#50 / On the Journey
Hey everyone,
We are traveling in the Minnesota Northwoods this weekend, so this will be a shorter edition. It is surprisingly warm, if you consider 30 degrees to be warm—and for a place that recorded 40-below last week, I do. It’s still snowing, of course, and driving along the country roads is desolate and grey. Here is a picture Ashley took that sums it up.
I’ve never been here in the winter before. We feel like we are in a Coen Brothers movie, keeping an eye out for crazed Scandinavian killers. Or like we are on our way to the Overlook hotel.
I do have a poem for you this week, from Kabir’s Ecstatic Poems, as translated by Robert Bly. Maybe this is a little underwhelming for #50. For me, though, #52 is the real milestone, anyway. And it’s a great poem. Poems like this have a way of breathing warmth and life into anything.
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world I told to, and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe, but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
So I bought some burlap, but I still throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
I pulled back my sexual longings, and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
I gave up rage, and now I notice that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed, and now I am proud of myself.
When the mind wants to break its link with the world, it still holds on to one thing.
Kabir says: Listen my friend, there are very few that find the path!
Please take care, write back if you can—send me any excellent poems you’ve read—and I’ll see you next week.
Love,
Aaron
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