Dream Time
Lovely Blog: Nekiya - The Descent
Shared wisdom, reflections, and blessings
Lovely Blog: Nekiya - The Descent
Posted by
Meredith
at
8:50 AM
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Suspended above the palace of Indra ... is an enormous net. A brilliant jewel is attached to each of the knots. Each jewel contains and reflects the image of all the other jewels in the net, which sparkles in the magnificence of its totality.
-Daisaku Ikeda
Posted by
Meredith
at
5:13 PM
4
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This autumn an elderly friend died. She was ready, and her family was ready for this transition. There was a “Memorial Meeting” in the Friends tradition to honor and remember her.
A Friend, after sitting with her thoughts about Roberta for a long time, stood and said, “Two types of metal keep coming to my mind, and they describe Roberta. The metals are tempered steel and silver bells.” The Meeting made verbal utterance as to the perfection of that metaphor for our friend.
Earlier, I had risen and shared two things about Roberta. One was an experience that she had shared with me many years earlier that she said she hadn’t shared anyone because she didn’t know what to make of it. Roberta had told me that one day, in autumn, she had been looking around her farm, and “a golden maple tree just lit up, as though it were electrified.” The shock of the color went right through her, and changed her. I could tell by her voice the vulnerability of one who has been changed by things not understood by the mind.
The other sharing I offered was that although during Roberta’s early life she was engaged in a very structured religion, in her later years, after she had long given up that structure, she became more and more open. So open, that she would often ask in the silence of Meeting, “What is God, anyway?” with a completely open heart.
I have been richly blessed by knowing Roberta; I feel her spirit now moving in me.
Posted by
Meredith
at
9:44 AM
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Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten,
Posted by
Meredith
at
8:20 PM
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Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
Judyth Hill
Posted by
Meredith
at
9:03 PM
6
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We two, how long we were fool'd,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings, side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbit and stellar, we are two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
Walt Whitman
From 'Children of Adam', 'Leaves of Grass'
Posted by
Meredith
at
3:25 PM
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The poet Mark Doty writes eloquently about his partner's death from AIDS, and how the process of decline gently stripped Wally of all that was not Everything, and how in that millrace he became most himself. Doty says that death is "the deepest moment in the world... even if that self empties into no one, swift river hurrying into the humble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents."
From Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast
Posted by
Meredith
at
3:55 AM
2
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Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you’d be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.
Rumi
Posted by
Meredith
at
11:15 AM
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When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing,
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and
the sweet confinement of your
aloneness to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
by David Whyte
From "The House of Belonging"
Posted by
Meredith
at
10:31 AM
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Martin Buber (1879-1965), Jewish theologian/philosopher, published his seminal work I and Thou in 1923. In this book he argues that we often objectify people, relating to them as we do things ("I-it" or "I – them"). He notes that it is possible to be truly open and vulnerable to another human being (or to God) when we entered into a relationship based on "I" and "Thou." This connection enlarges a person and makes true dialogue possible.
Gene Knudsen Hoffman
I've been contemplating what it looks / feels like when we enter an I / Thou relationship. Is there a way to describe that which epitomizes the I / Thou stance? I'm wondering if we could say of this relationship, "I love you just the way you are" and really feel the truth of it?
Posted by
Meredith
at
10:48 AM
3
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Selling flowers, Sapa
Originally uploaded by Meredith Krugel
Posted by
Meredith
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12:57 PM
2
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"I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room."
- May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude
This past year I have not produced many posts, as my friends who frequent here have undoubtedly noticed. I think that I just needed a rest, I needed days of not pushing. My mind has wandered, and rested, as I lived in the changing light of my rooms. I emerge refreshed, and peaceful. I am especially hopeful for the new year even though there are so many difficult realities.
Posted by
Meredith
at
6:43 PM
5
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One winter evening, when the innovative engineer R. Buckminster Fuller was drinking tea by the fireplace of Professor Hugh Kenner, three-year-old Lisa Kenner prolonged her bedtime farewell with the question: "Bucky, why is the fire hot?" Kenner writes: Some instinct told Lisa that he was the man to ask. His answer, as he took her on his lap, began, like most of his answers, some distance away from the question. "You remember, darling, when the tree was growing in the sunlight?" On arms like upgroping branches, his hands became clusters of leaves as he described their collecting the sunlight, processing its energies into sugars, drawing them down into a stocky trunk. "Then the men cut it down, and sawed it into logs. And what you see now" ---he pointed to the crackling hearth---"is the sunlight, unwinding from the log."
Posted by
Meredith
at
11:16 AM
2
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nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)...
ee cummings
Tell me more, poet. Tell me about the power of intense fragility. Tell me about the textures that compel, and the color of countries. Tell me how death is rendered with breathing, and tell me about opening and closing; show me eyes that are deeper than roses. Show me...
Posted by
Meredith
at
4:52 PM
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This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
I realized it was much simpler, much simpler even than dying and living. All the swan does to effect its transformation from awkwardness to grace and belonging is move toward the element where it belongs. That's all it does. I thought it was an astonishing key, an extraordinary key to transformation: all you have to know in your life are the things you love, the things you hold in your affection. You only have to know the frontiers, where simply by being at that frontier, you come alive. Take an inventory of your life. What is the work that brings you alive? What are the places that bring you alive? What are the conversations that vitalize you? In whose presence, simply by being in their presence, do you find yourself making the best of yourself, do you find yourself coming to the fore? Will you have faith in those frontiers, those extraordinary places that effect extraordinary transformations, and will you arrange your life, so you can spend more time at those frontiers?
Posted by
Meredith
at
9:11 AM
2
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Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and Spirit.
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With truth
And love.
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
This is the time
For you to deeply understand the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
---Hafiz
Posted by
Meredith
at
9:57 AM
2
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November 5, 2008
H.E. Barack Obama
President-elect of the United States of America
Washington, DC
U.S.A.
Dear President-elect Obama,
Congratulations on your election as the President of the United States of America.
I am encouraged that the American people have chosen a President who reflects America’s diversity and her fundamental ideal that any person can rise up to the highest office in the land. This is a proud moment for America and one that will be celebrated by many peoples around the world.
The American Presidential elections are always a great source of encouragement to people throughout the world who believe in democracy, freedom and equality of opportunities.
May I also commend the determination and moral courage that you have demonstrated throughout the long campaign, as well as the kind heart and steady hand that you often showed when challenged. I recall our own telephone conversation this spring and these same essential qualities came through in your concern for the situation in Tibet.
As the President of the United States, you will certainly have great and difficult tasks before you, but also many opportunities to create change in the lives of those millions who continue to struggle for basic human
needs. You must also remember and work for these people, wherever they may be.
With my prayers and good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
THE DALAI LAMA
Posted by
Meredith
at
9:17 PM
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Posted by
Meredith
at
8:46 AM
5
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I finished Widening Circles, by Joanna Macy. There is grace and gratitude throughout, and passion; sensuous, lyrical paintings vibrant with color, sound and fragrance; so much richness springing from her fingers onto the page. Some examples:
... the tears I feel... come from the presence I feel all around me - its flaming emptiness, its freedom....I beheld the shapes of things, their colors and textures. I saw how they all fit together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle once they find their place. Everywhere I looked I saw contours meeting, greeting, full of happy secrets, one about the other... Now plays of light, color, scent brought starts of recognition and pleasure - as if my beloved were continually adorning himself for my delight.... Sometimes I seemed to sense my body from the outside, how its form and skin must feel to air, light, cotton dress. I thought, maybe it doesn't matter where you draw the line between in and out, self and other, even weakness and strength. These differences are but touch points in the dance of complementarity; like epidermal surfaces, they allow encounter and caress...A light rain spattered as I bathed in the well... In and out, above, below - how odd and intricate this dance. I remembered what the poet M. C. Richards had said once about solitude: "Learn to move in the world as if it were your lover."
But by the very plans I had devised with John, I wasn't allowed to stay sitting there as a human, marooned in human culpability. As the others had I moved back from the center to the periphery, to see and speak from that wider context. From here we could see more clearly the isolation in which the humans imagine themselves to exist, and the fear that seizes them - a fear that generates greed and panic. For our own survival we - all beings - must help them. Could we help these twentieth century humans, the way we helped Arther pull the sword form the stone?
It is such a luxury to reflect at length on those who have graced our lives. Soon our concerns and intentions for them give way to thanksgiving for their existence; to see their qualities afresh is like opening a present on Christmas morning....Soon they seem to be walking beside us in the bright, green morning. I pretend they can see through my eyes the emerald parakeets swooping by the red hibiscus blossoms and feel through my soles how the marble cools in the shade.
Posted by
Meredith
at
8:29 AM
3
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Posted by
Meredith
at
8:46 AM
11
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The sky becomes one with its clouds
the waves with their mist.
In Heaven's starry river, a thousand sails
dance.
As if dreaming, I return to the place
where the Highest lives,
and hear a voice from the heavens:
Where am I going?
I answer, "The road is long,"
and sigh; soon the sun will be setting.
Hard to find words in poems to carry
amazement:
on its ninety-thousand-mile wind,
the huge inner bird is soaring.
O wind, do not stop--
My little boat of raspberry wood
has not yet reached the Immortal Islands.
Posted by
Meredith
at
5:13 PM
4
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Siting here at the Nameless, sun streaming in the windows, chatting with God on the laptop, love wordlessly pointing out how sweet the music is, how exquisitely enchanting the light. As the sun caresses the table it brings out the deep red and gold hues in the wood. How many conversations at this table? How many cups of coffee or tea? How many stories? I watch the light move slowly across the room. The pace is slow here at the Nameless this morning. Relaxed. The atmosphere settled. Sunday morning, but really, in here, it feels like eternity - a sweet, settled eternity. Everyone here is finding their way, in their own time and season. While they patiently wait for God, they drink coffee and tea. The waitress brings plates of warm goodies. When things settle, an easy loving-kindness emerges. I look around and find nothing sacred. Then again, there is nothing ordinary here either.
God just popped up! Since I had a good connection, I took the liberty of asking that ageless question, "Who or what are you?" The Beloved's reply: "I don't know."
I wrote back, "I knew it!" and we both had a good laugh at my choice of words.
Then, silence. You know, that still, silent, warm Presence that is so...
so...
... Beloved
Posted by
Meredith
at
12:06 PM
4
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And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun's mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
Hafiz/ Trans. Ladinsky
Posted by
Meredith
at
7:57 AM
2
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O you who've gone on pilgrimage -
where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
what air of love is this?
If you'd see the Beloved's
form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul's pearly essence
when you're the Sea of God?
That's true - and yet your troubles
may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
the treasure that is yours!
~Rumi 'I Am Wind, You are Fire'
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
Posted by
Meredith
at
11:58 AM
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Posted by
Meredith
at
12:01 PM
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I had a parent say to me recently, "When I tuck them in at night and they wake up in the morning in their beds, the universe is right."
I get that, I get that sentiment, that certain things when they are present in one's life, has one feel "the universe is right", something rings, something says "yes", there is a kind of intuited confirmation, messages come back to you saying you are heading in the right direction; there is synchronicity, a kind of harmony in the vibe surrounding an act or decision; there is a communication and relationship that is very much alive. There is a creative process happening, a conscious process in which we are participating, whether we realize it or not. This is magical in an ordinary way; in the zone or in contact with life in this way, this large way, feels alive and meaningful.
Posted by
Meredith
at
5:31 PM
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Posted by
Meredith
at
7:22 AM
4
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Labels: Rumi
Posted by
Meredith
at
11:30 PM
5
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We become aware of the void as we fill it.
~Antonio Porchia, Voices
Posted by
Meredith
at
10:05 AM
1 Reflections
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