WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
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Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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How does it end? About 2/3 through I got something in my eye.
What every deployed person with a dog feels like when Mom’s front door opens.
-Seen it. As he said. “Home is heaven when you’re out.”
Man, I hope so. See you soon, Nikki.
I think so. See you soon, Cody Boy >3
I guess I’ll be getting there in a little while. Getting near on to 80 now. Got me to thinking about the dogs in my life. I lose count after about 15 or so. If the video is real, and I sure hope it is, It’s going to be a big party.
At the final judgement and resurrection, the Saints, in their physical bodies, will repopulate a reconstructed Eden, an actual, physical, purified Earth. The new Eden will contain all plants and animals of the old one, even dinosaursk, and you get your old dogs and cats back.
At least that was the original Christian belief. Somehow it has been replaced by a purely spiritual Heaven, which of course would have no place for animals without souls.
Bob,
All good things come from Him. It would be completely reasonable to be with all that we loved.
I have not considered it prior, but it would be great to see Cinnamon, our perfect German Sheppard.
The deceased that we will be reunited with will be those that we had a true love for or deep emotional connection. Emotion seems to be the key to this reunion. Animals and people will be there. Many relationships will not be revisited as there is no real connection, including so called love relationships, marriages, etc. There won’t be a lot of teeth gnashing over events on planet earth, good or bad. It will seem as if we got off a train at the wrong location, fooled around for a while, and got back on to go home.
When my youngest was around 7 years old, I had to console her, because her Sunday school teacher had assured all the children that there would be no reuniting with pets in Heaven, because pets have no souls. She cried herself into quite an inconsolable puddle in my arms. I assured her that pets do wait for us in Heaven. I explained that if God had created all the creatures of the earth and provides for even the little sparrows in the fields, as we are told He does in the Bible, then He would certainly have our dear departed pets waiting for us there. I believe that Hell will have a special room for those adults who take perverse pleasure in smashing out the light of life and joy in children’s souls. Recently, my elderly mom has found great comfort in talking about departed family, friends, and pets that she will soon be reunited with. Our pets are glimpses of pure Heavenly love here on earth. They are my little angels that have taught me many of life’s lessons.
I cannot imagine Heaven without the animals who lived here along with us. I’ve known a lot of great dogs and especially a lot of great horses in my life and I have this idea that if I get there I’d like the Lord to come riding up with my beloved grand parents, all on our old ranch horses and put me right back with my beloved old buckskin mustang cowpony, Roy.
I have four cats already waiting for me in the heavenly stadium reserved for all NL fans: two Phillies cats, a Mets kitty, and the Pirates Queen. A number of theologians from Martin Luther to Helmut Thielicke to C.S. Lewis believed that humans will meet their pets again in heaven; FWIW, three of the four Doctors of the Latin Church (Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory the Great) are known to have had pet cats. To h-ll with ignorant Sunday School teachers; the ones I had as a kid were much better than the one Annie Rose mentioned. One of them had the wisdom to say that if Jesus didn’t love animals, why did John the Baptist point to Him (John 1:29) as the Lamb of God?
Last week Sarah Hoyt posted an account of the passing of her cat Greebo, titled “They’re Serving Tuna in Valhalla Tonight.” Greebo was a mighty warrior cat who fought off feral toms when he was just a kitten; amputated a fox’s tail on one occasion; and chased off a fugitive that the cops were pursuing. “I heard a war cry from Greebo, and a scream, and a guy ran out the backdoor, with Greebo on his head, yowling and tearing him up. The neighbors said, he just ran in the middle of the street, and gave himself up. Greebo came back, strutting, and we fed him well that night.”
The rest of Greebo’s saga is here: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/07/20/theyre-serving-tuna-in-valhalla-tonight/
Be prepared to find something in your eye.
If not to be with those we loved, human or animal, what’s a Heaven for?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(The_Twilight_Zone)
You’ve made me think of the few dogs I’ve had the pleasure to be master to. Chipper, Thor, Pepperpot, Large Marge… I’m sure there will be more.
You also reminded me of a poem I think I read here, ‘The House Dog’s Grave’. It ends with:
You were never masters, but friends.
I was your friend.?I loved you well, and was loved.
Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end.
If this is my end,?I am not lonely.
I am not afraid. I am still yours.