Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadows of the trees, –
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was,
Not yet the thing he planned…
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Wine from These Grapes)
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein
(The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God in Everything)
The metaphoric mind includes rationality, linearity, and logic – for it created them. But like some children, the rational mind often seems embarrassed by the presence of its parents.
~ Bob Samples
(The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness)
One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found – and it is found in terrible places… For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
~ James Baldwin
(Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures)
We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters,
the beans and squash, which give us life.
We return thanks to the bushes and trees, which provide us with fruit.
We return thanks to the wind, which, moving the air, has banished diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and stars,
which have given to us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to our grandfather He-no,
that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles,
and has given to us his rain.
We return thanks to the sun,
that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficient eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodied all goodness,
and who directs all things for the good of his children.
~ 19th-Century Iroquois Prayer
(The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to Celebrations, Holidays & Special Occasions)
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Circles)
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Self-Reliance)
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same.
~ Walt Whitman
(Miracles)
Back on July 14, Tim won some tickets from a radio station to one of the performances of the Amherst Early Music Festival, The Passion of the Italian Baroque, at Evans Concert Hall at Connecticut College. (The same place we saw Vusi Mahlasela perform solo in 2005!) This was an opportunity not to be missed, so we brought my cushion and propped me up in a seat so we could see and listen to the delightful Amherst Baroque Soloists play.
The Amherst Early Music Festival is the most comprehensive early music workshop in the world, with classes for amateurs and pre-professionals, a music and instrument exhibition, and a professional concert series. We offer programs of classes at all levels in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music and dance taught by an international faculty of well-known performers and teachers.
~ Marilyn Boenau, Executive Director
It was a beautiful concert with a soprano, viol, violin, violone, recorder, flute, two oboes, cello, and three harpsichords. Tim’s favorite piece was the opening number, Chamber Concerto in D Major, by Antonio Vivaldi, performed with the flute, oboe, violin, cello and harpsichord. I was especially enchanted with Canzona La Pighetta, by Tarquinio Merula, a composer previously unknown to me. It was played with the recorder, viol and harpsichord and it was mesmerizing!
The finale, which seemed have all the musicians on stage at once, was Venti turbini from Rinaldo by Handel. The exquisite soprano, Julianne Baird, sang a lovely refrain which was translated for us in the program:
Winds, storms, lend
Your wings to my feet
Heavens, Gods, take up arms
Against the one who gives me pain!
I like to think her request had been granted on behalf of my pain! 🙂 Although perched quite gingerly on the edge of my seat with cushion and rolled up sweatshirt for support I managed to stay seated for the entire program with minimal discomfort. Phew!
Because Tim is more into classical music than I am, I’m hoping he will leave a comment and elaborate on the comedy involving a couple of the harpsichord players, among other things…
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
~ Rumi
(Teachers of Wisdom)