Spirit Surfers

earthbound
Stephanie Valentin
Stills Gallery

via gmtPlus9 (-15)

via Andrew Sullivan

"We must take time, take pains, have a plan, form spiritual habits, if we are to keep our souls alive; and now is the time to begin. A man to whom religion is a reality, and who knows what is meant by "the practice of salvation," keeps his balance, because the living center of his life is spiritual. He cannot be upset, not shaken. The same hard knocks come to him as to others, but he reacts to them by the central law of his life. He suffers deeply, but he does not sour. He knows frustration, but he goes right on in his kindness and faith. He sees his own shortcomings but he does not give up, because a power rises up from his spiritual center and urges him to the best, - Joseph Fort Newton.

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Brain Curls

A newish study:

"According to researchers at UCLA, meditation is ... a way to build a bigger brain. Using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate and people who don’t, researchers found that certain brain areas - specifically “the hippocampus and areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus” - were significantly larger in people who meditate. And, those bigger brain parts might actually play a role in long-term meditators’ abilities to grab on to and maintain control of their mindfulness and emotions."

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POEM

Have You Prayed

by Li-Young Lee

When the wind

turns and asks, in my father’s voice,

Have you prayed?

I know three things. One:

I’m never finished answering to the dead.

Two: A man is four winds and three fires.

And the four winds are his father’s voice,

his mother’s voice . . .

Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires.

And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,

dreaming, thinking . . .

Or is he the breath of God?

When the wind turns traveler

and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed?

I remember three things.

One: A father’s love

is milk and sugar,

two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left over

is trimmed and leavened to make the bread

the dead and the living share.

And patience? That’s to endure

the terrible leavening and kneading.

And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep.

When the wind

asks, Have you prayed?

I know it’s only me

reminding myself

a flower is one station between

earth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and blood

was fire, salt, and breath long before

it quickened any wand or branch, any limb

that woke speaking. It’s just me

in the gowns of the wind,

or my father through me, asking,

Have you found your refuge yet?

asking, Are you happy?

Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.

The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one.

“Have you Prayed,” from Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee.

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2009 MOUNTAINEERING SEASON