Yahia Lababidi

Celeste Roberge’s sculpture “The Weight of Grief” #art

Clouds

And the heavy earth falls in the nights toward loneliness away from every star. We all are falling. This hand here drops. And look at others: it’s in all of them. And yet there is One who holds this falling infinitely softly in His hands. — Rilke, Autumn (Translation: Paul T. Hopper)

"What kind of times are these/ When it's almost a crime to talk about trees Because it means keeping still about so many evil deeds?" —Bertolt Brecht

evangelical poverty... a confession of helplessness

"The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you." — Rilke

'In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.' —Camus

Lemurs and turtles #animals #photography

Madagascar 🇲🇬 #nature #photography

Spiritual powers are superpowers.

Holy wow 🤩 www.newvillagepress.org/ifyoucannots... #IfYouCannotSayGenocide #booksky #Palestine #Gaza @newvillagepress.bsky.social

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” —William James

Beautiful things come out of nowhere. Horrors likewise. They defy history and logic, arguments always going —Norman Finkelstein, Aesthetics

Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try... You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. Bukowski

Walk in the park #nature #photography

“I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable.” —Malwida von Meysenbug (1816 — 1903 CE)

Broiled sea bass, gnocchi, pesto and steamed greens 👨‍🍳 #food #photography #foodie #health #recipes

What’s a shaykh? Being. What’s a disciple? Nonexistence. Until a disciple ceases to exist he is not a disciple. Shams

I have no business with the common folk of the world; I have not come for their sake. Those people who are guides for the world unto God, I put my finger on their pulse. Shams

A good man complains of no one; he does not look to faults. My character is such that I pray for Jews. I say, God guide them. I pray for those who curse me: O, God occupy him with a better and more pleasing pursuit than cursing. —Shams Tabrizi

"Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him." —E.M. Forster

'Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body.' —Tolstoy

The devil's greatest wile is to convince us that he does not exist. —Baudelaire

Maybe peace is a temporary stillness over trembling...

In the deep end, every stroke counts.

Let me fall if I must. The one I will become will catch me. ✨ Whenever feeling downcast, each person should vitally remember, "For my sake, the entire world was created. ✨ G_d is your shadow. — Baal Shem Tov

What is a mystic? one who swoons, defenseless in the face of Beauty a natural believer in evolution of spirit. two types of kisses, and the choice is yours: either with burning lips, that bind and blind Or a lipless kind, preparing us to leave a too-tight skin behind…

Half of seeing ourselves in everyone is compassion, the other half is arrogance.

for here there is no place that does not see you. Rilke 👁️

‘Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.’ —Kafka

‘Beauty is a precarious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well. Often it seems to me... the cry of the world as it dies, or a desperate, sumptuous prayer.’ —Eugene Ionesco

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. —Thoreau

'The province of poetry is a private ecstasy made public... capable of healing our sense of mortal estrangement—from ourselves, each other... our destiny and The Divine.' —Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

“Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on. Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.” —Simone Weil

‘I don’t have to exist. I don’t have to exist. Some reason, something allowed me to exist. And I give praise to that.’ — Mike Tyson @netflix.com

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry." —Yeats

We must try not to take our fight with ourselves out into the world.

Only after we have mastered a thing are we beyond it— culture, technique… even words.

Gentleness

To guard yourself against the evils of this sad world, keep your lips wet with the sweet taste of Revelation 🌟

Renew your vow to yourself.

To be placed on treacherous ground is good... you learn to stand on your own feet only when the ground is rocking under them. Vilhelm Ekelund

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before. Chateaubriand

"When we do what we love beauty notices." Alexander Black

Why bother? Sean Thomas Dougherty

"When your body was beautiful, You acted pretty ugly. Now that you're ugly, Beautify your actions. Time has made your body feeble: Yesterday a peacock, Today a porcupine" - Nasir Khusraw (d. 1077)

★ Palestinian-American poet and essayist Yahia Lababidi offers a phenomenal consideration of the moral obligation of artists and writers to speak out about Gaza. It’s a profound and luminous reckoning. @newvillagepress buff.ly/fyvqVrn

Whoso has known himself has known God too and knows all that the Prophets knew —Rumi

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." * "Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." — Charles Peguy

Believe

The true poet, or mystic, is not too proud to admit in matters great and small, they cannot proceed until they receive further instructions.