This is the bedtime story I am telling the kids tonight. Its the story of from Robert Fulghum's book, "UH, OH." I recently read it today in Michael Yaconelli's book "Messy Spirituality." This story shows that its not just ok to be a misfit, that it is an advantage. In essence, Norman's story reminds us of the value of authenticity, creativity, dedication, emotional connection, and the potential for unconventional success when we are true to ourselves. A different song is a more interesting song. 

The Minuet in G major is found in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, where it appears with its companion piece, Minuet in G minor, as a pair to be performed da capo. The notebook in question, which belonged to Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife Anna Magdalena, is a compilation of music by various composers of the late 17th and early 18th century, including François Couperin, Georg Böhm, Johann Sebastian Bach himself and possibly some of his sons (e.g. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach). Most of the entries in the 1725 notebook were made by Anna Magdalena herself, and a few were contributed by Johann Sebastian and various friends of the Bach family. Only a few composers are identified in the notebook. The Minuet in G major and its companion are two of the many anonymous works included. In the 1970s the Minuet in G major was identified as a piece from a harpsichord suite by Dresden organist Christian Petzold.

To follow the black bear through the thicket — 

who likes it?

To hunt without profit, to return without anything — 

who likes it?

You have to carry your own corn far.

You have to follow the black bear.

You have to hunt without profit.

If not, what will you tell the little ones? What

will you speak of?

For it is bad not to use the talk which God has sent us.

I am Speaks-Fluently. Of all the groups of symbols,

I am a symbol by myself.

My take/notes:

This is a Native American poem from an Osage origin thats sings about hard work.   It is so apt to have a Native American poem talk about the importance of hard work without any anticipation of reward.  It has an uncanny similarity to the prime message of the Bhagwad Gita: do your work without the anticipation of any rewards.  

Yesterday I had dinner at my hotel's bar and was joined by a person who seemed to be in his late 50s.  Through a long conversation as I got to know him better, I found out that his wife has been doing meditation and charity work ever since their son who is now in his mid-20s has been a victim of drug abuse.  I realized that his wife needed to find support to find the gratitude in life, but her husband, the person I was talking to, was less perturbed.  It was because he was busy with his work.  Work therefore is a form of meditation.  Work keeps you busy and prevents the disease of depression from taking over.  

It does not come as a surprise that most religions and spiritual practices encourage hard work.

The anger is greater, for each man would like to sleep 

In the arms of each woman who would like to sleep

In the arms of each man, if she trusted him not to be

Schizophrenic, if he trusted her not to be

A hypochondriac, if she trusted him not to leave her

Too soon, if he trusted her not to hold him

Too long, and often women stare at the word men

As it lives in the word women, as if each woman 

Carried a man inside her and a woe, and has 

Crying fits that last for days, not like the crying

Of a man, which lasts a few seconds, and rips the throat

Like a claw — but because the pain differs

Much as the shape of the body, the woman takes 

The suffering of the man for selfishness, the man 

The woman’s pain for helplessness, the woman’s lack of it

For hardness, the man’s tenderness for deception,

The woman’s lack of acceptance, an act of contempt,

Which is really fear, the man’s fear for fickleness,

Yet cars come off the bridge in rivers of light,

Each holding a man and a woman.

A Clear Midnight
by Walt Whitman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

There are some mysteries that are inexpiable. Walt Whitman is often found singing these mysteries.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. 

Here is a poem from Muriel Rukeseyer (The ballad of Orange and Grape) where the meanings of words has been changed.

Sometimes we say words we don't mean.  Not because we don't understand them, but because its a habit.  Or we don't think it is worth fighting for the cause of changing the name.

"Khalsa" means pure and for centuries while the Mughals were there in India and following Guru Gobind Singh creating a "Khalsa" force to fight the forceful conversion of Indians to Islam, it had a positive connotation; following violence in Punjab in the late 80s and early 90s -- at least in Delhi -- "Khalsa" and "Khalistan" got a negative connotation.

Before I came to America, I didn't realize that "negro" had a negative connotation.  I would have thought black has more a negative connotation.  My dad said there was a professor who used to call all his students "Taliban" in his university in India.  After all the word "Taliban" means student. But following 911, the word "Taliban" has been scarred for life.

In some ways, I think words can grow.  And many times they grow old and senile.  Sometimes they grow benign (I think that is happening to "Fuck" now).  And then we pass them to our kids.  But is that right?

This poem questions that, and actually takes a stance.  Some analysts would complain about this poem taking a stance about maintaining the meaning of words and pontificates that we should not do it.  I think it is ok for the poem to take a stance. But, it is equally OK for us to question the stance.  Isn't it OK for words to grow?

Here is the poem:

The ballad of Orange and Grape
- Muriel Rukeyser

After you finish your work
after you do your day
after you've read your reading
after you've written your say —
you go down the street to the hot dog stand,
one block down and across the way.
On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century.

Most of the windows are boarded up,
the rats run out of a sack —
sticking out of the crummy garbage
one shiny long Cadillac;
at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,
a man who'd like to break your back.
But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too.

Frankfurters, frankfurters sizzle on the steel
where the hot-dog-man leans —
nothing else on the counter
but the usual two machines,
the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,
I face him in between.
A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking.

I watch the man as he stands and pours
in the familiar shape
bright purple in the one marked ORANGE
orange in the one marked GRAPE,
the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE
and orange drink in the GRAPE.
Just the one word large and clear, unmistakable, on each machine.

I ask him: How can we go on reading
and make sense out of what we read? —
How can they write and believe what they're writing,
the young ones across the street,
while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE —?
(How are we going to believe what we read and what we write and we hear and we say and we do?)

He looks at the two machines and he smiles
and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.
It could be violence and nonviolence
it could be black and white      women and men
it could be war and peace or any
binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.
Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't do.

On a corner in East Harlem
garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,
forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,
misery, withered hope,
a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE,
pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.