More Evidence - Part 2

2.

Where are you when you’re not thinking?

Frightening, isn’t it?

Where are you when you’re not feeling anything?

Oh, worse!

Except for faith and imagination, nature is that hard fortress you can’t get out of.

Some person are captive to love, other would make the beloved a captive. Which one are you?

As we travel through Guyana, conversations frequently turn to experiencing birds in the wild that in our home countries are kept in cages, often with harm, suffering, and death as a consequence.  There is no doubt that humans love their birds, but in so doing, they make the beloved a captive. What would it look like if instead we were bound by love instead of being the binders?

Perhaps I would not even be here to hear the sound of the White Bell Bird.  I would not be using the earth’s resources to travel so far to behold beauty and to save it.  Instead I would be at home with a simple bell calling me to meditation, to awakening, and to liberation.  I would be swooning with every sunrise that lights the grandeur of the tall pines in the oak hammock.  Yet it is the beloved birds that bind me and bring me to these places in Latin America to be with them, and perhaps contribute if I can.  I am ever captive, and the captor.

We go through our days, with cages around us and the door open. 

We can step out into freedom, or we can lure others in with us.

Which will you do this day?

Four Sonnets - Part 2

2.

The kingfisher hurrahs from a branch above the river.

Under it’s feet is a fish that will swim no more,

That has its story, for another time perhaps.

Now it is the bird’s, pounding the fish then hulking it down its open beak…

Thought does not create the soul, not entirely, but it plays its part.

Meanwhile the bird is flashy body and the fish was flashy body and each

Fulfills what it is, remember little and imagines less.

And thus the day passes into darkness undamaged.

The fish, slippery and delicious,

The kingfisher, so quick, so blue.

Out on the river last night there were two kinds of fishers; the birds of which the blue racous Ringed Kingfisher streaks by and then the Amazona Kingfisher, green as emerald.  Both loop in and out of and then over the water to low lying branches.  Out on the water are also two of boat guides throwing lures into the bow lake of the Rupununi River, again and again, until at last they come up with two Peacock Bass which will be cooked in an outdoor kitchen for our dinner tonight.

Who am I to say that either fisher is wrong or not beautiful, though damage to flesh and rivers comes as does the darkness.

Swinging in the hammock under the sparking stars, a stomach content with delicious bass, I wonder how to live with nature, rightly, graciously, abundantly.  If I had feathers, would these long nights be any easier?

What parts of your humanity do you cherish?

Lark Ascending - Back from Guyana

I am now back from Guyana, and this my first morning, spent some time looking at the pictures that do no real justice to the beauty there.  Two in particular are my favorites - Kaieteur Falls and a pair of Red and Green Macaws flying in front of the falls.  They are rising in the cloudy mists of the thunderous water.  As so frequently, such a coincidence that Mary's poem is of birds rising to the clouds. So I include those pictures here for you.  The rest of the poems that will finish out this 15.5 months of Mary's poems, were all written while in Guyana.

Lark Ascending

galloped up into the  morning air

then floated

a long way

whispering, I imagine,

to the same mystery

I try to speak to

down here. ...

if I could

carry a message of thanks

to the doors of the clouds.

I don't know whether it would be

of the or the mind. I know

it's the poem I have yet to make

There are so many ways to give thanks - poets do so with their words, birds perhaps in their own way with their songs, and children with their giggling runs.  Writing, singing, laughing - these are but just three ways to live the day in gratitude.  I imagine there are thousands of ways.  Here are some of mine:

Looking up at the stars and smiling

Bowing to the trees

Kissing the ground

Hugging a person

Identifying a bird species

Biking instead of driving the car

Writing this blog

What are some of your ways of giving thanks?

I Worried

I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direct, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not, how shall

I correct it?

Was I right or wrong...

Will I ever be able to sing...

Is my eyesight fading....

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing

And give it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

I imagine that all over the world, minds awake with worry, often long before the sun rises and long before enough rest has been gained.  Just this morning I was up in the wee hours, thinking of final arrangements for my trip to Guyana. 

What I wonder is that beyond worrying there exist greater possibilites of what we could do with this day, and all our days.  First off - learn a new song and a new dance step.  Second, go outside and try to outcompete even the melodious thrasher who waltzes over the ground.  Third, repeat as necessary and as often as possible throughout day.

Let us join together and vow to drop one "worry" off our list, and replace it with praise.

How many days have you spent worrying about something, and have missed the chance for greater possibility?

Trees

Heaven knows how many

trees I climbed when my body

was still in the climbing way,

how many afternoons, especially

windy ones, I sat

perched on a limb that

rose and fell with every invisible

blow....

every leafy height

a happiness that came without even trying.....

Now I walk under them-

the household of such tall, kind sisters.

Yesterday, thanks to a reader here, I read a recent interview of Mary Oliver. She spoke of her troubled childhood when she has suffered abuse.  I can see her seeking to escape this, and climbing a tree so that she counteracted the violence done to her by beholding beauty within and without from the lofts of trees.  She sought to transcend the world below.

In the interview she spoke of the happiness and healing she had found in her older age. Though no longer a tree climber, I believe, or so project my own life journey on to hers, that she feels truly like she belongs on this world, walking with all beings as her siblings.

May we this day not feel like we need to climb over any body or being, but call them family, kindly.

Who are your siblings?

The Living Together

The spirit says:

What gorgeous clouds.

The body says: Good,

The crops need rain.

The spirit says:

Look at the lambs frolicking.

The body says:

When’s the feast?...

The spirit says:  Body,

How can we live together?

The body says:  Bricks and mortar

And a back door.

In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, we see that the fundamental needs of protection, security and nuturturance are below the higher needs of spiritual development. If the people are not fed and safe, it is hard for them to ponder the beauty of the clouds and the inherent worth and dignity of others.  Notice I say hard, not impossible. 

It is a difficult task though to embody spirit in our daily lives. Aren’t we always in some ways, or at least perceiving so, under threat or at risk of not having enough?  So we look to the lambs to slaughter them, our relationships, our communities, and our earth.

May we look to this day, and not sneak out the back door to meet our desires and our fears, but go boldly through the front door, and leave the door to our hearts open as we journey forward together.

Do you have tension between your body and spirit?  What is spirit?

April

I wanted to speak at length about

The happiness of my body and the

Delight of my mind for it was

April, a night, a full moon and-

But something in myself for maybe

From somewhere other said: not too

Many words, please, in the muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

I am at the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach giving a workshop of Nonviolent Communication. In my presentation I encourage people to use as few words as possible to keep the chance for connection and understanding alive.  Perhaps our brains do best in about 40 word segments.  Mary’s poem today is 51 words, just about right. 

It doesn’t take many words really to say, “Look, there goes beauty.”  “Hey, beauty is dwindling.”  “My heart hurts.”  “Now let’s do something about it.” 

What will you do “about it” – sing?  Change?  Open yourself to death and suffering?

Tom Dancers Gift of a Whitebark Pine Cone

You never know what opportunity is going to travel to you, or through  you.

Once a friend game me a small pine cone-one of a few he found in the scat

of a grizzly in Utah maybe, or Wyoming. I took it home

and did what I supposed he was sure I would do-

I ate it, thinking

how it had traveled through that rough and holy body.  It was crisp and sweet.

It was almost a prayer without words.  My gratitude to you, Tom Dancer,

 for this gift of the world I adore so much and want to belong to.  And thank you too, great bear.

I often aspire to be like Mary Oliver, but in today's poem she surpasses who I ever imagined myself to be. She ate seeds from bear scat.

Really?  Did she really?  Does she really do this and all the other things in her poems, or does she write poems from her imagination?

Who knows the truth of magic in our modern day shamans, but surely her power comes from somewhere. So why not through the leavings of bears?

As a veterinarian I think of disease transmission and imagine her boiling the heck out of that pine cone before ingesting it.

But perhaps I over estimate the need for sterility in this procedure, or in any other I undertake today. 

Maybe, just maybe, I will roll around in some shit today left behind from some wild being in the woods, smelling like I belong to the family of things, smiling like I know it.

What would you take in from the wild as food for your soul?

On the Beach

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

 to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves

equally to hug another body

As a biologist, and a veterinarian, I have seen amazing variety in how animals express their bonding, gender, and sexuality, and I am learning all the time how this is true too in the human animal.  Just last night I saw a program about transgendered people, and a few years back I married a transgender couple and gave a sermon on the topic at my congregation.  Bodies and minds are such fascinating, awesome conglomerations of physics, physiology, chemistry, and biology, and then the macro-output comes out as one body hungering for the touch and affection of another in apparent infinite possibility, much of it beauty beyond words. I say "much of it" because harm can be mixed in with the body's powerful emotions and desires. So much of our ever present subconscious wiring motivates us, and also evades our understanding resulting in actions that are regretable. I speak of deceit, physical harm, and sexual abuse.

There is risk to responding to the body's intent, however I for one am glad that we live in age where the light of understanding "human" has shed a light on how to nurture healthy relationships. We know that we are capable of great love and remarkable companionship, as well as tragic actions and mournful  decisions.

I pray that today I, and others, will choose love and beauty over tragedy.

What choices are before you this day?

Evidence

I.

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

2.

There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.

How old pain, for example, can stall us at the threshold of function….

Still friends, consider stone, that is without the fret of gravity, and water that is without anxiety. 

And the pine trees that never forget their recipe for renewal. 

And the female wood duck who is looking this way and that way for her children. And the snapping turtle who is looking this way and that way also. This is the world. 

And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles. 

3. 

I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by this adventure--your life--what would do for you? 

And, where are you, with your ears bagged down as if with packets of sand? Listen. We all have much more listening to do. Tear the sand away. And listen. The river is singing. …

For myself, I have walked in these woods for

More than forty years, and I am the only

thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.

Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the

Foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into some

fresh morning and look around and hear myself

crying out:  "The house of money is falling! The house of money is falling! The weeds are rising! The weeds are rising!"

In this day today, do you imagine there will be much evidence? Evidence for what?

Consider the lilies then and the birds as Mary does.  She's been reading the Christian Scriptures that one! (Matthew 6:25-34)

I read it much like she does.  There is so much contradiction in the passage, which points to the opposed tensions in life, we are left to turn to the infallible, but which can be hidden. So we go through our days as sleuths to discover. What you ask?  More importantly, how,  when we know that we are marching towards the point of being used up?  Or like the ducklings, hunted by pain for the good of the world?

I don't have the answer of how we listen for the evidence all around us.  

I only know that beauty is everywhere. It's my job to find it and praise the world accordingly, and to respond to the glory of every being with in the world, which are also within me.

What evidence do you long for today?

Almost a Conversation

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding is all body expression-

he swims like the sleekest fish,

he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.

Little by little he trusts my eyes

and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.

I admire his whiskers and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life is clear.

He does not own a computer.

He imagines the river will last forever.

He does not envy the dry house I live in.

He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.

He wonders, morning after morning, that the river is so cold and fresh and alive, and still

I don't jump in.

I have spoken often of the Ichetucknee, a spring fed river that in the summer is so cold that you have to clamp down on all fear and just jump in.  If one does so, there are great rewards.

Under the surface there are the sleek fish that with grace, you can sometimes touch.

At the surface are the croaking limpkins and the murmuring wood ducks who do not startle as you swim by them, listening.

Above the surface the Osprey look at you and you imagine you might fool them into thinking that you are a fish, so wondrous it feels to be part of the river for hour after hour.  Or perhaps the eagle could mistake you for a bird and take you away from all your trouble with firm talons.

Finally near the last bend is where the otters can be seen.  Yes, there is awe and gratitude, but I admit to discontent.  For I want to dive with them, root around for mussels with them, play with them, touch them, and be them.  It will not happen and soon one must exit the river at the end of the run.

It's all I can do to not drive back up to the entry point and jump in again. But what good would that accomplish?  For at least another two hours I could do  more than imagine that I am one with this world, my body would confirm that I am.

With this knowing, would not this river last forever?  If all humans could shed their clothes and join our brothers and sisters - in form or in dream - might we just forget our envy  and our religions? 

What a site - middle aged naked women recognizing each otter individually and seeing themselves.  How the people would marvel.

Go ahead and look, I've got whiskers too!

Where don't you jump in?

We Shake With Joy

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

Housed as they are in the same body.

Last night I had an enjoyable evening discussing how we might take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.  I am in Puerto Rico teaching Nonviolent Communication and my inspiring dinner companion is Psychologist, Animal Therapy Facilitator, and President of the Puerto Rico Alliance for Companion Animals, Dr. Ursula Aragunde Kohl.  We spoke of how our learning comes through trial, pain, and grief.  Not all learning of course comes to us on this path, but in my life, the really important learnings of how to love and stay engaged with others with an open heart have come through much pain.  I wondered out loud to her if then what my days would look like if I were to be fully present to others and to life. I’d probably spend half the day sobbing, and the other dancing like a mad person in public.  

Such extremes in the same day!

What “extremes” do you mix in the same day, or the same body?

One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day

1. 
  
Fat, 
black, slick, 
galloping in the pitch 
of the waves, in the pearly 
  
fields of the sea, 
they leap toward us, 
they rise, sparkling, and vanish, and rise sparkling, 
they breathe little clouds of mist, they lift perpetual smile, 
  
they slap their tails on the waves, grandmothers and grandfathers 
enjoying the old jokes, 
they circle around us, 
they swim with us - 
  
2. 
  
a hundred white-sided dolphins 
on a summer day, 
each one, as God himself 
could not appear more acceptable 
  
a hundred times, 
in a body blue and black threading through 
the sea foam, 
and lifting himself up from the opened 
  
tents of the waves on his fishtail, 
to look 
with the moon of his eye 
into my heart, 
  
3. 
  
and find there 
pure, sudden, steep, sharp, painful 
gratitude 
that falls - 
  
I don't know - either 
unbearable tons 
or the pale, bearable hand 
of salvation 
  
on my neck, 
lifting me 
from the boat's plain plank seat 
into the world's 
  
4. 
  
unspeakable kindness. 
It is my sixty-third summer on earth 
and, for a moment, I have almost vanished 
into the body of the dolphin, 
  
into the moon-eye of God, 
into the white fan that lies at the bottom of the sea 
with everything 
that ever was, or ever will be, 
  
supple, wild, rising on flank or fishtail - 
singing or whistling or breathing damply through blowhole 
at top of head.  Then, in our little boat, the dolphins suddenly gone, 
we sailed on through the brisk, cheerful day. 

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How do your joy poems grow?

With dolphin swims and human whims

And so my own heart grows.

I once swam with dolphins. They were captives in a tourist park near Cancun Mexico.  I kept telling myself that I wasn't part of the oppressive system that ruled these wild ones for the whims of tourists. I was there as a veterinarian consultant and was offered a chance to be with these sea-going mammals as a gift.  Into the pool I went and the dolphins barely acknowledged me as each put a nose to my foot, and then propelled me through the water. It was a photogenic moment, a picture taken that I've not seen in years.

I wonder what happed to those dolphins?  Are they still pushing round tourists through their water pens?  Shame arises with me over my past participation in such a scheme when I see dolphins playing around the coasts of Florida now. They seem so free, so wild, so themselves, and hence so much of God before me. 

I wonder where else I have captured joy, and therefore turned from God before me, in me, all around me.

They who bind to themselves a joy

Do the winged life destroy

But they who kiss the joy as it flies

Live in eternity's sunrise (adapted from William Blake)

            

Red Bird Explains Himself

Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart..

Mary, you are the brilliance and the song.  You bag of tricks includes obedience to work, to paper and pen, to breaking the heart open like an egg - but what delicious sweetness you cook up with your words!

I will stay with you and listen.

For the song of my heart I hear more clearly in your song - you help me grow, love, and weep.

You are both of this earth and of the ethereal vision that beauty resides here with me, down in the mud, and over and around me, bathing me in light and feathers with each rising sun. 

You were sent to this life to teach us our hearts.

I bow in gratitude to you - your feathered soul now flying with mine.

What does redbird, Mary, and this day teach you?