Walking Home from Oak-Head

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -

somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,

for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live -
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.

keywords: snow, sky, winter, time love, dark, peace, tree, wind, gift, music, word, fire, heart, world, star

I have been told that in this book we see a shift of Mary, perhaps towards religion or God. I'm not quite clear what discontent exactly some of my acquaintances portend when they say "Mary changes" in her later books. It's hard for me to imagine that she could be much more religious, much more of the suffering seeker, or more the one totally committed to growing her faith in the world than she has been. I certainly know that she brings out the hunger in me for faith in earth and her beings. Just beyond her words and often beyond my reach is the nameless, the indivisible, to which she temporarily gives the names of tree or bird. Maybe later she'll take the risk and call this God. It's all the same to me, for my struggle will not change. With this world falling apart now, how might I still see the light and grow a faith that is ultimately beyond me. For me, part of this answer is becoming, read a poem from Mary.

You who read Mary regularly, what is happening with your faith and in your prayers?

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?

LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT (PERCY THREE)

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

I've often heard it said that all human communication can be boiled down to three words. In Mary's case it is "I love you." Another set of 3 words are "Please" and "Thank you." Over and over every day we get the chance to ask others to serve us and to hear how we have served others. We might say it differently each time, and often without much skill. Perhaps our "please" comes out as a demand or regret - "you don't love me anymore!" or "why are you so lazy - pick up your socks." In either case we are asking for something - to be appreciated and to be cared for. The tricky part is for us the listener to translate the crankiness, the whining, the anger, and the irritation into a phrase that reflects a request on behalf of the speaker. That's called empathy. Easy to offer when a beautiful dog makes eye contact with us in the night, but it is much more complicated when looking into a scowling face. Those unhappy moments with others are a great chance for us grow our spirits and our hearts, for each time we can say to ourselves, "They are asking me to please love them, and I am so grateful that I may find a way to do so." Everything we hear then is "Please love me," and may everything I do, think , and say be "I do."

What is your favorite phrase? Or that speaks of a theme in your life?

The Cricket and the Rose

In fall
the cricket
beneath the rose bush
watches

as the roses fall
to the very ground
that is his kingdom also.
So they're neighbors,

one full of fragrance,
the other
the harper
of a single dry song.

We call this time of the year
the beginning of the end
of another circle,
a convenience

and nothing more.
For the cricket's song
is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given,

is given forever.
This is a truth
I'm sure of,
for I'm older than I used to be,

and therefore I understand things
nobody would think of
who's young and in a hurry.
The snow is very beautiful.

Under it are the lingering
petals of fragrance,
and the timeless body
of prayer.

I just read this morning in the Gainesville Sun how 1 in 7 kitchens would not pass a restaurant grade health inspection. Hearing this I take stock of my kitchen. On the window sill, a bowl full of old rose petals beckons my attention. I periodically wonder if I should toss them, their beauty long gone. Then I hold them to my face and their fragrance persists. So they remain yet another day.

There on the floor is one of those large crickets that inhabit our outside porch and occasionally wander in. To ease the heat we open windows and doors in the morning and this cricket has seen this as invitation to cruise my kitchen floor. She is rather ugly, her head out of proportion and her purpose unknown to me.

I don't know if anyone would see old flower petals and dinosaur like crickets as appropriate for a kitchen, or even if I do. Like Mary, I too am older and do not hurry on to thoughts of what my mother might say of odd crickets and old roses in a kitchen. Instead I ponder how I shall pray this day as I let the aroma of life filter into my walled refuge through open doors and open heart.

How do you pray?

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Well, I wrote too soon yesterday. Mary answered her own question about what we shall with our hearts; we are to journey to places where our heart's break. Her pathway in this poem is through the death of beautiful birds. Yup, that'll do it all right. So I journey to places where birds still sing, and there is an urgency to this. Maybe I can do something about it, but more than anything, my heart does not wish to be far from the beauty of parrots and people, even as they desert their last community of mixed species to become part of the urban caged and poor.

Perhaps it is a bit morbid to go to where hope is hard to find. I say not. For in these places, we know what love is, and we know of what worth interconnecting life is. Out of that space comes a sense of peace and belonging. Even when cloaked in a disguise that says "wrongdoing" we may recognize the true face of god as a love that if we turned all the way towards that fire, our ego would burn away.

May it be so.

What breaks your heart so that the whole world may fall in

The Owl Who Comes

The owl who comes

through the dark

to sit

in the black boughs of the apple tree

and stare down

the hook of his beak,

dead silent,

and his eyes,

like two moons

in the distance,

soft and shining

under their heavy lashes-

like the most beautiful life-

is thinking

of nothing

as he watches

and waits to see

what might appear,

briskly,

out of the seamless,

deep winter-

out of the teeming

world below-

and if I wish the owl luck,

and I do,

what am I wishing for that other

soft life,

climbing through the snow?

What we must do,

I suppose

is to hope the world

keeps its balance:

what we are to do, however,

with our hearts

waiting and watching-truly

I do not know.

Indeed, what are we do with our hearts. We could close them off and not see the tragic, but then we would lose the chance to experience those grace filled days of belonging where everything is just as it should be, because that is the way it is. With such radical acceptance we would love the child molester, the dictator, and the cancer cells. We just aren't taught how to handle that pain. Though I engage in a number of spiritual practices to grow my awareness and acceptance, I find that I turn from the sorrow in all kinds of subtle ways. Sometimes though my subconscious lets me know that I have work to do. In dreams, in moments of anger, in depression or withdrawal, and in the times when despair surprises me, I get a hint of how I don't know how to witness the tragic and the beauty as an interweaving whole.

For instance, having seen so much suffering in wild birds kept inadequately in captivity, I chose to leave avian veterinary medicine for a while. It is only after much work that I can engage with people who care of pet birds so that together we can find ways to decrease the harm we do as humans to these birds. I still see the tragic consequences of the pet bird market, but at least now I can interact with people and parrots without suppressing my authenticity, love, and care. I believe I can only do this by growing my heart so that it can hold the pain as well as the love.

What do you do to hold the painful and tragic?