Monday August 4 – start-up time
Rabindranath Tagore’s Poem # 1 from Gitanjali will probably be familiar to readers of this list. Today it appears for the third time. No surprise perhaps because I love it as a blessing looking out into the future.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,
and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,
and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart
loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest,
and still there is room to fill.
Tagore, Gitanjali # 1
Blessings for August
john st sj
p.s. Medicine Bundle
A Lakota soul-friend family, Don and Paulette Montileaux & their children, invite me to dinner each year when I spend some days on Pine Ridge. Don had read my May 22 post a few days before we gathered. After dinner he gave me a medicine bundle, one of the gifts offered-for-sale in places where his reputation generates a market that helps support the more serious labor of his painting. “Why don’t you find a small rock when you pray at your place in the badlands and another small rock when you pray on the shore of Lake Michigan and let the bundle remind you of both sacred places?” So I did. I took a pic this morning. The stone on the left with a little sage I found where I pray in the Badlands. The stone on the right I found near the shore of Lake Michigan about 3:15 am on July 30 while heading home to Motown. I’ll be keeping this prayer bundle as a reminder.
