Swimming, One Day in August - November 22, 2010

It is now, I said,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit

among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much

I thought my heart would break.

I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon

to the sea

which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.

Except that it will be time, again,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

Wendell Berry has a poem that mirrors Mary's: The Peace of Wild Things:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Like Mary, I go to the sea to be held in the waves so that my spirit may heal.  It is as if I am in the womb of life, rocked gently by the tides of eternity.  Except while in the waves I find that I am never quite relaxed, for I am on the lookout for the rogue wave, the shark, the jelly fish, and the rip tide.  Like Wendell, I also go to inland water.  While there, such as swimming in my favorite body of water, the Ichetucknee, I also do not relax totally, for there are water moccasins about and though rarely seen, there might just be a large alligator stalking me. 

Am I just an anxious sort?  Or am I gifted with a true sense of reality, knowing that ease and peace are only temporary?  I suppose the answer is yes to both.  For I am a wild thing, evolved to be ever vigilant for finding food, and not becoming food.

I am also human and believe that through intention and practice I can still the brain's primitive anxiety as I meld into the world.  Even though I am destined to be some being's lunch, target, or nutrient I can come into a state of presence that says there is no me that is not river or gator.  Let me run today towards fierce predator or drowning surge so that for a time I may be the peace I wish in the world.

Where do you go to ease your spirit?  Or is it possible?

Visiting the Graveyard

When I think of death

It is a bright enough city,

And every year more faces there

Are familiar

But not a single one

Notices me,

Though I long for it,

And when they talk together,

Which they do

Very quietly,

It’s in an unknowable language-

I can catch the tone

But understand not a single word-

And when I open my eyes

There’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.

There are the stones.

In the silence of this retreat I hear death speaking to me. There’s the creak in my knees as I unfold my legs again and again, rising and falling into the sitting cushion. The wind in the Spanish Moss whispers of times past and times yet to come. The clank of dishes, the cough, the sigh, the bell, the clapper, and my own urine splash and tinkle in the bathroom, all these death and life. The chickadee, perky with her dark cap, won’t be alive in a few more years, so short this species’ span of life. But now I hear her high in the oak, already dead before she hatched. I wish I could speak this language. So I sit, I strain, I listen. After each mediation I open my eyes. I see the beautiful tree, a grave marker on my heart, breaking it open, weighing me down with stones, until I am so deep in the earth that I am one with all.

Where and how does the language of death come to you?

There is a Place Beyond Ambition - October 18, 2010

When the flute players

Couldn’t think of what to say next

They laid down their pipes,

Then they lay down themselves

Beside the river

And just listened.

Some of them, after a while

Jumped up

And disappeared back inside the busy town.

But the rest-

so quiet, not even thoughtful-

are still there,

still listening.

Today is a day "off" for my spouse and myself, as is every Monday unless we are traveling. I look forward to it all week long. On this day we slow down and have the chance to listen to each other, and to the world. Sometimes these days are lazy, and other times they are packed full of stimulating thoughts and activities - much akin to the movie, "Ferris Buehler's Day Off." Today we went birding and just meandered on the trail taking in all the birds and the lovely people watching the birds. This day is our sabbath, a day of rest. By Tuesday morning though we are gearing up for the week and during this time we do struggle to listen and be open to what is, while we are also actors in the world - doing. My goal, my wish, my dream, and my hope is that we listen as we do, and grow my faith and skill in the most difficult action of all - the great "doing" is the "undoing" of our ego by listening.

One of my favorite stories regarding doing nothing is that of Lazy An. . Lazy An was a monk that appeared do nothing all day but sit under a blossom tree and smile. The villagers thought he was crazy or lazy. But what they didn’t notice was his joy in seeing the trees slowly blossom around him and birds alight on his shoulders. So great was his joy that he became a great leader of monks, for as others found through his example permission to be happy and to follow their childhood dreams, they also found that they had an incredible source of energy to care for others.

May this be so, for us all for the sake of all.

How do you "undo" and let go of ambition?

The Place I Want to Get Back To

The Place I Want to Get Back To

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they come
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

There are so many places to get back to:

• The wild ocelot who nuzzled me in Tikal, Guatemala.
• Discovering "Parrot Paradise" where over 200 parrots roosted every night
• The last swim of the year in the Ichetucknee river in September
• My wedding day
• My dream of seeing an Ivory Billed Woodpecker
• Hearing a voice on an airplane that let me know that love was enough/not enough and all there is

There are so many place to get to, and I hesitate to name one because that would seem to jinx the unexpected gift. Union with the companion by merging in love with this earth can come in so many ways in any of our days. I don't want to box out that possibility by boxing in how we may be surprised by love.

The sun rising through the trees says to me, "Here, now, not in the past, not in the future, today, this moment."

May gratitude today open the many doors that invite you to feel at home on this planet, in love, loved, and beloving.

What is your list of "places to get back too?"

Coming to God: First Days

Lord, what shall I do that I

Can’t quiet myself?

Here is the bread, and

Here is the cup, and

I can’t quiet myself.

To enter the language of transformation!

To learn the importance of stillness,

With one’s hands folded!

When will my eyes of rejoicing turn peaceful?

When will my joyful feel grow still?

When will my heart stop its prancing

As over the summer grass?

Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake.

I would climb the highest tree

To be that much closer.

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

Into the world of the invisible,

The inscrutable and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

On a day of no wind,

Bathed in light,

Like the wanderer who has come home at lat

And kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary thing;.

Every motion; even words.

Beyond loving then, there is stillness, emptiness, death. So much of Mary's work points us towards joy, and running towards union with love. At some point though even that is a superficial desire, a strategy to heal ourselves and be whole. How much must we let go? I suppose when a close one dies, we shock our system into contemplating that there is nothing but letting go to be done. It consumes us. Mary loses her poetry and bows down, no longer Mary of words. I lose my birds and bow down, no longer LoraKim of parrots. Ah. Nothing left but bowing and light. So I begin my day, turning to the east, turning over, in a deep bow to the sun.

What do you have left to lose?

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

Oh my gosh, my last posting was about responding to a desperate need for union, or perhaps better said a plea for awareness of the already existing beloved union. My solution was to breathe, to share our lives with this next breath, the only gift we truly have to give and to receive. Then Mary writes this to my heart. Taking in one poem every day I am struck by the story I am retelling of our lives here on this planet. Mary's poems speak to me like a book of Rumi poems, like a book of Koans, like the Bible, like the Talmud, like the Quran, like an African chant, like a Hopi dance., and like a woodpecker's tapping on a tree. All these scriptures knock on the soul's door so that we may open to awareness, and if we just focus with intent, we can retell the stories of our lives based on love, and not on domination and power over others. It doesn't really matter what we choose to help guide us, especially since it seems that guides choose us. And Mary, you have chosen me so that I may with joy greet the sun's rising knowing that the air I take in and that becomes part of my body's molecules comes from the same air you have taken in, that the dinosaurs snorted out, and that Jesus cried. To breathe is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

What does breathing mean to you?

Everything

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don't go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daises and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

You do Mary, you do.

Like you, I want.

I want to make a life that says out plainly what I mean. I want to keep close in my heart both beauty and tragedy. I want to question everything and try to answer nothing - coming to each relationship and every day with an open curiousity. I want my life to be a poem, never far from breathing in wonder and breathing out gratitude. I want a life of faith so that the light of the world is made more brilliant by my gladness. I want everything, and so, want nothing, so that I might be everything.

What do you want?