Meditations on treasures & legacies: what we cherish — themes from Hosea & Luke.
Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity. — Mahatma Gandhi
You are searching the world for treasure, but the real treasure is yourself. — Rumi
When he returned home to France, [Lafayette] lived on his big estates and did very well. He was in the same social class as the rich man in Jesus’ parable … In 1783, after a poor harvest, Lafayette’s workers were still able to fill his barns with wheat. “The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat,” said one of his workers. “This is the time to sell.” Lafayette thought about the hungry peasants in the surrounding villages. “No,” he replied, “this is the time to give.” — A story about the Marquis de Lafayette, who helped the American colonists during our War of Independence from Britain, 18th century (published as part of UCC commentary on Luke 12)
Questions on which to reflect about themes from Hosea 11 & Luke 12:
- What are idols? (PS: Rev Gail says they are: obsessions, addictions or passions that are out of balance in our lives because we focus time and treasures in ways that prevent us from putting energy and love where it belongs: with Godself, in just and compassionate human relationships [family & neighbors as defined by Christ] and into sustainable connection to creation.)
- What idols has faith and ethics — holy Love — helped us give up?
- What idols still have a hold in our individual and communal lives?
… the parable … doesn’t warn against money, wealth, or material abundance … warns against greed, about the insatiable feeling of never having enough. And the parable … illustrates this. The farmer’s problem isn’t that he’s had a great harvest, or that he’s rich, or that he wants to plan for the future. The farmer’s problem is that his good fortune has curved his vision so that everything he sees starts and ends with himself. — David Lose
Treasures: What Do We Cherish?
Stories hold us together. Stories teach us what is important about life, why we are here and how it is best to behave, and that inside us we have access to treasure, in memories and observations, in imagination. — Anne Lamott
I find that it’s essential during the day to actually note when I feel happiness or when something positive happens, and begin to cherish those moments as precious. Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness. — Pema Chodron
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed. — Mahatma Gandhi
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. — Oscar Wilde
It occupies me … to exhaust the fund of sentimental treasure, which the Divine spirit poured into my mind. it was, indeed, a time of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. — Zilpah Elaw
… the problem isn’t … money but our penchant to look to money, rather than to God and each other, for life. — David Lose
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. — Pablo Picasso
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
There is no wealth but life. — John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. — Epictetus
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. — Socrates
He who is greedy is always in want. — Horace
To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace. — Confucius, The Analects
Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, the wonder of our breathing. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Legacy: What Do We Leave Behind?
Are we really planning prudently? What gives our life meaning now, and what will give it meaning then? — Culpepper
At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived. — Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. — Ernest Hemingway
God’s people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need. — Shane Claiborne, Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said?
It’s never a question of skin pigmentation. It’s never a question of just culture or sexual orientation or civilization. It’s what kind of human being you’re going to choose to be from your mama’s womb to the tomb and what kind of legacy will you leave. — Cornel West
I get asked a lot about my legacy. For me, it’s being a good teammate, having the respect of my teammates, having the respect of the coaches and players. That’s important to me. — Peyton Manning
Humanity’s legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. — Doris Lessing
I’m not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: ‘live-acy.’ I’m more interested in living. — John Glenn
I think the whole world is dying to hear someone say, ‘I love you.’ I think that if I can leave the legacy of love and passion in the world, then I think I’ve done my job in a world that’s getting colder and colder by the day. — Lionel Richie
Meditations on Presence and Matriarchs
Come into Animal Presence — Denise Levertov
Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.
You. Your presence. Why can I not dip into your presence as I dip into sleep, clasp it and bask in it? How hold it? How savour it? It is more than I wanted. And less. — Muriel Ciolkowska
Your true home is in the here and the now. ― Thich Nhat Hanh
Be here now. — Ram Dass
Being fully present isn’t something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it’s being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself. That also has its softness. … This is the process of making friends with ourselves and with our world. It involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us. — Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness
Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon. ― Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground Of Love
Here both recognizes and demands recognition … In order for something to be handed over a hand must extend and a hand must receive. We must both be here in this world in this life in this place indicating the presence of. ― Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
— Mark Twain
My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead I was a painter and became Picasso. — Pablo Picasso
The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up doing it perfectly — indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection. — Arianna Huffington
Imagine feeling more love from someone than you have ever known. You’re being loved even more than your mother loved you when you were an infant, more than you were ever loved by your father, your child, or your most intimate lover—anyone. … This love is actually part of you; it is always flowing through you. It’s like the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything. When you tune in to that flow, you will feel it in your own heart—not your physical heart or your emotional heart, but your spiritual heart, the place you point to in your chest when you say, “I am.” This is your deeper heart, your intuitive heart. It is the place where the higher mind, pure awareness, the subtler emotions, and your soul identity all come together and you connect to the universe, where presence and love are. ― Ram Dass, Be Love Now
Mother
Whatever she was to me, she was the human
caught in something she could hardly stand,
she was like a flying singing being,
limed and jessed, a small soprano
of the trees, of ngetal and luis, reed and quickbeam.
No one said I had come from inside her,
yet from where else but that softness and music,
at birth I had stepped somehow back out of that laurel,
into which I had rushed away from my father,
and my mother was like a sister,
in thrall to three fathers
— mine, and hers, and Our Heavenly.
What she took from me she needed,
and much of what I had I had of her gift.
And it was as if I had known her from long before,
from any town square, back to near our beginning,
as if, in her, I met every woman burned with
ruis, coll, uath, saille, duir, beth, fearn, nion —
elder, hazel, hawthorn, willow, oak, alder, ash.
When I look back, I see her in woods,
woods in flower, though when I knew her
she was doing her time in the live grave,
she ate what she could,
coluratura lips pursed around some smaller spirit,
but if I sing, I sing from her.
First I would hear the note struck
on the piano, then her voice, rising toward it,
Druid mother I would hold now
in my boughs and pour forth
a newborn’s caroling.
— Sharon Olds