Happy Easter

Easter Wings by George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

     Though foolishly he lost the same,
           Decaying more and more,
               Till he became
                    Most poore:
                    With thee
                O let me rise
          As larks, harmoniously,
     And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne
     And still with sicknesses and shame.
          Thou didst so punish sinne,
               That I became
                     Most thinne.
                     With thee
                Let me combine,
           And feel thy victorie:
      For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Open and free

Ah, Come Sit Beside Me by Jiddu Krishnamurti from Darkness to Light:  Poems and Parables  (Harper & Row)

Ah, come sit beside me by the sea, open and free.
I will tell thee of that inward calmness
As of the still deep;
Of that inward freedom
As of the skies;
Of that inward happiness
As of the dancing waters.

And as now the moon makes a silent path on the dark sea,
So beside me lies the clear path of pure understanding.
The groaning sorrow is hid under a mocking smile,
The heart is heavy with the burden of corruptible love,
The deceptions of the mind pervert thought.

Ah, come sit beside me
Open and free.
As the even flow of clear sunlight,
So shall thine understanding come to thee.
The burdensome fear of anxious waiting
Shall go from thee as the waters recede before the rushing winds.

Ah, come sit beside me,
Thou shalt know of the understanding of true love.
As the mind drives the blind clouds,
So shall thy brutish prejudice be driven by clear thought.

The moon is in love with the sun
And the stars fill the skies with their laughter.

Oh, come sit beside me
Open and free.

 

 

No commentary today, just the invitation to take some time to just sit, open and free . . .

 

 

Matter matters

Often I Imagine the Earth by Dan Gerber in Poetry  (March 2010)

Often I imagine the earth

through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—
atoms, peculiar
atoms everywhere—
no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end,
soaring together like those
ancient Chinese birds
hatched miraculously with only one wing,
helping each other fly home.

I've always been a pretty good student.  In high school  I never really studied and was able to earn mostly As and a smattering of Bs in my honors classes.  I cruised along, expending little effort and energy-- until I encountered physics. 

Physics always seemed like a fun.  Sitting in the chemistry classroom slaving over stoichiometry equations, I'd hear the physics students in the hallway playing with Slinkys and think, "Now there's a science class for me."  Unfortunately the fun physics teacher left by the time I got around to taking physics.  The Slinky's were back in their boxes and instead we got a teacher brought out of retirement who stumbled through lesson plans, trying to teach us the laws of physics without delving into their relevance. 

A few weeks into the term,, I realized that physics and I just didn't get along.  Sure, we could co-exist.  I wouldn't challenge the law of gravity if it wouldn't suddenly change the space/time continuum but physics was relegated to the filing cabinet of things I would never "get" like probability and the appeal of Tom Cruise. 

Lately, however, I'm finding myself more and more interested in physics.  The beginnings of my change of heart happened several years ago when I became friends with a theoretical physicist working on his PhD.  I had just gotten my graduate degree in theology and as we talked about our studies, I realized there was a certain simpatico between the two disciplines.  Recently I'm starting to learn more about energy medicine.  In doing so, I've become interested in the atoms and energy that come together to form our physical bodies, and how that combination of mass and energy impacts our mental and spiritual well being.

Last night's  program at Cathedral Crossroads was on the spirituality of the universe.  One thing that really struck me in the Q&A time was a remark the presenter made about how atoms are all about relationship.  Depending upon how molecules come together, different elements emerge. It reminded me of the discussion we'd just had in Centering Prayer about how, for many of us, our practice of the prayer has changed our relationships.

Maybe we're like water molecules and meditation is like the heat that determines our  phase of
matter.  Without the thermal energy generated by the warmth of meditation, we become immobile and rigid like ice.  With it, we more easily adapt to and accommodate changes in the containers of our lives, as water does when it becomes steam. 

And afterall, who doesn't want to be a bit steamy at times? 

If you go for oysters and I go for ersters

Biology by Stephen O'Connor from Poetry (July/August 2008)

Is this happiness or oyster-life?

This flexing of muscular torso-foot

joy’s wonder? This sifting of silt

from food in the shifting chill-dark?

If, in my mind, there is a life of flight

in the light beyond the over-swirl,

must I unfix my lips from this rock

to be right? Or is my apex to worry

quartz against my shell?

 

 

The maple tree pollen has my head too muddled and stuffy to think coherently this morning.  So instead of any insights or reflections, I'll simply offer this little gem of a poem and leave you to ruminate on the questions the poet raises on your own.  (Hint:  I think the answer to all his questions is YES.)

 

 

 

 

A gift of a spring snowfall

Blue Grapes by Tess Gallagher from Moon Crossing Bridge (Gray Wolf Press)
Eating blue grapes
          near the window
     and looking out
          at the snow-covered valley.
For a moment, the deep world
          gazing back.  Then a blue jay
     scatters snow from a bough.
No world, no meeting.  Only
          tremors, sweetness
                             on the tongue.


I thought about this poem when I woke up this morning to a snow covered yard.  Unfortunately I didn't have any blue grapes in the house so I had to settle for a cup of tea in a blue mug to compliment the view out my window.  Still, it was an opportunity to simply be in the moment, to feel the heat seeping through the pottery as my hand curved around the cup, to watch how the snowflakes looked as if they were being sifted from the heavens.  Who can complain about snow in spring when it offers such gifts?

A bit of marvel for a Sunday

A Garden Amidst Flames by Ibn 'Arabi
O marvel!  A garden amidst flames!
My heart has become capable of every form:
it is a pasture for gazelles, and a convent for Christian monks,
and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran.
I follow the religion of Love:  whatever way
Love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith.


A poem for Sunday with no commentary or reflection.  However I will share this nifty picture I found of a dog meditating.  Enjoy!

The outward part of the inward-outward journey

A Poem by Teresa of Avila
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.
I've had an interesting experience looking for a poem for today.  I wanted something on the outward journey part of the see saw of contemplative life.  There's plenty of poetry about the inward journey but I was hard pressed to find a poem about what often comes out of a practice of silence, the enhanced sense of connection, deeper compassion, an abundance of gratitude.  And as I have other work I want to get done this evening, after several hours of searching I finally decided to fall back on this old favorite by Teresa of Avila. 

I used to share this poem a lot when I would lead pilgrimages at Washington National Cathedral, particularly with youth groups.  I liked to link it with a line from an interview I read from a peace worker in Palestine.  She said that while we are called to be the body of Christ in the world, she was pretty sure it means the eyes, hands, feet, and not the rear end.  Her advice was that although the problems of the world sometimes seem overwhelming, we shouldn't just sit around and do nothing.  We should listen for the ways we're being called to serve each and every day. 

The ways we bless others don't have to involve grand gestures.  One thing I have heard over and over from people who regularly do some form of meditation or contemplative prayer is that they become more aware of and open to what some call promptings of the Spirit, those internal nudges that push us to smile at a stranger, phone a friend, act on some impulse that comes from out of the blue.  So what nudge are you sensing today?

The one true thing

The Cloud by Dogen
This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful;
what dreamwalkers men become.
Awakened, I hear the one true thing—
Black rain of the roof of Fukakusa temple.

A couple weeks ago in my Tuesday evening meditation group someone mentioned he had been reading a suggested keeping in mind  the phrase, "Now.  Here.  This."

It's the theme of Dogen's poem and a theme I'm trying to remember as I listen for the one true thing in my life this evening. 

Now. 
             
               Here.
                 
                              This.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it's all about perspective

In a Crack by Rabindranath Tagore from Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology  (St. Martin's Griffin)
In a crack in the garden wall a flower
Blooms, nameless, lowly and obscure.
"Shame on this weed!" the plants tell each other;
The sun rises and calls, "Are you well, brother?"

The past three days I've posted poems about silence and linked them to the practice of meditation.
For the next three, I've decided to post poems that illustrate the fruits of silence.

The more I read today's poem, the more I get out of it-- the lesson that sometimes it all depends upon our perspective.  How having a relationship with someone or something can alter that perspective.  And how our perspective effects the way we name things . . . whether they remain nameless or we can welcome them as brother, sister. 

Die and become the sky

Quietness by Rumi trans. by Coleman Barks from The Essential Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco)
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick clouds.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence. The speechless full moon
comes out now.


When I first read this poem by Rumi, the final in the trilogy of poems about silence that I selected for this week, the invitation? command? to die unsettled me.  Although I know  the death he's talking about isn't literal, the word still was a stumbling block for me.   I couldn't stop thinking about it in terms of the traditional definition:  death is the cessation of life.

So I did what I always do when a word snags my attention, I consulted the dictionary.  And while I didn't find anything to shift my understanding of the word in terms of the way it's defined, which is pretty straightforward, the word origin intrigued me. 

The etymology for the word in English can be traced back to its old Norse root.  That then led me to read about the Viking understanding of death.  Evidently the old Norse understanding of death is that at the moment a person takes his or her last breath, it's not  the end of existence but as release or evaporation into the larger source of life.  I like that word evaporation.  The basic elements of the thing are all still there, they just take on a new form, a new way of being. 

Reading Rumi again with this understanding of the word die, I see it as not a command to end my life, but to begin it in a new way.  A command not so much to sever my ties with this world, but to strengthen them with the entire universe.  An invitation not to decay in the earth but to become the sky . . .

An Invitation to Silence

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda trans. by Stephen Mitchell from Full Woman, Fleshy Apple, Hot Moon:  Selected Poems (Harpercollins)

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.


Last week I led the Christian part of an interfaith meditation event for 40 or so participants.  The first presenter was a lovely Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka who guided us in a loving-kindness meditation for about 25 minutes.  I then gave a brief history and introduction to Centering Prayer and we sat in silence for another 20 minutes. 

 I'm used to sitting in silence with others, I do it almost every Tuesday evening.  And I often take the power of collective silence for granted until I talk to someone who is new to the experience, as was the case with my monk friend.  It's probably my own ignorance about his particular tradition within Buddhism and the type of meditation he practices, but that kind of surprised me.  Afterall, here was a man of a certain age, who has spent his adult life living all over the world and teaching meditation, saying that he'd never had an experience of collective silence like that before.  He talked about how there was an energy in the room that was powerful, yet at the same time deeply still and quiet. 

It's often the same way on Tuesday evenings in the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage.  When we shut the outer doors, dim the lights, and sound the prayer bowl, a palpable hush falls over the room.  Often the longer we sit, the more I feel myself descending into that energy almost as if I'm being taken down into the depths of silence in an elevator or sinking into it like a fathomless pool of warm water. 

I can't imagine what that silence would feel like if, as Pablo Neruda suggests, the whole world agreed to be still and quiet at the same time.  The logistics alone would probably prevent that from ever happening.  But maybe we can experiment on a small scale. 

So here's what I'm proposing.  Tonight, 19 May, 2013, from 6:40 - 7 pm EST, I invite you to sit in silence.  If you want to sit with others and you're in the DC area, feel free to join us in the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage at Washington National Cathedral.  If not, just find a comfortable place and take those twenty minutes to sit and be quiet.  It doesn't matter what you do in those twenty minutes-- Centering Prayer, metta meditation, mantra meditation, focusing on your breath, listening, whatever-- as long as you're quiet and still.  Let's see if even a little collective silence can interrupt the sadness and make us more alive . . .

 

The Shifting Sands of Silence

Ignorance by Philippe Jaccottet trans. by Derek Mahon from Words in the Air (Gallery Press)
The older I grow,the more ignorant I become,
the longer I live, the less I possess or control.
All I have is a little space, snow-dark
or glittering, never inhabited.
Where is the giver, the guide, the guardian?
I sit in my room and am silent:  silence
arrives like a servant to tidy things up
while I wait for the lies to disperse.
And what remains to this dying man
that so well prevents him from dying?
What does he find to say to the four walls?
I hear him talking still, and his words
come in with the dawn, imperfectly understood:

'Love, like fire can only reveal its brightness
on the failure and the beauty of the wood.'


Meditation has been on my mind a lot lately.  Specifically, my meditation practice and how my experience of it shifts continually like sand beneath my feet, yet somehow it manages to keep me anchored and stable in a way nothing else really can or does.  Just when I start to think I'm getting a handle on this discipline of silence, things go topsy turvy and the way I approach the silence changes. 

When I first began I greeted it with enthusiasm, welcoming it like a new and interesting friend, wanting to get to know it better.  Then I moved into a period where it was uncomfortable and challenging.  Off and on it feels like drudgery, something that has to be checked off my to do list (and when I'm in this phase I confess it often remains undone).

A little over a year ago I went through a phase where no matter how much I tried to settle my mind, I couldn't stop thinking about the mechanics of what was supposed to be going on in the silence.  It was as if I knew too much about the process to let the process happen.  Removing the label of the type of meditation I do from the period of silence took away those expectations and helped me move past that obstacle.

Last summer  I reached a point where I realized that my morning practice had become an unconscious part of my routine.  Along the lines of deciding when to get dressed or what type of tea to have in the morning, it was a decision made without judgment, based on a simple assessment of what I needed when. 

Lately, however, I've felt like the line in the middle of today's poem.  I don't know if I'd say I'm waiting for lies to disperse-- maybe more illusions or attachments, definitely charged emotions-- the meditation lets the dust settle so silence can begin the tidying up process. 

So, a little spring house cleaning seems to be underway in my soul.  What's stirring in yours?

A Welsh Poem for St. Patrick's Day

Why Welsh and not Irish you might be asking?  Although Patrick is Ireland's most famous saint, he was born in Britain, most likely in Cumbria, an area in what is now a corner of northwest England nestled between Scotland and Wales.  In fact, the name Cumbria is derived from the word the people of the area gave themselves, the Cymru, which means compatriots in old Welsh.  Cymru is still the Welsh word for Wales, thus the reasoning for a Welsh poem for St. Patrick's Day. 

ALMIGHTY CREATOR, it is you who made

The land and the sea . . . .

 

 

The world cannot comprehend in song bright and melodious,

Even though the grass and trees should sing

All your wonders, O true Lord!

 

 

The Father created the world by a miracle;

It is difficult to express its measure.

Letters cannot contain it, letters cannot comprehend it.

 

Jesus created for the hosts of Christendom,

With miracles when he came,

Resurrection through his nature for them.

He who made the wonder of the world

Will save us, has saved us.

It is not too great a toil to praise the Trinity.

 

Clear and high in the perfect assembly,

Let us praise above the nine orders of angels

The sublime and blessed Trinity.

 

 

Purely, humbly, in skillful verse,

I should love to give praise to the Trinity,

According to the greatness of his power.

He has required of the host in this world

Who are his, that they should at all times,

All together, fear the Trinity.

 

The one who has both wisdom and dominion

Above heaven, below heaven, completely;

It is not too great toil to praise the Son of Mary.

 

The Howling Hurt of Vulnerability

Not Here by Rumi trans. by Coleman Barks from The Sould of Rumi (Harper One)

There's courage involved if you wantto become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp
compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought? I want
a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm
won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.

I've been searching for three days now for a good poem about vulnerability.  It was getting late, I was getting tired and so I decided to settle for Rumi when I came across this poem that isn't actually settling at all as it's exactly what I was looking for.  (And really, is going with Rumi ever truly settling?)

I wanted something on vulnerability so I could post the link to this video by sociologist Brene Brown.  Several months ago we used elements of her TED talk on vulnerability as our discussion material for Centering Prayer.  The conversation I thought might last two weeks lasted for two months.  Her talk on the price of invulnerability is just as powerful.  Watching it will be fifteen minutes well spent, I promise.  If you haven't seen her first talk, click the link above and spend another twenty minutes to learn more about her studies on shame, guilt, vulnerability and whole heartedness. 

Good Days, Bad Days and Eh Days

Bad Day by Kay Ryan from Say Uncle (Grove/Atlantic, Inc.)
Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

I may not be elfin and I'm certainly no tailor, I can barely sew on a button, but this is one of those days where I can relate to the tailor elf.  The "stolen" poems (actually not stolen, I try to be careful about my attributions) aren't revealing much and I'm not feeling very inspired.  Some days are like that.  They make me appreciate those when poems are revelations and inspiration and imagination stroll hand in hand. 

What are you waiting for?

I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti from A Coney Island of the Mind  (New Directions)

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

 It is said that the average American spends what amounts to two weeks waiting at red lights.  Add to that our waiting in what always seems to be the slowest line in the grocery store, waiting for the barrista to make our  grande soy no foam latte, waiting for our name to be called in the doctor's office, waiting to get around the Beltway in rush hour traffic.  We spend a lot of time waiting.

I spent much of this afternoon in a waiting room and thinking about not how long we wait, but how we wait and what we wait for.  Wait I'm waiting for. 

What are you waiting for?

Waiting by Edgar Degas
 

Trying to begin

Begin by Brendan Kennelly from Staying Alive:  Real Poems for Unreal Times (Bloodaxe Books)
Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and the future
old friends passing through with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

I'm trying to begin this morning and in spite of the early morning birdsong, sunlight streaming through the window, and the sound of traffic (and road work) outside, it's requiring more energy than I feel I have today.  I need some serious motivation that I'm not getting from my usual cup of tea and morning meditation, thus today's poem.  Kennelly's words reminds me of David Whyte's Start Close In or Miroslav Holub's The Door.  Maybe a mantra or short found poem comprised of the words of  these three poets is the wisdom I need to inspire me today.

Start close in,

open the door,

begin. 

Beware or be aware when coconuts start falling

Timely Rain by Chogyam Trungpa from Timely Rain:  Selected Poetry of Chogyam Trungpa (Shambhala)

In the jungles of flaming ego,

May there be cool icebergs of bodhicitta.*

On the race track of bureaucracy,

May there be the walk of the elephant.

May the sumptuous castle of arrogance,

Be destroyed by vajra** confidence.

In the garden of gentle sanity,

May you be bombarded with coconuts

Of wakefulness.

 

 

Someone asked me recently how I find poems for this blog.  Some mornings I pull down a volume or eleven from my bookshelves and page through until the right poem jumps up and down and shouts, "Pick me, pick me!"  At other times a poem that I've read will float to the surface of my consciousness and I'll scoop it up and offer it.  Sometimes I'll be in the mood to hear a particular author's voice.  And days like today, when the weather seems to dictate a poem for a rainy day, I'll search the internet to see what I stumble upon. 

 

This morning I decided to try something new.  I went to the Amazon site and did a search for poetry and rain and then set about sifting and sorting through the results.  I considered posting a poem by another Buddhist poet but he was from the Zen tradition and a bit too nihlistic for a gray day.  Tibetan Buddhist poet and teacher Chogyam Trungpa, on the other hand, offered this blessing for balance that at first made me smile and then laugh out loud at the imagery. 

 

In the garden of gentle sanity/May you be bombarded with coconuts/Of wakefulness.

But don't drop your lollipop.

 

Soon after I first started meditating on a regular basis, I went to an intensive Centering Prayer retreat.  About 36 hours into it, I felt like I was being carpet bombed with coconuts.  I was battered and bruised and in tears when I went to the retreat leader for spiritual direction.  The first words out of my mouth were, "I don't want to do this.  I just want to be normal like other people."  Normal being people who didn't meditate or go on week long silent retreats or allow themselves to be broken open in order to grow and change.

 

The thing was, I'd been lounging in the garden for so long that it did seem sane, normal.  Shaking the trees of transformation was scary.  And the turmoil my soul was experiencing was anything but gentle.  All those fears, insecurities, anger, compassion, love, joy were best left napping in the shade while I floated in the pool of status quo.  Or so I thought. 

 

I worked through some of my tears and some of my fears that afternoon but I still left the room with trepidation, willing to stick with it but not sure for how long.  That was over a decade ago.  Learning more about the psychological and physiological effects of what happens during meditation (which Thomas Keating and others call divine therapy) helped me realized that I what I was experiencing was normal, or at least normal for many who step onto this path. 

 

I realize now that when I said I wanted to be normal, what I really meant was that I wanted to stay asleep.  And some rainy mornings that still doesn't seem like such a bad idea, literally and figuratively.  But then a coconut hits me and I remember the benefits of being awake.  Because without a coconut falling, you can't have coconut cake.

 

 

 

 

 

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*  bodhicitta - "enlightened mind;" an awakening of a felt and lasting compassion; felt need to  

    replace others suffering with bliss

 

** vajra - the Sanskrit word for both thunderbolt and diamond; a symbolic ritual object that  

     symbolizes both the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible  

     force)

 

Commas, Conjunctions and Being Present

Call the Periods Call the Commas by Kalli Dakos from If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand:  Poems about School (Simon and Schuster)

Call the doctors Call the nurses Give me a breath of
air I've been reading all your stories but the periods
aren't there Call the policemen Call the traffic guards
Give me a STOP sign quick Your sentences are running
when they need a walking stick Call the commas Call
the question marks Give me a single clue Tell me
where to breathe with a punctuation mark or two


Last night I had a dream about punctuation.  Actually it was a dream about lack of punctuation.  I was listening to critique from a writing professional (editor, agent, professor, something along those lines) who sat me down and told me I tended to jump from one idea or phrase to another too quickly and that my writing would benefit from learning how to properly use commas and periods in order to give myself and my reader the opportunity to pause and take a breath.  Case in point:  the previous sentence.

And while it may be a bit frenetic, at least my example demonstrating the need for commas isn't nearly as sinister as the one seen in the illustration below:

That's one 30 Minute Meal I don't want to try.

 

I remember in my dream agreeing with the editor/teacher/agent woman, confessing that it wasn't just in my writing that I needed to learn this lesson.  So when I awoke this morning and my thoughts started spinning,  I forced myself to think about conjunctions and ellipses . . . commas, and periods. 

Part of this processing of learning to be in the present moment is trying to dismantle the internal programs that lure my thoughts down the path to explore future scenarios or revisit the past to have a poke around.  Most of the great spiritual teachers I've studied-- Jesus, Buddha, Rumi, Mary Poppins (the books as well as the movie)-- remind me that it's all about being in the present moment. 

 

 



"Stay awake," Mary sang to Jane and Michael .  Alas, they didn't listen and then 

that whole fiasco at the bank happened because Michael acted out of a place of fear.

But that's another post for another day.



 

 

Back to punctuation and conjunctions.  Too often when something happens, good or bad, I want to turn a single event into a compound sentence with compound emotions and attachments rather than just letting whatever stand PERIOD.  I add and to move it into the future or but to try to make sense of what has occurred.  Even ellipses create a sense of expectation that nudges me out of being fully present and show I'm waiting for something to unfold . . .

  

 

Just like the advice I received about my writing in my dream, as I go through my daily life I need to be aware of the moments that call for a pause, and those moments that stand alone.  Period. 

Waking up with Rumi

Ode 314 by Rumi trans. by Coleman Barks from Like This: 43 Odes (The Windrush Press)
Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
I you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep.

Trying to wake up . . .

Such Singing in the Wild Branches by Mary Oliver from Owls and Other Fantasies (Beacon Press)
It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.


One way I know spring is here is that I wake up in the morning to the sound of birdsong-- a cardinal on the back fence, a flock of robins searching for breakfast under the lingering leaves on the ground, a lone duck flying over the house on its way to Rock Creek Park.   I listen and I remain tucked in my bed, firmly earth bound, slowly trading sleep for waking.

A few weeks ago I was listening to a radio show on consciousness.  The host was interviewing a philosophy professor who said when she passes her students on campus she grabs them and asks, "Are you awake?"  Startled, they generally reply "yes" without thinking about it too hard, however when she asks them if they were awake before she met them, they're not quite sure. 

Today is one of those days I feel as if I've been drifting through the hours unaware, asleep.  I need someone to grab me and ask, "Are you awake?" Or maybe I need to open the door and listen for the birdsong before it floats away into the twilight.

A Poem and a PSA for International Women's Day

The Laughter of Women by Lisel Mueller from Alive Together:  New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press)

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

I returned home late last night from a retreat at the beach where there was a lot of laughter of women but that's not the reason I chose this poem for today.  Today is International Women's Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of women while at the same time recognizing how many of our sisters around the world are still struggling to ensure the most basic human rights. 

It wasn't really all that long ago that women in the US were battling for their rights.  I found it really interesting after the inauguration in January that a lot of my Facebook friends-- gay men and people of color-- were lauding the "from Selma to Stonewall" line from the president's speech but leaving out the part about Seneca Falls.  And it wasn't just my friends on Facebook, I heard the media doing it as well.  I realized in talking with some people of various ages and backgrounds that it wasn't an intentional slight on most people's part.  Many had just never heard of Seneca Falls and had no point of reference so they simply left it out of the quote. 

So if you haven't heard about Seneca Falls, you can read about it here.  And if you're ever in the DC area and want to explore the history of women's progress towards equality, I highly recommend a visit to the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum. 

Okay, that's the end of my public service announcement for the day.  I'm off to laugh in honor of all the women who have laughed before me. 

Spring Soul Cleaning

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I've written before about poems like the one above that have been used so many times in workshops, retreats, meetings, that they've lost their meaning for me.  This Rumi poem was one of them until this week when I finally reread it for the first time in over a year.  It was as if The Guesthouse had been renovated and I could appreciate it again in a new way.

In the past I've always focused on that idea of how I can be open to those emotions and situations that I don't necessarily want to entertain, much less welcome.  This time, however, it was the idea of making space for new delight that really spoke to me.  Even though it's said that nature abhors a vacuum, I've come to realize that rather than rushing into redecorate when a corner of my soul has been swept clean.  I need some time to sit with that empty space, make sure all the vestiges of clutter are really gone, that I'm still not attached to the old stuff that used to be present before I can really be open to the new delight on the horizon. 

I feel like maybe I'm in that season of new delight.  The lemony scent of my previously polished soul is fading and now the empty space is finally ready.  For what, I'm not sure.  I'm waiting to see what new arrival tomorrow morning brings.

How about you?  What's going on in your guesthouse?  Is it a time of welcoming?  Cleaning?  Awareness?  Delight?

Howling, stirring, lurking

Wind by Ted Hughes from Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

 

Last night the wind picked up and howled around the house like a pack of hungry wolves. This morning when I woke up the clouds were pressing down on the sea compressing the light into a ribbon of illumination.   

I love to watch the effects of the wind on the landscape and sky. It always amazes me how at times it can whip loose clothes, hair, leaves, trash can lids into a frenzy yet the clouds sit stonily in an expanse of blue sky.  At other times, the air on the ground is stoic and still while the clouds race across the horizon like it's field day in the heavens. 

I'm reminded of the movement of the Spirit in my life and in the world.  At times I'm keenly aware of its presence, stirring things up, uprooting, lashing, howling, creating noise and chaos and movement.  Then there are those seasons of my life where things appear tranquil and still on the surface yet when I look back I can see the Universe was hard at work in ways I was unaware of at the time. 

It makes me wonder what's happening behind the clouds, under the sea, in the dark recesses of my soul today . . .

 

 

 

Ebb and Flow and Noticing the Turning Point

The Spring Sea Rising by Yosa Buson
The spring sea rising
and falling, rising
and falling all day.


The idea of ebb and flow has been on my mind a lot lately.  Those rhythms of nature that are echoed in our lives . . . abundance and scarcity, busyness and stillness, coming and going, sound and silence. 

Beside the sea I look out the window as I write and try to pay attention to when the tide is rising and receding but never quite catch that time of turning.  It's often the same way with my life.  I don't notice the waves creeping in until the water is around my ankles.  Part of this practice of paying attention is trying to be aware of when those sea changes are happening so I can consciously decide whether or not to stand and let them wash over me or move to higher ground.