Easing into the New Year

Winter is the Best Time by David Budbill from While We've Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press)
Winter is the best time
to find out who you are.

Quiet, contemplation time,
away from the rushing world,

cold time, dark time, holed-up
pulled-in time and space

to see that inner landscape,
that place hidden and within.


I love soup and sweaters, long books and even longer nights, the way the stars sparkle like ice in a winter sky and the blinding sun reflecting off a crusty layer of newly fallen snow.  Winter is the best time.  And in this threshold time between the first day of Christmas and the last, I often find myself  quiet contemplation time that David Budbill mentions in his poem. 

Often the occasion for my contemplation is the turning of the year.  My days of making resolutions and indulging in too much champagne are behind me.  Now I prefer to spend the days leading up to New Year's Eve reflecting on the year that has past and looking forward to the year that is on the horizon. 

This year, I'm leading my first ever "virtual" New Year's Eve retreat.  It's a way for people who are looking to move mindfully into the new year to do just that . . . reflect upon 2012, take some time to be open to the present moment, and vision for the future.  There are reflection exercises, questions to ponder and of course, plenty of poetry to guide you on the journey.  I'll also be sending periodic e-mails to participants Sunday morning through Tuesday afternoon with additional poems/prayers/questions and we'll have a virtual check-in/sharing time on Facebook at 2 pm on Sunday and Monday for any who want to share their experiences in community. 

If you're looking for a different way to begin this year, I invite you to join us!  Click here for more information or to register. 

Superficially Autumn, Deeply Liminal

SONG FOR AUTUMN by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume II  (Beacon Press) In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep

inside their bodies? And don’t you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

 

Okay so technically it's not deep fall, although it is superficially fall here in the mid-Atlantic states.  For the past month the red tinge has crept from the tips to the base of the leaves on the dogwood tree in my yard while the cherry in our neighbors' yard is embarrassingly bare.  Maybe all the crazy storms we had this summer made its leaves want to jump ship and feel the comfort of the earth early this year. 

I've welcomed the early taste of autumn myself, with open arms and open windows.  I fall asleep to the song of the crickets and wake up snuggled underneath the comforter after nights of fairy-tale like dreams that have drifted in past the curtains on the back of the north wind.  I put sweaters on in the morning and drink a cup of tea or coffee with cinnamon in it to warm me up but by the afternoon I stand in front of the open freezer in my shirt sleeves to get ice for my water.

Autumn is my favorite season and it can't get here for good soon enough for me.  Yet yesterday at my favorite farmers' market I was  reminded of what a liminal time of year this is, an epilogue to summer and prologue to autumn at the same time.  Produce tables were laden with cucumbers, zucchini and peppers as well as kale, beets, and apples.  A smattering of melons and tomatoes were holding on as the winter squash and broccoli jostled for table space at a few booths.  I bought kale and acorn squash to make the first white bean and winter squash stew of the season and tomatoes and basil for a farewell to summer caprese salad.

Many people I know have remarked that this summer was over in the blink of an eye and I feel the same way.  I have a hard time remembering what activity filled my days from June - August, nor can I recall the sensations that usually signal summer-- the smell of newly mown grass, the taste of a ripe tomato warmed by the sun, the heat rising from the pavement scorching the soles of my bare feet.  Maybe I didn't actually experience these things this year.  Did I go outside barefoot?  Was my window open on every other Tuesday morning when the grass was cut? Perhaps not but more likely I just wasn't paying attention.  And as much as I love autumn, that realization is enough to make me want to hold on tightly to these last few threads of summer in the hope I can follow them back to some recollection of the past couple months.  

Liminal times are like open doorways that invite me to a particular kind of mindfulness where I am aware that I'm moving from one way of being to another.  One foot is in the past and one foot is in the future, and in the midst of the two is the present.  I can put my weight on one foot or another, superficially living in the past or the future, but true balance comes only when I live deeply in the moment. 

 

A Prayer in My Boot

A PRAYER IN MY BOOT
by Naomi Shihab Nye from 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Harper Collins)

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep


Yesterday I confessed to not being able to live in the moment lately.  Naomi Shihab Nye offers a good remedy for that.  By carrying a prayer in my boot (or, ballet flat as is more often the case), ordinary encounters become opportunities to pause for a moment of mindfulness, gratitude, grace . . .

For what are you carrying a prayer in your boot today?

Mary Oliver Monday - Morning Poem

MORNING POEM
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One  (Beacon Press)

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


I'm usually one of those people who, as Mary Oliver describes in this poem, happily swims through the day.  Lately, however, I feel like I've been trudging, stumbling, lumbering along the path.  My imagination isn't flitting around from idea to idea like a sprightly sparrow or curious magpie; it's either pulling apart the past or looming over the future like a bird of prey. 

I try to remind myself to listen for what the beast inside me is shouting it wants and needs, to look for the prayers heard and answered.  The world isn't just created every morning, it's created every minute. 


How are you daring to be happy?  Daring to pray? 

A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life                                                                                                                                            by Baron Wormser from Scattered Chapters (Sarabande Books)

What a person desires in life
   is a properly boiled egg.
This isn't as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
   the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
   banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
   and furnaces and factories,
   of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
   of women in kerchiefs and men with
   sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
   and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
   of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
   stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
   the ace in any argument for God.
    Only God could have imagined from
   nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
   when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
   knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
   ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
   take it out on you, no dictators
   posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
   the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
   of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
   that came from nowhere.


A few weeks ago I began a practice that just happened to coincide with the beginning of Lent, but is a habit I hope to continue.  Each night before I go to bed, I take the small flowered notebook that rests on my night stand and write the headings, "The Small Step" and "The Small Gratitude."  Under each heading, I then record a few words:  worked on website, sorted out story idea, snow flurries on a Monday afternoon, a conversation with a kindred spirit.

The Small Step is to remind me that no matter how unproductive I may feel as a day comes to its close, chances are there was something I managed to do that inched me closer towards my goals. 

The Small Gratitude is also a prompt for keeping things in perspective, but it also makes me more mindful of these moments of gratitude as they occur.  When I initially started the practice, I had to review my entire day to try to recall one small think for which I was thankful.  Now, it seems as if there are several clamoring to be written down each evening. 

One of the things I love about Baron Wormser's poem is that it reminds me that even a small gratitude isn't necessarily as small as it appears at first glance.  Behind something as simple as a boiled egg, there is a story waiting to be told.  Gratitude for a simple snowflake can turn into an avalanche of thanksgiving if we look deeper.

How do you practice gratitude?

David Whyte Wednesday - What to Remember When Waking

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

by David Whyte from The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press)

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

Waking is an interesting process.  When I was working a 9-5 job in an office not located in the corner of my bedroom, I would be wide awake and engaged in the day as soon as I opened my eyes.  Whether my body sprung or oozed out of bed, my brain would start scrolling through the "to do" list like the roller on a player piano and I'd be caught up in a pre-programmed melody. 

Now that I'm the composer of my days, waking is a different process.  My eyes still tend to open as the first rays of dawn creep through my bedroom window; but rather than rushing into the future of musts, shoulds and needs, my mind lingers in that liminal place between sleeping and waking.  I try to recall the secrets of my sleep-- the images, stories and sensations that I've experienced in the dark so I can carry a touchstone of that wildly imaginative and wonder-full world into my day.  Or, as David Whyte says, "To remember the other world in this world is your true inheritance." 

For me, remembering this other world lets me look at the blank page as something full of possibility rather than just another thing that must be filled before the day ends and the whole routine starts over again.  True, there are things that I have "to do," but somehow those become less tedious impositions and more moments of mindfulness when I am able to remember.


What does the blank page hold for you today? 

Tomorrow morning, try to see what you remember when waking.

A New Look and Landscape

[I decided I wanted a new landscape for the blog so thus the changes to the design and color scheme.  Now on to your regularly scheduled poem . . .]

LANDSCAPE

by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems, Volume One (Beacon Press)

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that

they have no tongues, could lecture

all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience?  Isn’t it clear

the black oaks along the path are standing

as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around

the pond, thinking:  if the doors of my heart

ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now

the crows break off from the rest of the darkness

and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like

their lives to be, and imagined

their strong, thick wings.

Mary Oliver is another poet who notices things.  Her poems are practices in mindfulness-- lessons in how the landscape around her sheds light on the landscape of her soul.  Her starting point is a state of attentiveness. Billy Collins reminds us that one day we will die, so now is the time to pay attention, Mary Oliver reminds us that when we stop paying attention, we cease being alive.  Open eyes and open hearts are our natural state of being.  Like the crows, however, some nights I find myself thinking that I'd like to be more mindful, more attentive, more awake . . . and hopefully in the morning I am. 

What lessons are you learning from the landscape around you?

What is keeping the doors of your heart open in this moment?