Responding (vol. 6, no. 12)

Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:

1. Question:

• “What do we really know well about any creature, including most of all ourselves, and how is it that even though we know painfully little about anything, we often manage world-wrenching hubris about our wisdom?” – Brian Doyle (One Long River of Song)

2. Quote:

• “We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention. In some ways, this is getting far afield. I mean, we are — as far as we know — the only part of the universe that’s self-conscious. We could even be the universe’s form of consciousness. We might have come along so that the universe could look at itself. I don’t know that, but we’re made of the same stuff that stars are made of, or that floats around in space. But we’re combined in such a way that we can describe what it’s like to be alive, to be witnesses. Most of our experience is that of being a witness. We see and hear and smell other things. I think being alive is responding.” – Mark Strand (ht Marginalia)

3. Poem:

Mimesis by Fady Joudah:

My daughter
                        wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?

4. Something Inspiring:

This excerpt from Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris 

For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, / and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. / We have so little of each other, now. So far / from tribe and fire. / Only these brief moments of exchange. / What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these / fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, / have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

5. No new project updates.

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn

P.S. If this month’s newsletter resonates, would you consider forwarding it to one person who might value it too?