The Deepest Moment

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

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

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

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

Selling flowers, Sapa
Originally uploaded by Meredith Krugel

Let it Rest

"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.

Why is the Fire Hot?

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."

The Voice of Your Eyes

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...

The Swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

-Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly

David Whyte says of this poem:

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?

These are the questions I live. In my experience each soul knows when they are out of alignment with their heart and soul; on some level they know how far away from true north they have moved. When one moves into alignment with that which is most authentic in them, there is a wondrous synchronicity, meaningful coincidence and aliveness that infuses one's life. It just feels right, and others can recognize this. Energy becomes available that was locked away as other agendas were attended to; as we try to compensate for the lack of connection and authenticity. Like the swan out of water, awkward and out of his element, once he lowers himself down into the water, he is in his element, he is in the stream and is carried along in the current, transported and buoyed by the water, and what emerges naturally and spontaneously is authenticity, beauty, belonging, grace and genuineness.

Now is the Season

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

Celebration

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

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say
Holy Holy.


Persha Gertler

Emerald Parakeets

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.

A Gift of Darkness

Inspired by a Brazilian folktale, The Sea Serpent’s Daughter

~~

I would gather darkness from
Under my pillow,
From under my blanket and
From under my bed.

I would gather dark from
My Mom’s kitchen cabinets in the kitchen,
From my toy closet behind everything and
From the mud.

I would gather darkness from
A trashcan,
From a metal clothes closet and
From underground.

I would gather dark from
The sky,
From under a tree and
From nighttime.

I would put the dark in a cardboard box,
And surround it with metal,
Color it red, and put pink
Ribbon on it.
I’d decorate it with stars.

I would close the box
With a lock, a blue and grey metal lock,
And tie it up with a red and white
Dotted string.

I would give it to my Grandma
Who is tired from
Mowing the lawn
All daylong.

I would find her in the living room
Lying on the couch.
Grandma would say,
“THANKS!”

A group poem by Ms. Benedetto’s 1st & 2nd grade,
Yoncalla Elementary School

Sunset at the North Pole

As if Dreaming

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.

Chinese Poet Li Qingzhao

from Admiring Lotuses

(translated by Jane Hirshfield)

On-Line at the Nameless Cafe

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

And For No Reason

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

The Treasure

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

*Radiance*

If ten lamps are in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can't distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.

In the field of spirit there is no division;
no individuals exist.
Sweet is the oneness of the Friend with His friends.

Catch hold of spirit.
Help this headstrong self disintegrate;
that beneath it you may discover unity,
like a buried treasure.

From: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance
365 Selections from Rumi's Mathnawi
Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski