The November decline ... Hexagram 41, DIMINISHMENT

I'll tell you what love of this life is.
It's looking up
through trees newly bare of leaves
and seeing there the oldest road,
a broken line of white stars
stretching out across the sky.

It's thinking,
this could be enough.

~ Susan Elbe, from "Light Made From Nothing" ~




Photos found here and here.

Some links for Hexagram / Principle 41: here ... here ... here ... here.

A book for one of the I Ching's core principles, KINDNESS (aka Benevolence)

Kindness is as intrinsic to our nature as generosity is to our Earth ... and I'm definitely going to read a book that tells me that kindness is "potentially far more promiscuous than sexuality." Marcus Aurelius, after all, called kindness humanity's "greatest delight" ... It certainly has been mine.

"In every experience of true listening ...

... there is a mysterious moment in which the one who listens steps out from a fortress of self-concern and dwells silently in the truth of the one who speaks. This is a moment of great risk and great courage, for it ushers us into a different way of being in the world. Over time, we may even cease to be people who listen and become people who are listening, people whose very being is shaped by the posture of listening. This is the posture of the servant, whose attentiveness is not a sign of cringing compliance but a mark of human life lived ever more fully in the Spirit of love.

~John S. Mogabgab~

Thanks, Jan!

Plaque found at Monastery Greetings.

An offbeat possibility for Hexagram 51, SHOCK

Art is not cosy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended.

Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince


... Is this light ... lightning?

What explodes in an artist to shock beauty into being?

I see the contradiction between the image I've chosen for this entry, and the words ... "the light by which human things can be mended." As the oracle teaches, destruction and creation are two forever-bound aspects of the Yin/Yang, and of Life.

It took me more than seven years, after my mother's death, to begin composing a memoir in honour of her and our shared story. The shock of her death rendered my pen mute for all that time ... and then the story began to coalesce. I had to draw back and allow the telling to evolve in its own time.

Shock comes ... and salving eventually arrives in its wake. The forest, reduced to ash, will green again ...

Hexagram 37 -- INTIMATE BONDS

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.


(Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus”, II:13, trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Unmuffle yourself; come close to the hearth. Come into the circle of home.

In the deeps (Hexagram 29)

Questions that tap into our mortality, our pain, our selfishness, our basic needs, questions that arise from the immeasurable darkness, light, or mystery of our lives, require more than Answerization. They require our suffering, steadfastness, silent yearning, and deepest faith.

~David James Duncan ~

The essence of Hexagram 32, ENDURANCE

I do.

I do ... one of the most potent word pairings in any language. The marital vow that declares a bond, a choice, a commitment.

Beyond the familiar context of a wedding, the words "I do" underscore any choice of action to which we bind ourselves.

I do ... I will ... I choose.

I commit.

Sculptures: "Vow" and "Forever", by Michael Wilkinson