"A Homemade American Mystic, Of Purest Ray Serene ..." - 4 Excerpts from Coleman Barks' Foreword to "Great Song: Life & Teaching of Joe Miller"

Four excerpts from "The Tiger's Nest," Coleman Barks' Foreword to "Great Song: Life & Teaching of Joe Miller" (1993)

Bravo & Bon Voyage Great-Hearted Ally!

Next time ...

Coleman Barks (April 23, 1937 - February 23, 2026)

- Richard Power, Theosophical Society of San Francisco 

"Great Song" Cover Photo Credit: Susannah Grover

#Theosophy #Vajrayana #Bhakti #Poetry
#ColemanBarks

"This is Coleman Barks. I hear you've written a book about Joe Miller." - In Celebration of A Great Poet (April 23, 1937 – February 23, 2026)

Bill Moyers interviews Coleman Barks, PBS, circa early 1990

 

One morning, in December 1992, my phone rang. "Hello, Richard? This is Coleman Barks. I hear you've written a book about Joe Miller."

That phone call was the beginning of a collaboration which MIRACULOUSLY put "Great Song: Life & Teachings of Joe Miller" into people's hands a mere year after his death.

I had indeed recorded, transcribed & annotated the talks of the legendary American sage Joe Miller. Joe had read the manuscript. No one else had. We agreed I would only publish it after his death.

Then Joe died in August 1992 & Guin died that November.

A mutual friend mentioned my project to Coleman.

Coleman had visited Joe. They had laughed & sung & told each other stories.

Coleman got it. Sitting there in Joe & Guin's flat on Nob Hill, Coleman knew he was in the presence of something rare, something blessed.

Thanks to PBS interviews w/ the great Bill Moyers, Coleman's brilliant star was on the rise. 

Fiercely independent, in those formative years of his fame, Coleman self-published his Rumi poems. Maypop Books. My work on Joe would be the only book in his catalog that wasn't either a collection of his Rumi renderings or his own poetry. 

A poet & mystic, Coleman understood why I needed to bold, italicize & even use ALL CAPS to imbue the printed text w/ a sense of Joe's powerful spoken word shakti.

Coleman understood my right brain approach to how the book was organized. He let the book be itself, something unlike anything else, a rare artifact carrying within it the truth of a rare being.

His edits only strengthened & amplified what I was doing.

We brainstormed the book title on a long phone call. Somehow we ended up talking about that majestic Rilke poem (trans. by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy) -

"I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?"

That's how "Great Song: Life & Teachings of Joe Miller" got its name.

Bravo & bon voyage you old raccoon! 

- Richard Power

Repost from @colemanbarks_official:

Coleman Bryan Barks of Athens, GA passed peacefully at home on February 23, 2026 surrounded by loved ones. He was born on April 23, 1937 to Elizabeth Bryan and Herbert Bernard Barks. He grew up on the campus of Baylor School in Chattanooga. He earned his BA at UNC Chapel Hill, his MA at the University of California, Berkeley, and returned to UNC for his doctorate. Barks joined the faculty of the University of Georgia English Department in 1967 until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1997.

In 1976, Barks’ close friend, the poet Robert Bly, showed him some academic translations of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the thirteenth-century mystic Persian poet. Bly urged Barks to “release the poems from their cages.” Later, Barks became a student of the Sri Lankan Sufi mystic Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. Thus began his long and illustrious career translating Rumi. His translations have sold millions of copies and have been translated into many languages spanning 41 countries, inspiring readers worldwide.

In addition to his Rumi translations, Barks was an acclaimed poet in his own right. Much of his finest work – including notes on his process – is archived with the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia.

Barks lived in Athens, Georgia for most of his adult life. Although internationally acclaimed, he was always approachable at his favorite corner seat at The Manhattan Cafe, Jittery Joe’s, or the Five Points Waffle House, ready and willing to talk about poetry, politics, or the Georgia Bulldogs. Generous with friends and strangers alike, he enjoyed laughing, dinners, conversation, buck dancing and singing, with some partiality to shape-note hymns. He found particular inspiration and peace near rivers and creeks. Outside of the written word, he expressed himself creatively through stonework and painting. He was a devoted and playful grandfather, always instilling an appreciation for whimsy and art in his children and grandchildren. His work and life were infused with humor and joy.

"Wonderous Is This!" - Join Us for the 2026 Lenten Sutra Readings Every Friday Evening Until Good Friday

 

The 2026 Lenten Sutra Readings start this evening at 6 p.m.

Both in-person at the Lodge or on-line via Zoom.

Here is the link to register for attending on-line via Zoom:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89788177977

You will receive a confirmation email with further information,

The Readings will be held every Friday and conclude on Good Friday, April 4th.

We will alternate between the "Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation" and the "Diamond Sutra," starting tonight with the "Great Liberation"

Join us!

Here is a precious video from our archives, the legendary American sage Joe Miller reading the "Great Liberation" 39 years ago! "So long as love remembers ..." 

Joe Miller on The Great Liberation, 4-17-87, SFTS Lodge, Lenten Sutra Reading. 

Copyright Emilio Trampuz. 

Samaya Gya Gya ("Vast, Vast, Vast Is Divine Wisdom") - Join Us for the 2026 Lenten Sutra Readings

  

Written by the great Mabel Collins, and published by the Theosophical Society in 1923, "When The Sun Moves Northwards" reveals profound secrets of our journey through both the visible and invisible worlds. Focused on the first six months of the year, "the Six Sacred Months," from Winter to Summer, from nadir to zenith, "When the Sun Moves Northward" details a series of inner initiations, "ceremonies," available to incarnate humans, and in alignment with the turning of the seasons in the natural world. Just as there is an optimal time to plant seeds in the fecund soil of Gaia, there is an optimal time to plant seeds of growth, healing and achievement in the human soul. This is it!

"When the Sun Moves Northward" was a favorite text of the legendary American sages, Joe and Guin Miller. To ride the energy of this time, to harness the power of it, to be in alignment with the Turning of the Wheel in both the visible and invisible worlds, Joe and Guin decided upon a practice to share with each other. During the Lenten Season, starting on Ash Wednesday and ending on Good Friday, every weekday morning at 6:30 am, Joe would read Guin his favorite holy text "Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation" and every weekday evening at 6:30 pm, Guin would read Joe hers, "The Diamond Sutra." 

They started off in their living room. After we discovered this was going on, there were many of us huddled together listening, meditating, every morning and every evening. Eventually, the readings moved downstairs to the Lodge's "Buddha Room." This practice went on uninterruptedly until their deaths in 1992 (Joe in August, Guin in November). Our Lodge has kept this practice going every Lenten season ever since. In later years, adapting to the times, we changed up the scheme as needed. But one way or another, for 33 YEARS we have kept the Wheel turning. 

Here is the schedule for the 2026 Lenten Sutra Readings:

Friday 2/20, 6 pm: Great Liberation

Friday 2/27, 6 pm: Diamond Sutra

Friday 3/6, 6 pm: Great Liberation

Friday 3/13, 6 pm: Diamond Sutra

Friday 3/20, 6 pm: Great Liberation

Friday 3/27, 6 pm: Diamond Sutra

Friday 4/3, 6 pm: Great Liberation

All 2026 Lenten Sutra Readings will be both IN-PERSON at the Lodge & ON-LINE (via Zoom).

As we get closer we will be posting information for those who want to experience the Readings via Zoom. So check back with Lodge social media or if you're on our email list, look at your inbox.

The images included here are pages from these 3 holy books, "Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, "The Diamond Sutra" and "When The Sun Moves Northwards," along w/ pages from Joe Miller's oral commentary on the "Great Liberation," the full text of which is included in Richard Power's "Great Song: Life & Teachings of Joe Miller."

Conversations in Theosophy (SFTS Lodge, 1/25/26): Strength to Love

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew, 18:20)

SFTS Lodge Altar

In our first Conversations in Theosophy of 2026, we honored the memory of the great Bodhisattva Dr. Martin Lither King, Jr., sharing readings from his "Strength of Love" sermons and discussing the relevance of their message in this time of trial and tribulation.

Published in 1963, "Strength of Love" is a collection of sermons which he started writing during a fourteen day jail sentence during protests in Albany, Georgia (July 1962) and finished before launching protests in Birmingham, Alabama (early 1963).

• King worried that the force of his spoken words would not make the transition to the printed page and wrote in the book’s preface that his reservations had “grown out of the fact that a sermon is not an essay to be read but a discourse to be heard. It should be a convincing appeal to a listening congregation ...” - The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University 

For our Conversation in Theosophy, Lodge President Mary Power read aloud from the first sermon in the collection, "A Tough Mind and A Tender Heart." 

In our circle's ensuing dialogue, the striking resonance of the sermon's message with the Theosophical Society's Three Avowed Objects was highlighted.

• To form a nucleus of universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.
• To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science.
• To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity. 

The message of Dr. King's sermon also resonates strongly with the Theosophical Society's Motto, "No Religion Higher Than Truth," AND the second line that this Lodge has added since the era of those great American sages, Joe and Guin Miller, "No Religion Greater Than Love."

Here are three short video clips from the presentation, interspersed with quotes from the text.

•  There is little hope for us in our personal or collective lives until we become tough minded enough to rise about the shackles of half-truth and legends. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft minded. A nation of soft minded men is purchasing its own spiritual death through an installment plan. - MLK, Jr., "Strength of Love," 1963.  

    

• Jesus reminds in a striking way that the good life demand combining the toughness of th serpent with the tenderness of the dove. To have serpent-like qualities devoid of dove-like qualities is to be passionless, mean and selfish. To have dove like qualities without serpent like qualities is to be sentimental, aimless, and empty. We must combine in our characters antithesis strongly marked. - MLK, Jr., "Strength of Love," 1963

• There is another way which combines tough mindnes with tender heartedness. It is tough minded enough to resist evil. It is tender hearted to resist it with love. It avoid the complacency and the do-nothingism of the soft minded and the violengoog_23981734ce and bitterness of the hard hearted - MLK, Jr., "Strength of Love," 1963

"Unarmed Truth & Unconditional Love Will Have the Final Word in Reality" - MLK Day 2026

Mantelpiece Altar, Theosophical Society of San Francisco

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." 

- MLK, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, Oslo, October, 1964

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Under Arrest, Montgomery, Alabama, 1958.
Photo Credit: Charles Moore

NOTE: MLK came from the future, & brought with him a message so powerful that its delivery cost the messenger his life. No monument could ever contain the greatness he conjured, but your radiant mind can mirror it, & your overflowing heart can pour it forth. Choose to live this truth. Choose to live from the future into the now. Choose indomitable compassion & dauntless courage. The goddesses of love & justice call to you from within your psyche-soma-soul. - Richard Power

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Grosse Point High School in 1968, Detroit
Photo Credit: Tony Spina

"Love is the supreme, unifying principle of life." - MLK, 1965

The Embrace" depicts the arms of MLK Jr. and Coretta Scott King
wrapped around each other.

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!” 

- Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Strength to Love” (1963)

A photograph taken after the announcement that MLK had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

“Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. ... And he gave them a formula for action, ‘Be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’ ... We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.” - Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Strength to Love” (1963)

Photo Credit: Dick DeMarsico, World Telegram. 1964.

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies ... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring ... When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh ... Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality .. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now ... Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.' There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: 'The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on' ... Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world ... The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history." - MLK, NYC, April 1967

Martin Luther King Memorial, Washington D.C.  Photo Credit: @zackowicz MyDCcool

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF SAN FRANCISCO JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 PROGRAM

That's what Theosophy is all about -- wisdom and love. There is a place in The Secret Doctrine where it states very clearly that Theosophy isn't the "love of wisdom," but rather "the wisdom of love." If each one of you thinks back over your life, you will see that it is always feeling that moves you, the feeling of love. - Joe Miller, Great Song: Life & Teachings of Joe Miller (Edited with An Introduction by Richard Power, Forward by Coleman Barks)

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF SAN FRANCISCO JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 PROGRAM 

ON-LINE Sunday, 1/18/26, at 6 p.m. -  Jeff Curtis presents "Everything from Nothing & the Fullness of the Void" 

IN PERSON: Sunday, 1/25/26, 4 to  6 p.m. - Conversations in Theosophy

ON-LINE: Sunday, 2/15/26,  at 6 p.m., Elaine Santos presents "Heart Chakra Imagery"

IN-PERSON: Sunday, 2/22/26, 4 to 6 p.m. - Conversations in Theosophy

Join us for blessed new year of offerings both in-person and on-line!