Sunday, October 26, 2014

Sacer Simplicitas: Walking



"When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity."  Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis."
-   Robert Fulghum, From Beginning to End
 
"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all."
-   Wendell Berry

"Our philosophies must be rewritten to remove them from the domain of words and "ideas," and to plant their roots firmly in the earth."
-   William Vogt

 
"My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance


and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces."
The Walk by Rainer Marie Rilke, Translated by Robert Bly



"Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune— I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road. 

The earth—that is sufficient; 
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.  

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go; 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them; 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 
 
You road I enter upon and look around!
I believe you are not all that is here; 
I believe that much unseen is also here."
-   Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road," Leaves of Grass, 1890.  









1 comment:

  1. Philosophy practiced is the goal of learning. - Thoreau

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