Haiku: Frog in Pond by Basho

Old pond

frog jumped in 

sound of water.

Translated by Lafcadio Hearn

A Found Haiku - sort of

Please conserve water

do not feed the deer

pick up after your dog

(found on Salt Spring Island)

This is more an instruction than a haiku. To attempt to make this more poetic would make it less urgent. 

Tomorrow there will be a haiku by Basho that may give you some idea of what a haiku sounds like.

What Can We Have Faith In?

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Martin Luther King Jr. BrainyQuote

This is what is asked of us. That there are no guarantees of a map, no guarantees we shall survive, no guarantees of anything.  We have created a construct in which to live. Some of it really helps some of us, while others are trapped. Sometimes things turn out well and sometimes they don't.

Most of those who suffer did not ask for it.  Most of us suffer.

I have faith that I can find a way through the day even though I don't know everything. I have faith that compassion is a way that works for me. I have faith that I am not alone.  

We are not good or evil, but some have been damaged beyond repair.

Faith

This is no time for a casual faith. And we Unitarian Universalists must remember that we are not in this alone.

SUSAN FREDERICK-GRAY  |  11/7/2017  |  WINTER 2017

UUWorld

Humility

"Along with humility, we should be grateful for nature’s generosity, something I’ve learned from Indigenous peoples. They acknowledge the source of their well-being, clean air, clean water, clean food and clean energy — all things that are created, cleansed or replenished by the web of life around us. In the urbanized industrial world we inhabit, we tend to think the economy is the source of all that matters to us, and so we have little regard for what we’re doing to the natural systems that sustain us. It’s time to see with new eyes." David Suzuki, Environmentalism is a Way of Being.

Kissing the Earth

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
 
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Capitalism the Nightmare - Truthdig

"Nearly three-fourths (71 percent) of the world’s population is poor, living on $10 a day or less, and 11 percent (767 million people, including 385 million children) live in what the World Bank calls “extreme poverty” (less than a $1.90 a day). Meanwhile, Oxfam reliably reports that, surreal as it sounds, the world’s eight richest people possess among themselves as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire human race." Paul Street, Capitalism the Nightmare, Truthdig

This is a sobering thought for the first day of this year's Advent Calendar.

Trinkets and charms are fun to buy, to give and receive, but it almost seems as though we have given up trying to solve the worlds gravest threats, for a little novelty.

In the long run I hope for guidance from friends, science and philosophers to steer my efforts towards a social responsibility.