M.J. Rose

Astrologist and all around positive dude Rob Brezsny came up with the Mirabilia Report. I think it’s a great idea, and every day lately I’ve been attempting to come up with at least one observation worthy of being reported as such. I suggest you give it a try too.

Here’s Rob’s report:

Mirabilia is a word that refers to events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small miracles; it’s from the Latin mirabilia, “marvels.” Here’s your mirabilia report for the coming week:

• The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles.
• Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone near them does.
• There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go.
• Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia.
• Bob Hope donated half a million jokes to the Library of Congress.
• Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal.
• The moon smells like exploded firecrackers.
• Physicists in Tennessee coaxed electric signals to travel through coaxial cable at four times the speed of light, even though the equipment they used was cheap stuff from Radio Shack.
• Revlon makes 177 different shades of lipstick.

(From the book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It’s available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.)

“You can think of the groundlessness and openness of insecurity as a

chance that we’re given over and over to choose a fresh alternative.

Things happen to us all the time that open up the space. This

spaciousness, this wide?open, unbiased, unprejudiced space is

inexpressible and fundamentally good and sound. It’s like the sky.”- Pema Chodron, *Practicing Peace in Times of War*

A friend is going through a divorce and I sent that quote to her today. I believe that empathy and commiseration are serious tools for dealing with a broken heart and so I had been trying to describe to my friend a feeling I’ve had when everything has fallen apart and I am suddenly peeled like an onion and left out in the strong wind – my emotions utterly bare. I think Pema Chodron has found the right words for this sensation, and so I used hers.

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE

by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come.

-Jack Gilbert

(I’ve posted this poem because I feel that it does a very fine job of addressing the concept that even though life is dirty and tough, that it is our duty as beings to embrace beauty despite it all…for what is the meaning of beauty without its opposite? How will there be rebirth if there is no death?)