Waving Us On (vol. 7, no. 2)

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

1. Question:

Excerpt from Jean Gebser’s Winter Poem:

Who speaks of the future?
Who counts
in saying:
“It shall be”?
Look outward
and you see within:
It is.

2. Quote:

• “The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only half way down a well. Coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. The frustration is immense. But you must keep doing it anyway. After many years of practice, the chain draws unexpectedly tight, and you have dipped into the waters that will continue to entice you back. You’ll have broken the skin on the pool of yourself.” – Seamus Heaney (Feeling into Words, ht Elizabeth Gilbert)

3. Poem:

A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly):

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far beyond the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance—

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

4. Something Inspiring:

• “I have stood in the stars and looked out on the earth in admiration. I have walked into the future and returned with my arms full of flowers.” – Joy Harjo (answering the question “What is poetry?” on the OnBeing Podcast)

5. Project updates:

New Book: Do-Goodernomics: A Merciless Market Analysis of Our Hero-Complex

• We give money. We volunteer. We donate clothes. We ladle soup. We want to do good. But what else do we want? What happens when good intentions meet incentives, identity, and scarcity? Find out by reading this short on pages but long on questions provocation.

New Essay: The Blue Mark Paradox of Education

• “Recently, while hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains and looking up from the trail to check my direction, I noticed a brush mark of blue paint on a tree just ahead of me. It assured me, This is the way. As I continued my hike, I found myself wondering, how did the Park Rangers decide how many marks were just enough to keep hikers on the right path without crowding out their own sense of direction?”

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