More Evidence - Part 3

3.

It is salvation if one can step forth from the clutter of one’s mind into that open space-that almost holy space-called work.

Emerson: how the elegance of his language can make me weep over my own inadequacy…

Do you hear the rustle and outcry on the page?

Do you hear it’s longing?...

4. 

Let laugher come to you now and again, that sturdy friend.

The impulse to leap off the cliff, when the body falsely imagines it might fly, may be restrained by reason, also by modesty.  Of the two possibilities, take your choice, and live.

Refuse all cooperation with the heart’s death.

5.

 Sing, if you can sing, and if not still be musical inside yourself.

Yesterday I visited Kaieteur Falls in central Guyana.  Here is the tallest single drop falls in the world.  While there we saw a pair of Red and Green Macaws circle through the rising mist of the falls, their calls echoing down the canyons and down deep in our souls.   


At the head of the falls are immense cliffs, to which we were invited to crawl onto our stomachs and peer over.  In between dizzy spells, I watched the White-collared Swifts approach the falls and then in twos and threes dive straight down the vertical wall of water,  twittering amongst themselves as they left us behind on the cliffs.  I would not be exaggerating to say that we experienced an impulse to follow them, and perhaps we did.  Somehow watching them and the macaws it was as if we ourselves were flying as they, the rainbow rulers and aerobatic champions of the falls.

Let us choose not to be restrained by either modesty or reason, but jump over the edge of perceived separateness so that we may put to death our egos so our hearts may yet live and our spirits at last soar.

What might you choose to day so that your heart may live and your spirit soar?

A River Far Away and Long Ago

The river

Of my childhood,

That tumbled

Down a passage of rocks

And cut-work ferns,

Came here and there

To the swirl

And slowdown

Of a pool

And I say myself-

Oh, clearly-

As I knelt at one-

Then I saw myself

As if carried away,

As the river moved on.

Where have I gone?

Since then

I have looked and looked

For myself,

Not sure

Who I am, or where,

Or, more importantly, why.

It’s okay-

I have had a wonderful life.

Still, I ponder

Where that other is-

Where I landed,

What I thought, what I did,

What small or even maybe meaningful deeds

I might have accomplished

Somewhere

Among strangers,

Coming to them

As only a river can-

Touching every life it meets-

That endlessly kind, that enduring.

The other Mary that is endlessly kind and enduring I see in the deer along the river bank This doe, gentle and mild, may this day be s too fearful to look into her reflection in the pool, for she is on guard for predators. If, we, the prey and predators, were to ponder and slow down, would we see that we flow with life in the form of Ghandi, Jesus, the newborn child, and the mother duck who gives her life over to the snake to protect her eggs? If we were to come upon this river and pause, would we not be tempted to take a leap of faith and jump in? I know I am, and mourn that I hold back.

What would that be like if were to go out our doors today as the sleepy rays of the sun come over the hills, and see the stream of life alive in everything? And then jump in. going where the moment takes us, to strangers, to pain, and to no purpose whatsoever, and in that process we wash the wounds of the world with kindness.

Where would you like to take a leap of faith, and yet hesitate?

The Orchard

I have dreamed

Of accomplishment.

I have fed

Ambition.

I have traded

Nights of sleep

For a length of work.

Lo, and I have discovered

How soft bloom

Turns to green fruit

Which turns to sweet fruit

Lo, and I have discovered

All winds blow cold

At last,

And the leaves,

So pretty, so many,

Vanish,

In the great, black

Packet of time,

In the great, black

Packet of ambition,

And the ripeness

Of the apple

Is its downfall.

This morning I awake to blackness in the town of Tucker, outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m here for a workshop on Restorative Circles. As I awoke, I had a clear image of the good work of my mother. In her middle years she was a quilter. These later years though she mostly sleeps, and when awake, challenges those who care for her and wish for her a better life. She has dementia. The gravity of the years is upon her and she is an apple on the way down. As her Power of Attorney and her Medical Power of Attorney it often falls to me to be the enforcer and persuader for her to make decisions that benefit her, and do not harm her. Many days my discomfort, pain, and loneliness of having her slip away so slowly leaves me judging the worth of myself, her, and the world at large – for surely such sweet blooms should never turn to moldy apples littering the ground.

But her quilts endure. She worked on one quilt a good part of my adolescent, a patchwork of embroidered birds. Later she gave me an appliqué penguin quilt. I have both still and they are used every winter, a little worse for wear. My mother’s brain may be fragmenting into pieces, as will my precious quilts she made for me, and frankly, my body is a little worse for wear. Somehow though as I think of the beauty and warmth of love and care sewn into these quilts I seem at peace. For the pieces of her life will endure in quilt, in me, and in those that come after. There is no way to restore her to her youth, and there will come a time when her quilts are beyond restoring, but life will have come full circle. Thank you mother for your loving work. Thank you all for the work you do.

What is your work and how does it bear fruition?

Introduction to Thirst and Messenger

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Did Mary mean to segue between books ending one with igniting and the other beginning with flame? How did she know that my blog from the day before would speak of being astonished into stillness? Mary, she's in my head and heart. She predicts my life. I have found a faithful companion that speaks of my life's true work - to love, and to speak love. Of course, if it is that basic, how could she not be with me always, as well as the clam and the wren? One quiet, one chattering, both me. All beloved.

What is your life's work?

What I Have Learned So Far - September 5, 2010

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

So much like E. B. White is Mary this morning. He wrote, "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." So like Mary, like E.B. White, we awake torn. So many plans are lit up with the first thought of sun's arising, and then the Barred Owl hoots or I recall a dream last night when two wild Scarlet Macaws flew down to me and invited me to hold them and to stroke their rainbow feathers. I am astonished into stillness, savoring each feeling and vision of that dream. I am in love. It burns. My soul flares with 5 more projects that spark from that dream. Is this what loves brings us to, crazy wild fires that take down the old forests and urge new seeds to grow? In my ignition, I am gone.

How do you balance saving and savoring?

Meanwhile

Lord, my body is not yet a temple,

But only one of your fair fields.

An empty field that nobody wants, at least not yet.

But even here the lily is somewhere,

Sometimes it lifts its head above the grasses,

The daises, the milkweed, the mallow.

And sometimes, like us, it sleeps, or at least

Leans below the blades of the grasses.

Lord, I live as you have made me to live.

I bite hungrily into the peach and the turnip.

I bite, with sorrow, into the calf and the lamb.

I drink the tears of the clouds.

I praise the leaves of the shrub oaks

And the pine trees in their bold coats.

I listen and give thanks to the catbird and the thrush.

Meanwhile, the fox knows where you are.

The bees leave the swamp azalea and fly straight

To the shadow of your face.

Meanwhile my body is rustic and brash.

The world I live in is hedges, and small blossoms.

Lord, consider me, and my earnest work.

A hut I have made, out of the grasses.

Now I build the door, out of all things brash and rustic.

Day and night it is open.

Have you seen it yet, among the grasses?

How it longs for you?

How it tries to shine, like gold?

The very first sermon I ever preached in a Unitarian Universalist church was based on the Christian reading “Consider the Lilies.” In Luke 12: Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!

Mary’s words speak of her doubts, her questioning faith, or perhaps your doubts and mine? Is it possible to work hard enough that we might be accepted, or better said, that we accept that we are not separate from the glorious whole? We are as noble as the lilies, the grasses, the ravens. Perhaps it is not a matter of work, but faith to live as best we can and know underneath our daily paths, or perhaps to the side, is a field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. What are we waiting for? Let’s go lie down in the grass and let the fire of love consume us.

Honey Locust - August 8, 2010

Who can tell how lovely in June is the

honey locust tree, or why

a tree should be so sweet and live

in this world? Each white blossom

on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed-

a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower

holds a flask

of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.

The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy

with gratitude. They are working like farmers. They are as

happy as saints. After awhile the flowers begin to

wilt and drop down into the grass. Welcome

shines in the grass.

Each year I gather

handfuls of blossoms and eat of their mealiness; the honey

melts n my mouth, the seeds make me strong,

both when they are crisps and ripe, and even at the end

when their petals have turned dully yellow.

So it is

if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is

not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams

all the way to the grave.

floating in,

then the scouts going out,

then their coming back, and their dancing-

nothing different

but what happens in our own village.

What pity for the tiny souls

Who are so hopeful, and work so diligently

until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw

Someday, of course, the bear himself

will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.

Nature, under her long green hair,

has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even

when there are many

as people, in a town or a village.

And what, moreover, is catastrophe?

Is it the sharp sword of God,

or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear

blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,

slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,

and saunters on.

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.

As a child I loved the game kick-the-can. When the seeker would tire of the game or when the seeker had been defeated, we would yell All-y all-y in come free which means that all those still out could come in without receiving a penalty or losing the game. This phrase comes from "All ye, all ye outs in free." So to Mary, I say, all-y, ally-in come free. She as has me pinned to the mat, my heart clinched in an inescapable hold. I cry uncle and give myself over to absolute reality - that my hurt and suffering is due to some other wild body loving life. How can one live with such glad interconnectedness? Drifting I suppose in the heaven, no purpose, no agenda, nothing but breath and light. I lose myself but win the game of life and death. Mary has defeated this seeker.

How do you give yourself over to that which is greater than yourself?

White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

I wonder what it is that I will accomplish today

If anything can be called that marvelous word.

It won’t be

My kind of work, which is only putting words on a page,

The pencil

Haltingly calling up

The light of the world,

Yet nothing appearing on paper half as bright

As the mockingbird’s verbal hilarity

In the still unleafed shrub in the churchyard-

Or the white heron rising over the swamp and the darkness,

His yellow eyes and broad wings wearing

The light of the world in the light of the world-

Ah yes, I see him.

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

Okay, I’m flat out disagreeing with Mary, although given the paradoxical nature of poems; she probably secretly led me into agreeing with her. I do believe that the poem on the paper is the light of the world as is the poet. The heron over the swamp is no more beautiful than the humans I saw in the hydrotherapy pool this morning. I’m at a resort/convention hotel in San Diego and after working out I limped over to the Jacuzzi to lessen the ache of my knee. In one corner of the Jacuzzi is a middle aged woman, her body bulging out of her suit. In another corner is an older man, he too rotund and big bandage covering a third of his face. I can go into judgment mind and ask what is right about we well-fed middle aged people relaxing in the middle of the day in an expensive hotel while billions upon billions of other beings are suffering? How is the work we putter with considered any kind of accomplishment amidst the beauty and tragedy that rises out of the ache of our hearts and the bodies of so many? I don’t rightly know how to answer this except to say that my inner knowing replies to the doubting mind that beauty is in all bodies and all words. And that means mine too.

What is it you hope to accomplish today, and is it enough?

First Happenings

A morning-glory morning with its usual glory, dawn particularly startling with citrons and mauves, petunias in the garden flashing their tender signals of gratitude. The sunflowers creak in their grass-colored dresses. Cosmos, the four o’clocks, the sweet alyssum nod to the roses who so very politely nod back.

And now it is time to go to work. At my desk I look out over the flutter petals, little fires. Each one fresh and almost but not quite replicable.

Consider wearing such a satisfying body! Consider being, with your entire self, such a quiet prayer!

Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Consider that we don’t. Instead imagine the phrase “We humans lead lives of quiet prayers, satisfied with our bodies so that we go to the grave with a song in us.” No really, imagine that now. Look down at your body and what do you see? I can tell you what I see in the dimly lit hotel room in which I write. I haven’t had my coffee yet so there is no extravagant dressing of reality here. I see loosening skin, crinkling in the joint areas and even over major muscle masses – what if my skin is folding up, trying to repress a smile or a giggle, hence pinching its lips? Oh the things it has seen me do, so much under the sun and so much in the shadows of night and questionable decisions. I see scars of all shapes and sizes, some visible, some not, but all a tribute to my humanity, my embodiness, my stories of accident and ill health. I see a roll of fat peaking out under my t-shirt, wanting to be seen for what it is – a sign of miraculous physiology that keeps me going when the meals are few and far between.

Wow, that felt good! What a way to begin a day of work, especially my day before the public for I am presenting 3 talks at an international conference. My skin will giggle, my scars will speak, and my fat will nourish me. What a satisfying body! What if every day began like this with a song for our bodies and the body of humanity.

What do you see when you survey your body?

Morning Glories

Blue and dark-blue

rose and deepest rose

white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent

cornfield rising and saying

in their reliable finery...

The reaper's story is the story

of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the

reaper cannot

separate them out there they

are in the story of his life

bright random useless

year after year

taken with the serious tons

weeds without value humorous

beautiful weeds.

A Haiku in response to this:

Coming to take us

You and me. Beautiful weeds

Death makes us all one.

Do you ever feel useless and fail to trust your bright beauty?

Indonesia - April 11, 2010

On the curving, dusty roads

we drove through the plantations

where the pickers balanced on the hot hillsides..

no poor man,

with a brown face and an empty sack,

has ever picked his way out of.

A the inn we stepped from the car

to the garden, where tea

was brought to us scalding in white cups from the fire.

Don't ask if it was the fire of honey

or the fire of death, don't ask

if were determined to live, at last,

with merciful hearts. We sat

amongst the unforgettable flowers.

We let the white cups cool before

we raised them to our lips.

I have lived this journey of Mary's. I have had brown hands serve me cafe con leche - beans picked by scorched hands, cows milked by a man earning $2 a day, and my needs served in white cups from a mother of four who lost two children as infants to treatable diseases. In such incongruency, hearts open up and ask, why me? Why aren't the tables reversed where I am serving others from my long labor of facing little choice on how to nourish myself and my family? Perhaps these questions are too hot to answer and my privileged life style cannot take in the heat of these questions, and still stay sane in my own situation. These people - the workers, pickers, and servants of the world are unforgettable flowers of beauty. Let their beauty help me recommit my life as a picker. By anguishing and picking choices I can raise others' hands to my lips to kiss and perhaps help others raise themselves out of the ashes of fires serving me, the inheritor of neocolonialist fires that ravaged the world. I bow down and kiss the earth, now, in prayer for this to be so.

Where do you see economic disparity in your life and what choices do you make based on this reality?

Singapore - April 7, 2010

In Singapore, in the airport,

a darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach...

A poem should always have birds in it...

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees...

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win...

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as shares down at her labor,

which is dull enough...

She does not work slowly , nor quickly, but like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life

And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won't happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn't.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life. I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

the way her smile was only for my sake: I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

Just as I was thinking of how Mary's poems are all saying the same thing and asking the same question (and of course they are, aren't they, just as the sun asks and answers the same thing in startlingly new ways every morning?), here she does something different, answers a different question in my mind, heals another part of my life, leads me to the broader resonance that her poems affirm. My soul breathes, "Finally!" My question is, like her one question, how do we love the world? An important corollary question for me, that has been feeling neglected in this book of poems to date, is how do we love the humans in our world? How do we love all that we are and including our expression in society that leaves beauty scrubbing ashtrays in public toilet bowls? How do we see light in war, in poverty, in gang leaders and in drug lords? This is the work of my life, to love the world of nature, including human nature. This driving passion is no more noble than the sharp tang of cigarettes and urine mixing in polluted rivers, or the refolding of a dirty cloth in the hands of others on any street, either in Singapore or Mexico City. The light that can shine out of our lives is in all our hands.

When have you been surprised by beauty in humans?