Poem: Complex Phenomena
The rules of chaos are simple: a mountain
is never a perfect cone. A lake
is never really a circle. A drop
of dew is not a microcosm.
No. Flowers wither.
Dust collects. There is
the relentless return of what we
do not want. Everything inclines
to disorder. But then how
to explain this grove of orange trees
planted so close branch nuzzles branch,
the whole world in permanent rows?
An illusion, of course. When
the present for most of us lasts only
3 seconds. But then how to
explain the man blind from birth who
sees a person and believes he sees
a tree on legs? How did he find
the conceit to link such disparates?
The tactile vision of his past creates the
chaos of his present sightedness.
His world, newly angled, is no longer
reasonable, but still he relies on what
he knows. He names what he sees, revising
phylum, genus, class as he goes,
sometimes standing quite still, eyes closed
in order to recall the harmony of things.
-----------------Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Cuban-American professor, poet, editor, essayist, from What Cannot Be Fixed, 2014
Proverb:
“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.”
---------------C. S. Lewis 1893-1963), Irish convert to Christianity, Christian apologist, author, lecturer and poet
Painting: Birch Forest, Gustav Klimt, 1903
Painting: Birch Forest, Gustav Klimt, 1903
Prayer: Thou Art Not As I Have Conceived Thee
Lord, it is nearly midnight and I am waiting for You
in the darkness and the great silence.
I am sorry for all my sins.
Do not let me ask any more than to sit in the darkness
and light no lights of my own,
and be crowded with no crowds of my own thoughts
to fill the emptiness of the night in which I await You.
Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of you and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing you.
If I imagine you, I am mistaken.
If I understand you, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain
I know you, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.
----------------Thomas Merton (Father Louis) (1915-1968), writer, poet, contemplative, ecumenist, and Trappist monk
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