The Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

November 6, 2025

 

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

 

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,

If they are not yours as much as mind, they are nothing…

 

—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”

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A man is what he thinks about all day long.

 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

 

—Buddha, from Dhammapada

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ethnosphere: “the sum total of all thoughts, beliefs, myths and institutions made manifest today by the myriad cultures of the world.”

 

–Wade Davis, from Light at the Edge of the World, p. x

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Mortals suppose that the gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves.

 

But if cattle and lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and fashion images, as men do, they would make pictures of their gods in their own likeness; horses would make them like horses, cattle like cattle.            

 

—Xenophanes (570-478 B.C.)

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I…peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, 

The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 

 

—Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”

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…this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

 

—Duke Senior in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Act 2, scene 1

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I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. (Nobel Prize speech, 1964)

 

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

 

Hate paralyzes life; love releases it. Hate confuses life; love harmonizes it.

 

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.

 

—Martin Luther King

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what we think is who we are

as indivduals

and collectively

 

For more than twenty years, i’ve been turning this phrase over in my mind: 

 

the stories we tell ourselves

 

I’m fascinated by how each of us constructs an identity and a worldview—stories about who we are and about the world and our relationship to it. Each of the things I’ve chosen for this “peace, love, happiness & understanding” suggests a story—a way of experiencing or understanding our life. My own felt sense of things is that Johnny Stallings is a fictional character, and from moment to moment I’m dreaming the world in which I live.

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A Story that Could be True

 

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by—
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”—
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

 

—William Stafford

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The parable of the good samaritan:

 

25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,

34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

 

—Luke 10:25-37  (KJV)

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Here’s a more recent version of the same story, by E. E. Cummings:

 

a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars

 

—e. e. cummings

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This is an old folktale:

 

The Shirt of a Happy Man

 

Once there was a king who wanted to be happy. His wise counselors informed him that he needed to acquire the shirt of a happy man. So, he sent his soldiers out in quest of such a shirt. One by one they returned empty-handed. None of them could find a happy man. Finally, the last soldier returned. 

 

The king asked, “Did you find a happy man?” 

 

“Yes,” the soldier said. 

 

“Where’s his shirt?,” asked the king. 

 

“He didn’t have one.”

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Check out the Playing for Change version of “Peace Train” by Yusuf/Cat Stevens on YouTube!

 

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My dad liked this poem:

 

Abou Ben Adhem

 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

 

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

 

—Leigh Hunt

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Plato told this story:

 

Some people are in a cave. They are chained up in such a way that they can’t move, and can’t turn their heads. They are all looking straight ahead. 

 

Behind them are people with torches who are carrying things back and forth and talking to each other. The cave-dwellers see shadows on the wall in front of them—their own shadows and the shadows of the objects that are being carried back and forth. As far as they know, the only reality is these shadows and the conversations that the shadows appear to be having with each other.

 

One man escapes from his bondage and is able to turn around and see what’s going on in the cave. Then he leaves the cave and sees the sun illuminating an amazing world.

 

He wants to tell the people in the cave about what he has seen and understood. He goes back down into the cave. When he tries to tell the people what he has seen, they think he is mad.

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Here’s one from William Blake:

 

The Garden of Love

 

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

 

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;

So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

 

—William Blake

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These are a few or my favorite passages from my favorite poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself:

 

20

…Why should I pray?  Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

 

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counseled with doctors and calculated close,

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

 

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less…

 

24

…I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

 

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds….

 

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy….

 

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

 

30

All truths wait in all things…

 

31

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the ant is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a masterpiece for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

 

44

Immense have been the preparations for me….

 

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,

They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

 

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

 

All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

 

48

…whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud…

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times…

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe….

 

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

 

—Walt Whitman

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Thomas Traherne was a Seventeenth Century Christian mystic. I love his ecstatic poems and meditations! In this meditation he is writing about how he experienced the world as a small child:

 

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared: which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor divisions: but all proprieties and divisions were mine: all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.

 

—Thomas Traherne, from Centuries of Meditations

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In Dostoevsky’s great last novel, The Brother’s Karamazov, there is a monk named Father Zossima. When I first read the novel, fifty years ago, I was impressed with the words of Father Zossima, which are of course Dostoevsky’s words:

 

Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love….

 

My friends, ask joy from God. Be joyful as children, as birds in the air….

 

When you are alone, pray. Love to throw yourself down on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably, love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears. Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and it is not given to many, but to those who are chosen. 

 

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Here are some recent small poems from my journal:

 

walking on the earth

every step a prayer

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raspberries say what i want to say

better than i can

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how did i get to be old?

i used to be young 

what the hell happened?

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briefly visiting book after book

i’m like a hummingbird going from flower to flower 

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start your day with hummingbirds

not the new york times

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the problem with being one-with-everything 

is all the misery

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modern farming

 

get up early

feed the tofurkys

milk the oats

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it’s the most beautiful day since the world began

a bumblebee is on the lobelia

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i’m transitioning

from happiness

to bliss

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Let’s end with a brief passage from the book Peace Is Every Step by the Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Like many of the things here, it’s a story in the sense that it is a way of experiencing and understanding our precious life on this beautiful planet 

Here’s a thought:

If you find yourself feeling ungrateful, you might remind yourself that the average surface temperature on the planet Venus is 867 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

Interbeing

 

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. 

 

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

 

Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

 

—Thich Nhat Hanh, from the book Peace Is Every Step