"We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." -- Simone Weil

"A true transformation of our culture would require reclaiming the erotic as power-from-within, as empowerment." -- Starhawk

"We can regain the lost sense of wonder about human sexuality, the ecstasy of pleasure, and the miracle of love."
-- Riane Eisler (from Sacred Pleasure)

"We are creating a world we have never seen. We are whispering it to each other cuddled in the dark, and we are screaming it at people who are so scared of it that they dress themselves in war regalia to turn and face us." -- adrienne maree brown (from Emergent Strategy)

"Divinity is aimed at humanity." -- St. Hildegard

"The grace of the love of the skies be thine... The grace of the love of the stars be thine... The grace of the love of the moon be thine... The grace of the love of the sun be thine." (from Carmina Gaedelica)

"The Kingdom of God is a dwelling place for men. What else can it signify but a condition in which human existence is not only tolerable but joyful -- because it is open to infinity..." -- Morris West (from The Clowns of God)

Beauty Overcomes

"Beauty overcomes every other consideration." -- Keats

The beautiful
we see here and perhaps there
are you one who can see it everywhere
and in everyone I wonder but for
most of us the Un-beautiful
fill our minds as easily
as do the shrouds of gossip

I try to tell someone anyone what it is
like to climb the fence of every
in-between but to still be living afraid
of a complete jump-over

I still dream of hungry people
and people without homes on the road
and people who scream in the night
hoping to scare away the footfalls
that approach always in the dark
and as thin as their meditations on love

I wake up to a reading of the Bodhisattva
of Un-limited Compassion I will read it
again later I think as I shower
and wonder at the very clear bead
in the center that links the Un-beautiful and
Compassion to the mysteries of all the rest

I try to tell someone anyone what it is
like to climb the fence of every
in-between but to still be living afraid
of a complete jump-over

The beautiful
that overcomes every other consideration
is not some philosophical conjecture
but the exact point that has no view
not like me and not like the fence
upon which I climb and sit

-- 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