An Introduction
to the Activated-Heart-Life and the Writings of Robert Daniel Smith
Robert Daniel Smith, Founder (1982) of Franciscan Workers of St. Junipero Serra, Dorothy's Place Hospitality Center,
and (in 2003) with Michelle Smith, the intentional community Companions of the Way.
to the Activated-Heart-Life and the Writings of Robert Daniel Smith
Robert Daniel Smith, Founder (1982) of Franciscan Workers of St. Junipero Serra, Dorothy's Place Hospitality Center,
and (in 2003) with Michelle Smith, the intentional community Companions of the Way.
Ma turned the dough and stirred the coffee. "Listen to me," she said. "I'm gettin' cornmeal today. We're a-gonna eat cornmeal mush..."
"I been thinkin', long as I'm a outlaw anyways... I'll be ever'where -- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -- I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready..."
(The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Movie by John Ford)
"I been thinkin', long as I'm a outlaw anyways... I'll be ever'where -- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there... why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -- I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready..."
(The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Movie by John Ford)
Icon of the Catholic Worker Movement
The Burning Hand
Refueling a contemplative, curious, creative, compassion-action counterculture.
Wild-Thought Fueling Station:
Start with exposing the Activated-Heart-Life with a Trinity Meditation
The Blessed Trinity:
Root Being, Dancing Consciousness, and Delightful Bliss!
Love, Lover, Loving Truth, Nonviolence, Simplicity
Cosmic Mystery, Consciousness, Coherence
Strength, Equality, Community Imagination, Courage, Good Luck
Personalist, Communitarian, Universalist
Transmission, Transfiguration, Transubstantiation
What if? Why not? What next?
Being, Consciousness, Bliss
and, of course, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Now Read This:
Okay. All of this is very true for me. But, being a bat-shit-crazy-celtic-taoist-leftist-mystic, I need to take you further... maybe you are the only one who will ever in fact read this, but I need to tell you my truth... the truth taught to me by Eleanor and Jose, the Felshaw brothers, John Rahn, Jim Ferguson, Sweet Annie, and all the folks who ate-up the two million+ meals that I served in my thirty years on the Chinatown streets of Salinas: are you ready? Well, here it is: somehow, each and every one of us is caught up, is wrapped up, in a Cosmic-Immaculate-Conception (another "mystic-version" of Trinity) that can, curiously enough, be wildly thought of as "Ma, Tom Joad, and the Rose of Sharon"... There! There is a Blessed Trinity for you and the twenty-first century! If you find yourself confused or irate, pick up a copy of my Salinas' brother, John Steinbeck's book "The Grapes of Wrath"... it's all right there in those pages... and, in the end, it's all so pure and simple, like the "God" we pretend to adore, "Love one another as I have loved you." Person-to-person-with-no-one-left-out-or-left-behind... religion, politics, economics, culture, nations: "I was hungry and you fed me... blessed are you poor... blessed are you peacemakers... woe to you rich... the kingdom of heaven is within you..." Quit playing at religion-politics-and-predatory capitalism, as if any of it is worth a hill-of-beans: there is, after all, a right and a wrong: it might be close, but it is not yet too late...
The greatest challenge of the day is:
how to bring about a revolution of heart,
a revolution that has to start with each one of us.
-- Dorothy Day
Be concrete be immediate! Imagine the world!
If you embrace a child, can you consent to the death of
a child? each human face leads you (follow!) to every face.
-- Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ
I am convinced that in spite of the complexity of life in our society
what will save man is to serve another, several others, freely; and
and to form with them a creative and liberating community... in the
certainty that we are playing the game of God, the interiorized
festival of life.
-- David Kirk
The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.
-- Lao Tzu
The cosmos is an infinite and eternal intelligence... The ultimate purpose
of human existence is to consciously foster and further the transmission of the
unifying, embracing, and all-encompassing intelligence of the cosmos into the
universe. -- Ervin Laszlo
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!
-- Jesus
The philosophy of Tao embodies a cosmology rooted in that most primal and
wondrous presence: earth's mysterious generative force... this venerable
generative force appears most explicitly in Lao Tzu's recurring references to the
female principle, such as "mother of all beneath heaven," "nurturing mother,"
"valley spirit," "dark female-enigma." -- David Hinton
We are clusters of vibration in-formed by the intelligence of the cosmos.
-- Ervin Laszlo
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to man's highest conscience.
Let nations ally themselves no longer with death, but with life; not with
destruction, but with construction; not with hate, but with the creative
miracles of love. -- Paramahansa Yogananda
I was hungry and you fed me! -- Jesus
Every day: Chop Wood, Carry Water
-- Chinese Taoist Sage
Come to my home. I will make tea. Noodles. We can talk poetry. -- Tsung Tsai
The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was
made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.
-- Edward Andrews
Our power is in our soils. They sustain our every need. They are the starting
place when we return to the land with a seed in hand.
-- Poppy Okotcha
Make love. Take a bath. Make love again. -- Frida Kahlo
And then I ate hot bread. -- Gertrude Stein
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. -- Leonard Cohen
Nothing Immortal
There is nothing immortal
about these bones
that I wear under my skin
but the wandering clouds
above
ah as they dance through
the blue
surely they wear immortality
as the skin of the Tao
Simple Way-Ultimate Way
The kingdom of heaven within you
is the bare-naked admission
of no-thing out-side
but all-things jumping
through possibility
into here...
then returning
into there...
neither of which
is different or separate
from the other
always Mother
always birthing
always celebrating
always transforming
this is Simple Way
and
Is is the always-rising
from the empty-belly of Not
this is Ultimate Way
now-only
Wandering Cloud, Empty Mind
Wandering cloud empty mind
Counting trees
If Li Po drops by later today
I'll show him my winter-naked
Apple trees
Waiting for their spring-bloom
I'll ask him if he would like
A cup of tea
And a conversation on poetry
I know that I will also
Ask him to meet my wife
Later and stay for dinner
And who knows perhaps
He will
But for now I'll walk the dogs
-- Robert Daniel Smith
OK -- so I left the mosque and went to the alehouse! The sermon was interminably long, and valuable time was wasting away. -- Hafiz
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge. -- Rumi
What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to the All. -- Meister Eckhart
Creation was fashioned to be adorned, to be showered, to be gifted with the love of the Creator. The entire world has been embraced by this kiss. Limitless love, from the depths to the stars, flooding all, loving all. It is the royal kiss of peace. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. -- St. Hildegard of Bingen
Imagine Paradise, Practice Beauty
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
The Ultimate is experienced in the depth of the soul, in the substance or Center of its consciousness, as its own Ground or Source, as its very being or Self (Atman). This experience of God is summed up in the word saccidananda. God or Ultimate Reality, is experienced as absolute being (sat), known in pure consciousness (cit), communicating absolute bliss (ananda).
-- Fr. Bede Griffiths (The Marriage of East and West)
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how siomple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life. -- Zoe Saldana
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
-- William Blake
The Ultimate is experienced in the depth of the soul, in the substance or Center of its consciousness, as its own Ground or Source, as its very being or Self (Atman). This experience of God is summed up in the word saccidananda. God or Ultimate Reality, is experienced as absolute being (sat), known in pure consciousness (cit), communicating absolute bliss (ananda).
-- Fr. Bede Griffiths (The Marriage of East and West)
We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. -- Simone Weil
Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how siomple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about. -- Dostoevsky
I want to have more sex, travel more, drink more wine and love life. -- Zoe Saldana
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
-- Amit Goswami, Ph.D.