For the Sleepwalkers

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

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

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

...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

A Spiritual Journey

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

A call to Love and to Ripen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reciting poems in the moonlight,

riding a painted boat...

every place the wind carries me is home.

-Yu Xuanji

This is My Motto

"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

Presence into Silence

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?

"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

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

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

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

My World Tuesday

God's Lips Upon The Veil

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

   
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

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

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

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

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?

The Thread

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

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

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

Our Task

"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

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

Circle of Morning

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)

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.