Graceful Presence

For Presence

2011-12-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Signs of Life

2011-10-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

Serenity reflections.

Apache Blessing

2011-10-11T21:55:00.001-07:00

The Friend on the Journey

2011-08-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

I have been preparing for a pilgrimage these past weeks of summer. In September I am going on the The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, also known as The Way of St James, which is a collection of old pilgrimage routes which cover all Europe. I shall be going only on the final leg of the trail which begins in Sarria Spain and ends in Santiago de Compostela. I am really looking forward to walking this spiritual path. As I have been preparing by walking ever longer distances, I often note some friend along my way. This day it was this black bird on the rock beside the river. I see this Graceful Presence here, watching me, and I know I am not alone, and I also sense I am keenly held in the manner of all things.

The Power of Spirit

2011-07-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

Author and lecturer Paula D'Arcy spent time each week with Morrie (of Tuesdays with Morrie) in his final year when he knew he was dying. They had many wonderful conversations, deepening inquiry and communion between them. At one point Morrie asked Paula to tell him anything she knew about the power of Christ. Paula responded thus:

"I didn't know, but I told him that I suspected: that the Spirit hidden deep within us recognizes truths our minds do not consciously know. And in spite of the barriers and limitations we impose, in spite of our fears and our refusals, in spite of our determination to limit Spirit to certain names or beliefs... there is nevertheless a level of awareness within us that exceeds all names and definitions. And this awareness responds from a knowledge the mind does not possess."

Later, reflecting on this conversation D'Arcy writes, "More than anything else, Morrie and I were sharing what it means to be a human being, just as he'd requested. We were exploring meaning. We were asking: What does it mean to be alive? Is this human nature our only nature? Is something else trying to emerge? What will we do with the life we were given? How will we live? What limits are we willing to push? How much are we willing to see?"

From Sacred Threshold: Crossing the Inner Barrier to a Deeper Love by Paula D'Arcy

I love these questions Paula and Morrie were asking. I love the question Morrie asks Paula, and I love the answer Paula gave Morrie about the power of Christ Spirit within us. Can you feel the loving communion here - deeper than deep?

Contrasts

2011-07-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

I love this photo a friend took of her niece. To me it portrays so many contrasts - hard and soft, young an old, living and dying, earth and body. And most especially, I see Graceful Presence here.

What do you see?

My World Tuesday

What's Possible?

2011-07-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Before you can do something that you’ve never done before,

you have to imagine it’s possible.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

2011-07-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

Serene

2011-07-18T19:50:00.000-07:00

My room at the Ralston White Retreat Center - where I attended a retreat and kept noble silence for four days. It was deeply quieting. My World Tuesday

Enough

2011-07-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

Self Love

2011-07-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

My teacher said, "To be real is some measure of self love. A wholesome wanting - to know ourselves as we are - is an essential element that supports our spiritual practice. Love is essential to this practice."

As I have been sitting in meditation this past week, I began to notice the feeling of preciousness of coming home to myself. On the cushion my thoughts go wandering, and I have learned to call myself gently back, back to the core of my being where my heartbeat is steady and my breathing is rhythmic. I began (at my teacher's advising) to feel this as coming home to my self, and finding a refuge here, within me. Then, I began to sense that something much larger than me was actually welcoming me home again, with open arms and a graceful holding. Every time my thoughts would wander, I would begin to realize it and come home again, always being welcomed in a profound way. Deep feelings of tenderness welled within me.

My World

2011-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Beauty emanating from the lichen on rocks during a hike in the Umpqua National Forest, Oregon. Graceful Presence is here, in this, too.

Mindfulness and Inquiry

2011-07-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

The past week I enjoyed five days of silence and listening by attending a Mindfulness and Inquiry Retreat with a favorite teacher, Frank Ostaseski. Today, in the return to my "normal life", I am mindful of the teaching to "feel the flow of experience." Moment to moment, I am observing more than usual what is in the field my awareness - especially what my mind is thinking, what emotions I am noticing, and what my body telling me. In this field of awareness, where "the me disappears" I seem to feel more aware of myself than before. At the same time, I sense that this awareness of me comes not from my small self but rather from a larger Presence within or through me. It is as though by simply feeling the flow of experience, my Being is a kind of vehicle for the sacred.

This simple teaching touches me deeply - through it I sense the truth of my self freshly.

Canticle of Love

2011-07-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

"Somewhere in our history religion became synonymous with God.

Religion is a longing for something, but it is not the thing itself. The thing itself does not need religion. In fact, religion may be the great barrier, because it is so rule-bound and convincing, so driven by ego ("Our" God is the true God).

Spirit, the thing itself, needs nothing to define it.

It cannot be described; it cannot be owned.

It can only be experienced in its wild passion and its love.

It can be encountered, not studied.

The mind cannot grasp it, though it will forever try.

That which we long for has the character of a single relationship, with infinite forms.

All longing is spirit longing for itself.

Spirit may appear as a child, a starlit night, new love, music, art, terror, tragedy, beauty...

It comes disguised. "

Paula D'Arcy in A set of New Eyes

blessing the boats

2011-05-20T07:40:00.001-07:00

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Lucille Clifton

Beloved Rilke

2011-02-24T09:56:00.001-08:00

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Parable

2011-02-21T08:25:00.001-08:00

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of paper, with these words: "Somebody save me! I'm here. The ocean cast me on this desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry! I'm here!"

"There's no date. I bet it's already too late anyway. It could have been floating for years," the first fisherman said.

"And he doesn't say where. It's not even clear which ocean," the second fisherman said.

"It's not too late, or too far. The island Here is everywhere," the third fisherman said. They all felt awkward. No one spoke. That's how it goes with universal truths.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

A Needed Smile

2011-01-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry -
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets
would make of all this,
thee shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrators of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,
Ye-Hah.

~ Billy Collins ~

Enough Said

2010-12-03T03:47:00.000-08:00

A young friend of mine is working on the Enough project in Africa. I am amazed at the courage of young people like her, and encourage support of this important work:

Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Founded in 2007, Enough focuses on crises in Sudan, eastern Congo, and areas of Africa affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Enough’s strategy papers and briefings provide sharp field analysis and targeted policy recommendations based on a “3P” crisis response strategy: promoting durable peace, providing civilian protection, and punishing perpetrators of atrocities. Enough works with concerned citizens, advocates, and policy makers to prevent, mitigate, and resolve these crises. For more information, please visit www.enoughproject.org.

The Altar of this Moment

2010-11-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

Place everything you can perceive—

Everything you can

see, hear, smell,taste, or touch,

Upon the altar of this moment

and give thanks.

It is over so soon—

This expression,

This single moment of your precious life,

This one heart

pounding itself open

with fear or wild joy,

This one breath rising

in the cold winter air

smoothly and gently

or coughing and sputtering,

Bow, while you can, before

This one taste

Of afternoon tea

Warming its way to your belly,

Or the fragrant orange

exploding its sweet juice

in your grateful mouth.

You have to love

The antics of your mind,

Imagining life should only be sweet.

The bitter makes the sweet; and life is both.

It is whole, like you,

Before you think yourself to pieces.

Place this moment’s pain and confusion on the altar, too,

And give special thanks for such grace

That wakes you up from sleeping through your life.

Pain is greatly under-rated as a pointer to Unknowing,

yet greatly over-rated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,

Your eyes meet mine and there is

a single looking.

What is peering from behind our masks?

Can it touch itself across the room?

Place your palms together;

Touch your holy skin.

In another moment it will shed itself.

What will you be then?

What were you before you had two hands?

What are you now?

You cannot capture That

and place It on the altar of this moment.

It is the altar,

And this moment’s infinite expressions,

And the Seeing,

And its own devotion to itself.

You are That.

Dorothy S. Hunt

Nass River

2010-11-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-
bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese flying north.
And I can't remember who I am supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon
myself, have mistresses in maidenhair
fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday:
a blank shimmering space forward and
back. I want to think with my belly.
I want to name all the stars animals
flowers birds rocks in order to forget
them, start over again. I want to
wear the seasons, harlequin, become
ancient and etched by weather. I
want to snow pulse, ruminating
ungulating, pebble at the bottom of the
abyss, candle burning darkness rather
than flame. I want to peer at things,
shameless, observe the unfastening,
that stripping of shape by dusk.
I want to sit in the meadow a rotten
stump pungent with slimemold, home
for pupae and grubs, concentric rings
collapsing into the passacaglia of
time. I want to crawl inside someone
and hibernate one entire night with
no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant
loam. I want to melt. I want to swim
naked with an otter. I want to turn
inside out, exchange nuclei with the
Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of
summer I want to make blind motion,
using my ribs as a raft, following
the spiders as they set sail on their
tasseled shining silk. Sometimes
even a single feather's enough
to fly.

~ by Robert MacLean

The Love of God

2010-11-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul
the way that light rushes into a transparent object.
The more love that it finds,
the more it gives itself;
so that, as we grow clear and open,
the more complete the joy of heaven is.
And the more souls who resonate together,
the greater the intensity of their love,
and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.
- Dante

Praise Them

2010-10-31T17:20:00.000-07:00

The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us.

~ Li-Young Lee

The Sculptor

2010-10-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

In ancient India lived a sculptor renowned for his life-sized statues
of elephants. With trunks curled high, tusks thrust forward, thick
legs trampling the earth, these carved beasts seemed to trumpet to the
sky. One day, a king came to see these magnificent works and to
commission statuary for his palace. Struck with wonder, he asked the
sculptor, “What is the secret of your artistry?”

The sculptor quietly took his measure of the monarch and replied,
"Great king, when, with the aid of many men, I quarry a gigantic piece
of granite from the banks of the river, I have it set here in my
courtyard. For a long time I do nothing but observe this block of
stone and study it from every angle. I focus all my concentration on
this task and won’t allow anything or anybody to disturb me. At first,
I see nothing but a huge and shapeless rock sitting there,
meaningless, indifferent to my purposes, utterly out of place. It
seems faintly resentful at having been dragged from its cool place by
the rushing waters. Then, slowly, very slowly, I begin to notice
something in the substance of the rock. I feel a presentiment . . . an
outline, scarcely discernible, shows itself to me, though others, I
suspect, would perceive nothing. I watch with an open eye and a
joyous, eager heart. The outline grows stronger. Oh, yes, I can
see it! An elephant is stirring in there!"

"Only then do I start to work. For days flowing into weeks, I use my
chisel and mallet, always clinging to my sense of that outline, which
grows ever stronger. How the big fellow strains! How he yearns to be
out! How he wants to live! It seems so clear now, for I know the one
thing I must do: with an utter singleness of purpose, I must chip away
every last bit of stone that is not elephant. What then remains will
be, must be, elephant."

When I was young, my grandmother, my spiritual guide, would often tell
just such a story, not only to entertain but to convey the essential
truths of living. Perhaps I had asked her, as revered teachers in
every religion have been asked, "What happens in the spiritual life?
What are we supposed to do?" Granny wasn’t a theologian, so she
answered these questions simply with a story like that of the elephant
sculptor. She was showing that we do not need to bring our real self,
our higher self, into existence. It is already there. It has always
been there, yearning to be out. An incomparable spark of divinity is
to be found in the heart of each human being, waiting to radiate love
and wisdom everywhere, because that is its nature.

--Eknath Easwaran, in God Makes the Rivers To Flow

Luminous Language

2010-10-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

The water spoke
Yes
Yes
Yes
Soft whispers
Beneath
The air current
Of this one‐pointed
Stillness.

Gabriel Isa Madrone

Wanderer

2010-10-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a wanderer
so let that be my name –
the first winter rain
~Basho~

Where Fears are Erased

2010-10-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

Now I Know Why

2010-10-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

Now I know why people worship, carry around

magic emblems, wake up talking dreams

they teach their children: the world speaks.

The world speaks everything to us.

-William Stafford

This marks my mother's passing - 88 years of a rich, full life. I'll miss her, as I carry forward all the talking dreams she taught me.

Sunset

2010-10-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

~ Rilke

Monday Morning Meditation

2010-09-30T19:47:00.001-07:00

If you ask me why I dwell among green mountains,
I should laugh silently; my soul is serene.
The peach blossom follows the moving water.
There is another heaven and earth beyond the world of men.

-Li Po

Though I am Old

2010-09-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

- W.B.Yeats

My World Tuesday

2010-09-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

I love spirals - moving in and moving out again.

Fire

2010-09-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, is a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would. So, building fires requires attention to the spaces in between, as much as to the wood. When we are able to build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on the logs then we can come to see how it is fuel, and the absence of fuel together, that makes fire possible. We only need to lay a log lightly from time to time. A fire grows simply because the space is there, with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.

Judy Brown

~~~

This reminds me of the resting space in the midst of a conversation, a busy day, before a meal, and even, between breaths. There, right there, between the in breath and the out breath, is a space to rest.

Bestemor, my "Morney"

2010-09-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

I am in the arms and heart of my beloved grandmother.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

2010-09-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

-William Stafford

A Love Note from Kabir

2010-09-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

Hang up the swing of love today!
Hang the body and the mind between the
arms of the beloved, in the ecstasy of love's joy:
Bring the tearful streams of the rainy clouds
to your eyes, and cover your heart with
the shadow of darkness:
Bring your face nearer to his ear, and speak
of the deepest longings of your heart.
Kabir says: `Listen to me brother! bring the
vision of the Beloved in your heart.'

See No Evil

2010-09-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

No one expected all three of them
to sit there on their tree stumps forever,
their senses covered with their sinuous paws
so as to shut out the vile, nefarious world.

As it happened,
it was the one on the left
who was the first to desert his post,
uncupping his ears,
then loping off into the orbit of rumors and lies,
but also into the realm of symphonies,
the sound of water tumbling over rocks
and wind stirring the leafy domes of trees.

Then the monkey on the right lowered his hands
from his wide mouth and slipped away
in search of someone to talk to,
some news he could spread,
maybe something to curse or shout about.

And that left the monkey in the middle
alone with his silent vigil,
shielding his eyes from depravity's spectacle,
blind to the man whipping his horse,
the woman shaking her baby in the air,
but also unable to see
the russet sun on a rough shelf of rock
and apples in the grass at the base of a tree.

Sometimes, he wonders about the other two,
listens for the faint sounds of their breathing
up there on the mantel
alongside the clock and the candlesticks.

And some nights in the quiet house
he wishes he could break the silence with a question,

but he knows the one on his right
would not be able to hear,
and the one to his left,
according to their sacred oath--
the one they all took with one paw raised--
is forbidden forever to speak, even in reply.

--Billy Collins

My World Tuesday

2010-09-07T19:51:00.000-07:00

Daniel Deardorf

2010-09-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

Small Ruby

2010-09-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

The small ruby everyone wants has fallen out on the road.
Some think it is east of us, others west of us.

Some say, “among primitive earth rocks,” others, “in the deep waters.”

Kabir's instinct told him it was inside, and what it was worth,
and he wrapped it up carefully in his heart cloth.

Springtime People

2010-09-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

We are no longer innocent; but we must make every effort to become primitive so that we can begin again each time, and from our hearts. We must become springtime people in order to find the summer, whose greatness we must herald.

Rilke, Early Journals

Listen

2010-09-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~FREDERICH BUECHNER

Forgiveness Note

2010-09-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

William Carlos Williams

I don't think Williams is really sorry, do you? I want to eat some of those sweet plums, too.

My World Tuesday

2010-08-31T00:12:00.000-07:00

North Umpqa River above, and Little River below

I dream the dream of a pond

who lives not just to mirror the sky

but to let willow trees on the bank

drink me up.

-Shu Ting

Growing

2010-08-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

“You have to grow from

the inside out.

None can teach you,

none can make you spiritual.

There is no other teacher

but your own soul.”

~Swami Vivekananda

For the Sleepwalkers

2010-08-29T23:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight I want to say something wonderful

for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith

in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path

that leads to the stairs instead of the window,

the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing

to step out of their bodies into the night,

to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.

Always they return home safely, like blind men

who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.

That's why I want to say something astonishing

like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs

flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.

And now our hearts are thick black fists

flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.

We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-

walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.

We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness

and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

~ Edward Hirsch

I love this poem - it so matches my intentions this morning. I am outside by my garden as I write this. The sounds of summer are everywhere, the feel of ths sun is so wonderful. I am the child bathing in this warmth, turning my face once again to the presence that fills the openness. Here I am exploring openness - where there is room for Presence to revel itself... knowing somehow that the nature of our nature is open.

Breath Made Visible

2010-08-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve always said dance is the breath made visible and that covers about everything because once you stop breathing and the breath is no longer visible, you stop moving. ~Anna Halprin

Click here to see a beautiful video trailer of Breath Made Visible / Anna Halprin

Camas Lilies

2010-08-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas
opening into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you — what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down —
papers, plans, appointments, everything —
leaving only a note: "Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I’m through with blooming."

Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.

Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

~ Lynn Ungar ~

Oil painting by Ann Ruttan

My Mountain Flower

2010-08-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

...and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

James Joyce

My World - Oregon Coast

2010-08-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

A Spiritual Journey

2010-08-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry ~

Love Note from Buddha

2010-08-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

A call to Love and to Ripen

2010-08-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most
difficult task of all...., the work for which all other work is but

preparation. It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen...

a great claim upon us, something that chooses us out and calls

us to vast things.

—Rilke

Sleeping in the Forest

2010-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Umpqua River near my home...


I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

~ Mary Oliver

My World Tuesday; SE Oregon Desert

2010-08-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

Thoreau said, "It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see." I think he was right about that.

Pelted By Beauty

2010-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

The power of love received in the body:

this was the Festival!
how we stood and faced one another
and we took hands
and the love came.
And all the flowers swarmed about our heads:
deep deep the sting goes.
Let love be welcomed the moment it seeks us.

—M.C. Richards

The Hummingbird

2010-08-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

The sunlight speaks. And its voice is a bird:

It glitters half-guessed half seen half-heard

Above the flower bed. Over the lawn ...

A flashing dip and it is gone.

And all it lends to the eye is this --

A sunbeam giving the air a kiss.

Harry Kemp

Open from Deep Within

2010-08-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sometime go outside and sit,
In the evening at sunset,
When there's a slight breeze that touches your body,
And makes the leaves and the trees move gently.
You're not trying to do anything, really.
You're simply allowing yourself to be,
Very open from deep within,
Without holding onto anything whatsoever.
Don't bring something back from the past, from a memory.
Don't plan that something should happen.
Don't hold onto anything in the present.
Nothing you perceive needs to be nailed down.
Simply let experience take place, very freely,
So that your empty, open heart
Is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.

- Tsoknyi Rinpoche in Carefree Dignity

Reciting Poems

2010-08-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

Reciting poems in the moonlight,

riding a painted boat...

every place the wind carries me is home.

-Yu Xuanji

This is My Motto

2010-08-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony."

~ William Henry Channing

My World Tuesday: Sunrise

2010-08-09T17:00:00.001-07:00

Presence into Silence

2010-08-08T07:48:00.001-07:00

Metta Inst Last night Ram Dass taught a group of caregivers, 80 in all, via Skype about "presence". His wise council included how to find a level above the disease, the story, the suffering, to relate soul to soul with another. He reminded us that we are not our personalities, our roles, but rather just loving-awareness. His grace touched hearts and minds, and then we fell back into silence.

What does Love give?

2010-08-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Love gives us the fortitude to lighten the sorrow of others and ourselves. It soothes us like sweet cream and warms us into a gazing calm which makes us feel a sense of awe in the presence of something magical. Love helps us recognize the quiet grandeur or beauty of life. We notice the earth, the sky, a breathing, ...functioning planet, full-flowering gardens, and bending branches over silent walkways" C.J. Good

Married to Amazement

2010-08-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
- Mary Oliver

Watch with glittering eyes

2010-08-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
— Roald Dahl

The Longest Journey

2010-08-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

The longest journey I've made
is the one back to myself.
~Ama

My World Tuesday

2010-08-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

God's Lips Upon The Veil

2010-08-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

God has never left you.

It is just

that your soul is so vast

that just like

the earth in its innocence,

it may think,

"I do not feel my lover's warmth

against my face right

now."

But look, dear,

is not the sun reaching down its arms

and always holding a continent

in its light?

God cannot leave us.

It is just that our soul is so vast,

we do not always feel God's lips

upon the

veil.

St. Catherine of Siena

Ready for Everything

2010-07-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

"But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being."

- Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

I love all the advice Rilke gives to the young poet. I imagine being that young poet (though I am neither young nor really a poet), and soaking in the wisdom of an beloved elder.

r really a poet), ad soaking in the wisdom of an elder.

Knowledge

2010-07-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot go back to seeing the part as the whole.

~Ursula Le Guin

The Zen of Truth

2010-07-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be.

Harry Frankfurt, Princeton philosopher and best-selling author of “Fighting Bull”, in a NY Times magazine interview.

Sitting in meditation, I recognize the truth in what Frankfurt is saying. Truth seems to really only be truth in this moment. It's not really about me, it's about the unfolding of the moment. It isn't about what happened, or what might happen next. That, perhaps, is what I love so much about sitting on the cushion. Truth is revealed.

Chatting with Fish

2010-07-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

The fish tell him:

"Hey Hafiz,
We see you know the joy of our existence,
We see you have learned how meditation
can free you from Land, Mind, Debts, Alimony-
The Whole Works,
And like us, let you carouse all day in God."

from: The Fish and I will Chat

A Morning Offering

2010-07-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue ~

All The Hemispheres

2010-07-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

All The Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

~ Hafiz ~

Here's to Opening and Upward

2010-07-16T10:52:00.001-07:00

   here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
and to your(in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain

and here's to silent certainly mountains;and to
a disappearing poet of always,snow
and to morning;and to morning's beautiful friend
twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and

let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid
down with ought with because with every brain
which thinks it thinks,nor dares to feel(but up
with joy;and up with laughing and drunkenness)

here's to one undiscoverable guess
of whose mad skill each world of blood is made
(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon)
  e.e.cummings

Blooming

2010-07-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.~Anais Nin

The Soaring Impulse/Possible Dreams

2010-06-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

While searching the Internet for the last poem I posted, The Sage, I found this blog: The Soaring Impulse I was so touched by the Graceful Presence of the author, Maithri. He has founded an organization called Possible Dreams International. Please read his blog, and contribute your "Whisper of Hope" to his work.

The Sage

2010-06-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

The small man builds cages for everyone he knows.

while the Sage,

who has to duck his head when the moon is low,

keeps dropping keys all night long

for the beautiful

rowdy

prisoners.

--Hafiz

Wilderness

2010-05-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

Who to Be?

2010-05-02T18:21:00.001-07:00

The Thread

2010-04-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

There's a thread you follow.
It goes among
things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

-- William Stafford

THE OPENING OF EYES

2010-04-27T07:52:00.001-07:00

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clean air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

— David Whyte

Gifts

2010-04-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

My dreams are dreams of the pond
That lives not only to mirror the sky
But to let the surrounding willows and ferns
Refresh and cleanse me.

Through tree roots I make my way towards the leaves' veins
Their dying brings me no sorrow
For I've expressed myself,
I've won life.

My happiness is the sun's happiness
In a brief span of time I'll leave behind enduring works
That will strike gold sparks
In children's eyes, and
In a sprouting seedling
I'll sing a jeweled green song.
I am artless yet bountiful
I'm unfathomable.

My pain is the pain of seasonal birds
Only spring understands such passion.
Endure all hardships and failures,
Always fly toward a future of warmth and light.
Ah, the bleeding wings
Will write a line of supple verse
To enter deep within all souls,
Deep into all times.

All my feelings
Are a gift from earth.

—Shu Ting

Blessings of springtime

2010-04-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

Our Task

2010-02-28T07:22:00.001-08:00

"One hand on the beauty of the world, one hand on the suffering of all beings and two feet firmly grounded in the task of the present moment."

~ from the Cathedral of Autun, France

Door of Being

2010-02-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

Door of being, dawn and wake me,
allow me to see the face of this day,
allow me to see the face of this night,
all communicates, all is transformed,
arch of blood, bridge of the pulse,
take me to the other side of this night,
where I am you, we are us,
the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined,

door of being: open your being
and wake, learn to be ....

~ Octavio Paz ~

Listen

2010-02-01T22:56:00.000-08:00

Circle of Morning

2010-01-20T09:30:00.001-08:00

I sat and watched the sun come up.

I could hear it spreading across the vault of the softening sky;

hear the aural beauty,

the song, the earthen majesty of its touch,

the warmth and blessing,

the nourishment of its grace.

Color fading into gray

- another little death -

sweeping backward from where it first emerged;

the arc complete

the song fading into silence,

into the circle of morning.

Love Poem to God (this)

2009-12-30T18:34:00.000-08:00

Did I expect any of this?

No, I did not expect this in my life.

I have been innocent of the expectations of this.

I did not expect to find in you the Friend of a lifetime,

or the sacred Other within you,

or the Deep-time experience

in an everyday conversation over tea.

I did not expect to find such rich blessings

in relationship with you.

You are my unexpected treasure

dear One.

Dream Time

2009-12-21T08:50:00.001-08:00

Lovely Blog: Nekiya - The Descent

Photo: Andrew Goldsworthy

Indra's Net

2009-11-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

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

A Friend Passes

2009-10-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

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.

The Holy Longing

2009-10-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

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,

where you have been begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you are the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

Goethe

Wage Peace

2009-06-21T21:03:00.001-07:00

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

We Two

2009-05-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

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'

The Deepest Moment

2009-04-10T03:55:00.000-07:00

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

Rumi Lifts Another Mirror

2009-03-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

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

Rumi begin with the grief for what was lost - a phrase that surely gets my attention. But Rumi says that this grief lifts a mirror. I recognize this is an amazing truth, a beautiful and enlarging insight. This mirror shows us where we are working, bravely working. Things look their worst in grief. And yet, there in the dark bitterness is the kindness of a friend, a lily in bloom, the soft satin of the blanket's edge. These signs work on me, and in my imaginings I connect with the essence of God; it is a fleeting feeling of being held, a feeling of hopefulness and of greatness enveloping me. I feel my sad, dragging, crying, loathsome self begin to soften, to look, to open to this light, and to the warmth of connection. I stretch my hand/heart open, just a little at first, then close again. Then, feeling a soft breeze upon my face, move to open again. I expand, and then contract, and somewhere within this slight movement is where I settle, balanced in a faint flutter.

Sweet Darkness

2009-03-07T10:31:00.000-08:00

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"

I / Thou

2009-01-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

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?

Selling flowers, Sapa

2009-01-03T12:57:00.001-08:00

Selling flowers, Sapa
Originally uploaded by Meredith Krugel