the sigh of a Delta breeze kissing the grass

Breakfast.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I've forgotten the road by which I came.

-Han-Shan

I live in this huge valley, right in the middle.
I’m ninety miles west of the Sierra Nevada mountains,
and about the same east of the Pacific Ocean.
People go there, to both places, for the beauty,
and both are beautiful. But so is my valley.
It is a more subtle beauty than vast mountains
or the wide, tossed ocean. Beauty rests here.
In the shade of a century-old elm or valley oak.
In the sigh of a Delta breeze kissing the grass.
The magpies and raccoons know it,
and the river otters and wild turkeys. And me.

-james lee jobe

The baby sparrows

cry out, and in response, mice

answer from their nest.

-Bashō

Why wonder?

They came to Jesus and he welcomed them and fed them.
Brother, he said. Sister.
He spoke to them about sharing.

They came to America and America turned them away.
Stranger. You pray wrong.
You might kill us because, after all, we've been killing you.
But we love people. You know, otherwise.

Why wonder?

If you have no faith, no kindness, then just say so.
Don't pretend that you do.

Be done with it.

-james lee jobe

We are all connected. When you touch one thing, you are touching everything. Whatever we do has an effect on others. Therefore, we must learn to live mindfully to touch the peace inside each of us.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Those wild sparrows appear and disappear in a flash, sometimes one will land on my patio or in my yard, and peck around. Just a moment or two, and then gone again. Where do they live, where do they sleep? So tiny and delicate, so free, in a world as big as all that.

-james lee jobe

We should practice with a beginner's real innocence, devoid of ideas of good or bad, gain or loss. 

-Shunryu Suzuki

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james