3 for 2003

Tonight there are gatherings in Rochester & Burlington I'd have liked to enjoy. I'm a working man, though, so I'm sticking around Cleveland. Friends there, friends here. I haven't so many, but they spread themselves out, they do. It should be a good night, though.

Here are three quotes to ring in the new year from Dag Hammarskjold's published journal, Markings, (my perennial bathroom book.)

If, without any side glances, we have only God in view, it is He, indeed, who does what we do....Such a man does not seek rest, for he is not troubled by any unrest....He must acquire an inner solitude, no matter where or with whom he may be: he must learn to pierce the veil of things and comprehend God within them.

-- Meister Eckhard

You ask yourself if these notes are not, after all, false to the very Way they are intended to mark.

These notes?--They were signposts you began to set up after you had reached a point where you needed them, a fixed point that was on no account to be lost sight of. And so they have remained. But your life has changed, and now you reckon with possible readers, even, perhaps, hope for them. Still, perhaps it may be of interest to somebody to learn about a path about which the traveler who was committed to it did not wish to speak while he was alive. Perhaps--but only if what you write has an honesty with no trace of vanity or self-regard.

-- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings

The next is beautiful, and I didn't realize he wrote it on December 31st until after I'd typed it out here...

Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth.

-- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings