Thursday, February 1, 2024
This morning I went for another run with Betty. Her leg is feeling way better, and I’m so grateful for that.
In the morning we went to do baptisms in the Orem temple with Ada and Brooklyn and the kids. I love the baptistry there. The stained glass windows with the sandhill crane are just stunning.
Yesterday the kids missed the Orem High seminary, so we had to make it up by doing a lesson at home. Came back and had a fun seminary lesson where they made Come, Follow Me videos. Really fun.
In the evening, I drove Betty around to run some errands. While she shopped, I sat in the car with River, and I read the introduction to Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Far North. Bashō is a Japanese poet from the 17th century who was hugely influential in the development of the haiku. His best work (IMO) is a combination of prose and poetry about the many pilgrimages he took throughout Japan. It made me think a lot about contemplation and nature. I want to be more quiet inside -- more observant. I want to teach my kids to do the same thing. When I got home, Dad and I had a good chat about this same idea.
Bashō says:
What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
Bashō, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Classics) (p. xxxii). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Also this:
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one – when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural – if the object and yourself are separate – then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.
Basho, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Classics) (pp. xxxvii-xxxviii). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
