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THE SEED CATALOG / April, May, June 2005 |
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THE SEED CATALOG / April, May & June 2005 The Universal Utility of Hot Water Is it just an urban legend, or did a flight attendant on one of the doomed 9/11 planes actually use hot water to attack the hijackers? Hot water can have many uses. When childbirth occurred in old westerns, anybody just standing around, usually the father, would be hustled off to boil some water; and I'm sure it really was needed, too. A friend with whom I sometimes dined at restaurants would have only hot water to drink with his meal. And, you know, it's really quite a satisfying drink, certainly one of the least complicated. Poised at the ready in the microwave or the "Mr. Coffee" machine, hot water is a universally useful thing to have on hand Bill JoynerTHE CELESTIAL CAROUSEL (A Circus of Spiritual Discovery) is about to be born, so let's get some hot water boiling! As you may recall from endless promises I've made, this is my philosophical fun book of images and ideas, 80 pages of easy to digest entrees of wisdom and experience, embellished by Chris
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CLOSER, Mike Nichol's film with Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Jude Law and Julia Roberts, clearly demonstrates that, in relations of the heart, we are only slightly removed from cave man behavior. Sophisticated modems in London take a swing at the love game and strike out magnificently. It's complicated, sophisticated, salacious, and I'm sure many would say it's pornographic. But, if it's any comfort, you could see more full frontal nudity in PLAYBOY than you will see in this movie. I certainly would not recommend it for fainthearted or easily offended individuals, and I would advise great discretion in deciding who sees it with you.. Me, I went by myself, like Nicodemus, in the dead of night, to see what it was all about. After all, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen both won best supporting actor and actress awards at the Golden Globes for their work in this intriguing, at times bewildering story of people falling dangerously in love and misusing love to break each other's hearts. It's Natalie Portman's movie, really, courtesy of her hero director Mike Nichols. Small wonder that his soulful camera can't take its eyes off of her! Her body is displayed in all its glory, but, miraculously, her soul is revealed, as well. Everything about the film is gorgeous, especially the haunting musical selections. - Bill Joyner (3-25-05) |
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Warriors of Love We are foot soldiers of love in God's unending war of peace. Rainbows of refracted light, we cast our glowing showers of grace upon the shadows of night. We are life's perpetual advanceupon the frozen void of death, agent provocateurs in the service of love's all conquering, ever-regenerative realm.-- BJ
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Sometimes I wonder whether it's worth it |
and then we're together
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and it's worth it |
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Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to the dust. - T.S. Eliot
Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists. Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless. You I acclaim as the inexhaustible potentiality for existence and transformation wherein the predestined substance germinates and grows. I acclaim you as the universal fountain of water whence spring the souls of men and as the limpid crystal whereof is fashioned the NewJerusalem. PierreTeilhard de Chardin
(The words above are only an excerpt from the late genius paleontologist/priest, de Chardin's exuberantly inspired "Hymn to Matter," in his book, Hymn of the Universe.)
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The highest spirituality
is simply to accept life as it is. - Alan Watts
Secular Spirituality The concept of secular spirituality continues to amaze me with its supreme efficiency. What is, is holy. That's it! I first came upon the perfect meaning of this concept in a review of Bob Dylan's music. His songs, the critic said, are "secular manifestations of religious experience." And I thought, yes, what we need is not more religion, but a more natural understanding of divinity as the essence of reality. To find God in the ordinary stuff of life; is that not the quest of scientists, artists and saints? My dear friend Corita Kent was fond of quoting the Balinese saying, "We have no art, we do everything as well as we can." To me, that's the essence of secular spirituality. |
Corita Art Center |
Corita Art
Center 5515 Franklin Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90028 (323) 466-2150 email: [email protected] |
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-- Bill Joyner |
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We are all a unity -- with ourselves, with each other, with divinity and reality. We are one and the same, yet completely unique. |
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To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle. WALT WHITMAN
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The universal quality is diversity. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
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