The Burning Hand Beat
Viewspaper
Sapientia in plateis clamitat [Wisdom cries out in the marketplace]
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, and compassionate counterculture
where men are nonviolent, women are free, and everyone is wanted.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Catholic Worker, Dharma Bum,
Broken-Vase Taoist, and a Some-Way Episcopalian
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:
Father, according as I am able, I keep my
little rule, and my little fast, my prayer,
meditation and contemplative silence; and
according as I am able, I strive to cleanse
my heart of thoughts: now what more should
I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched
out his hands to heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire. He said:
Why not be totally changed into fire?
Nothing -- neither gold nor money, costly stones nor pearls -- can hide from me the eyes of the
poor who weep because they lack life's necessities. -- St. Hildegard of Bingen
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai "Ancestor Wisdom"
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
Love one another as I have loved you!
I was hungry and you fed me.
-- Jesus, Still the Little Lost Boy of Broken Hearts
It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him. -- Pelagius (ca. 355 - 420)
A new concept of celebration beneath the human underground must
emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be
formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the
revelation of unity for all mankind. -- Chris Brown, Refueled
(Referring back to the hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, 1967)
As the body is clad in cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the
heart in the trunk, so we are, soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.
-- St. Julian of Norwich
It was Japhy standing on top of Matterhorn Peak letting out his
triumphant mountain-conquering Buddha Mountain Smashing song
of joy. -- Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)
The needs of the planet are the needs of the person, and the rights of the person are the rights of the planet.
-- Theodore Roszak
The Kingdom of God is a dwelling place... 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 (The Clowns of God)
All the freaky people make the beauty of the world. -- Michael Franti
Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. -- Mahatma Gandhi
My God and my All!
Most High, all-powerful, good Lord, yours are the praises, the glory, the honor and all blessing. To you alone,
Most High, do they belong, and no one is worthy to mention your name. -- St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of the Poor
Read St. Luke, 1: 46 - 54 (The Words of Magnificat Mary)
"My soul magnifies the Lord (to make great, to enlarge, to intensify)
... He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their seats, and he has lifted up
the meek. He has filled the hungry with good things; and dismissed
the rich empty... (thus revealing a core aspect of what would become
her son's teachings: God's own preferential option for the poor) ...
The rich take what belongs to everyone, and claim they have the right to own it, to monopolize it. -- St. Basil
I am criticized often for my continual attacks upon the rich. Yes: because the rich continually attack the poor.
-- St. John Chrysostom
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is
companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that
the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
-- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!
-- St. Francis of Assisi
Viewspaper
Sapientia in plateis clamitat [Wisdom cries out in the marketplace]
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, and compassionate counterculture
where men are nonviolent, women are free, and everyone is wanted.
Edited by Robert Daniel Smith, Poet, Catholic Worker, Dharma Bum,
Broken-Vase Taoist, and a Some-Way Episcopalian
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said:
Father, according as I am able, I keep my
little rule, and my little fast, my prayer,
meditation and contemplative silence; and
according as I am able, I strive to cleanse
my heart of thoughts: now what more should
I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched
out his hands to heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire. He said:
Why not be totally changed into fire?
Nothing -- neither gold nor money, costly stones nor pearls -- can hide from me the eyes of the
poor who weep because they lack life's necessities. -- St. Hildegard of Bingen
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai "Ancestor Wisdom"
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
Love one another as I have loved you!
I was hungry and you fed me.
-- Jesus, Still the Little Lost Boy of Broken Hearts
It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him. -- Pelagius (ca. 355 - 420)
A new concept of celebration beneath the human underground must
emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be
formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the
revelation of unity for all mankind. -- Chris Brown, Refueled
(Referring back to the hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, 1967)
As the body is clad in cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the
heart in the trunk, so we are, soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.
-- St. Julian of Norwich
It was Japhy standing on top of Matterhorn Peak letting out his
triumphant mountain-conquering Buddha Mountain Smashing song
of joy. -- Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)
The needs of the planet are the needs of the person, and the rights of the person are the rights of the planet.
-- Theodore Roszak
The Kingdom of God is a dwelling place... 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 (The Clowns of God)
All the freaky people make the beauty of the world. -- Michael Franti
Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. -- Mahatma Gandhi
My God and my All!
Most High, all-powerful, good Lord, yours are the praises, the glory, the honor and all blessing. To you alone,
Most High, do they belong, and no one is worthy to mention your name. -- St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of the Poor
Read St. Luke, 1: 46 - 54 (The Words of Magnificat Mary)
"My soul magnifies the Lord (to make great, to enlarge, to intensify)
... He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their seats, and he has lifted up
the meek. He has filled the hungry with good things; and dismissed
the rich empty... (thus revealing a core aspect of what would become
her son's teachings: God's own preferential option for the poor) ...
The rich take what belongs to everyone, and claim they have the right to own it, to monopolize it. -- St. Basil
I am criticized often for my continual attacks upon the rich. Yes: because the rich continually attack the poor.
-- St. John Chrysostom
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is
companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that
the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
-- Dorothy Day, Saint of the Gutter Beautiful
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!
-- St. Francis of Assisi
Icon of the Catholic Worker Movement
Wild Thought Fueling Station:
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
-- Jesus
Poetry is the heart of the world. -- Tsung Tsai
Simple Gifts
'Tis the gift to be simple
'Tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right
'Twill be in the valley of love
and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend
we will not be ashamed
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning
we come round right.
-- Shaker Hymn
Mystery and reality emerge from the same source. -- Lao Tzu
Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.
-- St. John Chrysostom
As we grow in consciousness, there will be more compassion and
more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions,
between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the
separateness. -- Ram Dass
In the ultimate reality, the whole is present in every part
and every part participates in the being of the whole.
-- Fr. Bede Griffith
Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
-- George Fox
The place of prayer is a precious habitation. -- John Woolman
The whole of life is sacramental. -- A. B. Brown
Turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love. -- John Woolman
Life is holy, and every moment is precious. -- Jack Kerouac
We are Earthseed
The life that perceives itself
Changing.
-- Octavia Butler
If you want to become whole, first let yourself become broken.
-- Lao Tzu
(hence, "broken-vase taoist")
Belief initiates and guides action -- Or it does nothing.
-- Octavia Butler
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
Embrace simplicity.
Put others first.
Desire little.
-- Lao Tzu
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
Stop demonizing pleasure... love up on each other...
-- adrienne maree brown
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
-- Diane di Prima
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
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
Make love. Take a bath. Make love again. -- Frida Kahlo
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
I'm continually astonished that people really don't love each other.
How can they do it?
-- Jack Kerouac
Our work today is evidence of the unfinished status of planetary
struggles for equality, justice and freedom.
-- Angela V. Davis
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
Every day: Chop Wood, Carry Water
-- Chinese Taoist Sage
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
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
And then I ate hot bread. -- Gertrude Stein
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. -- Leonard Cohen
I am your Mother. -- Our Lady of Guadalupe
Hot Tea Dragon Cup
mallards lead goose parade
dark pond
dark shore-frozen leaves
dark distant wings
slap-slap
and me? my protest soundless
lost time
in half-pursuit of Dark Enigma
lips touch hot tea dragon cup
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
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
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 simple 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
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 simple 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
If you come away from these pages more inclined to view the world about you with a magical vision that is
personalist, communitarian, unitary, nonviolent, and pan-sacramental, then the website has served its purpose.
personalist, communitarian, unitary, nonviolent, and pan-sacramental, then the website has served its purpose.