A Farm For The Future

When you strip without being ashamed

37. His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample then, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

48. Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move."

53. His disciples said to him, "Is circumcision useful or not?"

He said to them, "If it were useful, their father would produce children already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become profitable in every respect."

54. Jesus said, "Congratulations to the poor, for to you belongs Heaven's kingdom."

112. Jesus said, "Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh."

113. His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"

"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."

via The Gospel of Thomas

the line's open, though the higher purposes are away from their desks

Self Help

- William Matthews

It would be good to feel good about yourself for good.

The air is slurred, the seas are fouled, the body

the soul wrangle constantly, like Freud and Jung

in their endless duet from Ll Cuore in Maschera.

Can it be, that fully and accurately to throb, woofer

and tweeter pulsating as one, with your own emotions

is the fullest expression of the life force,

or whichever whispers over the dark waters set all

this lavish and heartbreaking fuss in motion? There must be

some higher purpose to whose faint signal you could,

so to speak, tune yourself in. You'd need ears like a pair

of vacuum cleaners. Maybe the static and dry-icy gossip

of space would come to seem comforting, and anomalous

noises, such as the one that sounded like the thinnest film

of foil, as long as a galaxy perhaps, being unwrinkled

for recycling, would also seem comforting, like a dial

tone: the line's open, though the higher purposes are away

from their desks. Despite the expense and crimped ear,

you would stay on the line, steadfast and unnumbable,

alert for the faintest bruit; might not the most minuscule

dapples of sound turn out to be duff-begrimed specklets

of instruction? You want to be one on whom nothing

was lost, but space never sleeps and you do, adrift,

with a dark and a lit side, and a noiseless momentum.

But wait. At last there's a message, faint as the rasp

of a match being struck on the bottom of a well, and it's

for you. Eat less flesh. Compare yourself carefully

to your neighbor. Don't tread on me. Let there be ego

where one there was id. Know what free advice is worth.

God weeps for the helpless, and without a sound.

I googled for perspective

Tonight I was having a pity party, and as usual no one showed up to celebrate. Then I found this...

This link will take you to a Magnum Photos essay depicting four shanty towns. It is an interactive essay so you can move forward and backwards in as well as follow the links all the way into the personal lives of several families from each of the shanty towns. It amazed me as a teenager visiting the dumps in Tijuana, and it amazed me again tonight that with grace humans are capable of joy and generosity... even in poverty.