"A Hidden Life"

This extraordinary and timely film was brought to my attention at Ordinary Plots: Meditations on Poems + Verse.  Our public library had a copy of the DVD.

The following appeared at the end of the film:

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Revisiting "Old Girl From The North Country" / Still Willing To Give Peace A Chance

My 17th blog birthday is coming up on December 8, the anniversary of the day that my beloved R returned from a year in Vietnam, serving as a helicopter mechanic in Da Nang.  That was the year 1970.  Something happened to him during that year that he kept inside.  It ate him alive.  Things happened to me after he came home that are still healing.  In 2006, a wise and concerned woman suggested that I do something good for myself on December 8, that I give that day a new meaning.  I had been reading blogs for about a year at that point, including Robin and Roger's blog "Dharma Bums."  

My blog was to be a retrospective of the art work I had created throughout my life, beginning with a drawing I had made in my senior year in high school, a drawing that came to represent R.

*

Somewhere along the line (2008?) I inadvertently changed my blog address from

http://oldgirlfromthenorthcountry.blogspot.com

to what it is now.

*

After R died in April 2008, I changed the name of my blog to:

 TALKING 37TH DREAM WITH RAINBOW (RUMORS OF PEACE)

*

I've changed my blog name several times since them and most recently to:

37TH DREAM / RUMORS OF PEACE AT SUNRISE

(with SUNRISE repeated 7 times)  

*

In the last years of his life, during the war in Afghanistan, R wrote on the envelope of a letter to me, "Give Peace A Chance."

The light without beginning or end

Thank you to Sabine for bringing this song to my attention back in 2019.

Just now, before any sign of dawn, this song began to play in my mind, my heart, and my soul.

The dark hours of the day are getting longer and longer, as they always do, and spring will come again and again.

Songs of Experience

 

Unlike a lot of the videos making the rounds on social media, this one does not celebrate Israeli unity, righteousness and resilience since the Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas. Instead, it captures the fracture and despair many Israelis feel about the Netanyahu government. 

“In the dark times / will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.” (Bertolt Brecht).

Lily Gladstone (Addendum)

Not alone

Tiny Mandala #33 of 53

*

*

FOR PEACE

As the fever of day calms towards twilight
May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,
May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,
May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war
Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other
A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace
Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.

That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,
That our swords be beaten into ploughshares

And no hurt or harm be done
Anywhere along the holy mountain.

John O'Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher

From the book, Benedictus

Listening

Thanks to Beth at Wait - what? for posting this.

Looking both ways, looking up, looking outward, looking inward / Love Has Many Faces

*

Two timely book recommendations.  

A first cousin who lives in Florida sent me a copy of The Seed Keeper, which takes place where our first-generation American grandfather was born in 1871 in Minnesota of Norwegian immigrants, in the wake of the Sioux Uprising of 1962 and subsequent hangings of 38 Dakota men. 

These two books explore complexities of history, present-day life, and relationships within the vast human family.  They offer no easy answers.  Both books celebrate the many faces of love.  In each book, the expressive beauty of the natural world is ever present to be experienced amidst interpersonal, social, political and spiritual unrest.

and 

Beyond The Lion Gate was written by my blog friend, Morelle Smith who lives in Scotland.  I've bought several of her books over the years and continue to find the writing on her blog and otherwise, whether poetry or prose or novel or book review or essay, to be compelling.  The photos on her blog from her travels and from Scotland are sublime.

*

*