Mindful

Every day

I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

How does Mary write one poem after another like this? Her daily presentations are causing a shift in me. If you’ve been reading along with me, I wonder if the same is true for you? Every day for the last 196 days I awake to Mary, reflect, and write here. She is helping me become more wise in several important areas. I sense a greater acceptance of reality just as it is – including suffering, death, and human fumbling and bumbling. Her poems speak of the constant beauty in the hard to accept, and so I see this more clearly now. I dare to presume that there may be a twinge more mindfulness in my day as well. The drab and the daily have astounding stories to tell. Take our common House Sparrow here in the U.S.A. If they could talk, what would they say? What prayers do they offer to the world in their seemingly mundane daily occurrence? Would they tell us how they are endangered in their home territory of Europe and how their cousin, the Tree Sparrow of Europe and Asia, were killed by the millions upon millions in 1958 in China. Mao Zedong commanded the people to kill this bird so there would be grain for export. They did as they were instructed and in turn, the absence of this bird led to the over population of locusts, which led to the worst famine in history, killing some 30 million Chinese in the following year. So thank you dear Mary for helping me see the lives of sparrows, grass, and family members as grateful prayers.

What might the drab and mundane say to you?

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,

are not living. I say,

you live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they

are afraid of being left behind: I have said, hurry, hurry!

and they have said: Thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no

argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,

but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside

the harbor. I am holding in my hand

small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.

Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

Just yesterday I spoke of Mary's animistic tendencies. Here she "outs" herself completely - clouds and rocks can hurry and be asleep. It seems that whenever people speak of life and interconnection the argument always comes down to rocks. Is a rock alive? This was one of the first disagreements I had with my current spouse who is a philosophical professor. We were speaking of rights and respect for nonhuman life and we argued over the defining line of life versus nonlife. I positioned myself that rocks have an essence that seems only to compel me slightly less towards care and respect than nonrock life. For me then they are "alive" and capture my heart and imagination, much like a stuffed animal or even a photo of a living being or habitat. I grant all this and more "life" because they are me and I am them. We are interconnected, and if I can hurry and sleep, it seems that they can as well. The divine is in each of us, for we together are the sacred, the whole, the holy.

Does being "alive" change how you treat an object? What is it that draws out your care, respect, compassion, and sense of interconnection?

White Eyes

White Eyes

July 14, 2010

In winter

all the singing is in

the tops of the trees

where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

shoves and pushes

among the branches.

Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep

but he's restless-

he has an idea,

and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

as long as he stays awake...

so it's over

In the pine-crown

he makes his nest,

he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

I only imagine his glittering beak

tucked in a white wing

while the clouds...

thicken, and begin to fall

into the world below

like stars, or the feathers

of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

that is asleep now, and silent-

that has turned itself

into snow.

Animistic trees, gods and goddesses, wind spirits, and totems birds. Mary has met them all and they are hers. How many peoples have looked to the stars and storms and known giant birds that love us, protect us, and challenge us? There is one large bird that comes to me in my dreams and in my longings. She is a large albatross and she wings over me, ready to alight if I should call out and need wisdom, comfort, or beauty close to me. Because this bird is always with me, I wish to see albatrosses in the flesh and have been scheming for years on how to get to Midway Island, where hundreds of thousands breed. Just this past week I attended a conference where there were two presentations on albatrosses on Midway. One scientist told of how the lead paint on the abandoned military buildings on the island poisons albatross chicks, killing approximately 10,000 of them a year! They began a cleanup of this lead paint, but ran out of money to protect and care for this endangered bird. But I have an idea that is slowly unfolding - a visit to the island for research, to care for the ailing chicks, and also to write and tell others what is happening. So I turn my focus to the far west of Midway, awake to the tragedy of my bird, loving and loved.

What is your response when you hear of tragedy so far from your home?

The Old Poets of China

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness. It does not believe

that I do not want it. Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

As the morning heat's tentative fingers probe deeper into our house with the sun not even risen yet, I imagine myself wrapped in saffron robes atop a cool mountain. Above the heat, above the fray, and beyond the internet my only goal for the day would to be present to the sun's first and last rays and know they were me. I wonder now how this noble goal is not doable in the heat, in the fray, and held by the internet. To gain this peak experience of interconnection, I suppose I must believe that I do not want busyness, but be-ness. Indeed, I long for it.

What do you long for?

Many Miles

The feet of the heron,

under those bamboo stems,

hold the blue body,

the great beak

above the shallows

of the pond.

Who could guess

their patience?

Sometimes the toes

shake, like worms.

What fish could resist?

Or think of the cricket,

his green hooks,

climbing the blade of grass-

or think of camel feet

like ear muffs,

striding over the sand-

or think of your own

slapping along the highway,

a long life,

many miles.

To each of us comes

the body gift.

I am thinking of those who do not move on feet. Fish, snakes, trees, and infants who never toddle and fall, except into death. What of human quadriplegics from birth? I wonder how their body is a gift to them - a body that brings them pain and frustration? I have a first cousin whose two younger children have cerebral palsy. These two are now young women, and their life has been one of surgeries, crawling along floors instead of walking, wheel chairs and walking assistants, and near death issues that accompany their bodies everywhere they go. From afar their lives do seem a gift - such sweetness and uniqueness and the beauty of humanity I see in them. From afar I also see the long days and long years they and their parents, brothers, grandparents, and friends have suffered. From afar I have not walked in their shoes, or in any other being's. I do not know what gifts are theirs to give and to receive - yet it is through my body that I know them and through theirs that they know me. Perhaps that is enough of a present, this presence?

What gifts come to you from your body and other bodies?

Bear

It’s not my track,

I say, seeing

The ball of the foot and the wide heel

And the naily, untrimmed

Toes. And I say again,

For emphasis,

To no one but myself, since no one is

With me. This is

Not my track, and this is an extremely

Large foot, I wonder

How large a body must be to make

Such a track, I am beginning to make

Bad jokes .I have read probably

A hundred narratives where someone saw

Just what I am seeing. Various things

Happened next. A fairly long list, I won’t

Go into it. But not one of them told

What happened next-I mean, before whatever happens-

How the distances light up, how the clouds

Are the most lovely shapes you have ever seen, how

The wild flowers at your feet begin distilling a fragrances

Different, and sweeter than any you ever stood upon-how

Every leaf on the whole mountain is aflutter.

I have come across bear tracks and sign in the wilds of Alaska. Every near encounter focused my attention ever greater to fire side stories told by others who had actually interacted with wild grizzly bears. What would I do if I saw a bear, and if s/he charged me, what would be the best strategy for evading harm? Such goes the allure of bear stories – what would I do? Would I survive? The fascination of bear stories and spoor seems to be fueled by fear and ignites further anxiety. But what of the fragrance of flowers? When teaching Nonviolent Communication I often have given an example of the distinction between stimulus and cause with emotions. Does the bear cause us to be afraid? One person might see a bear bounce out of the berry bushes and feel extreme fear and start running .The next person might see the bear and be overwhelmed with a sense of beauty and connection (although probably also retreating to put distance between them and the bear). The bear stimulates our emotion, but isn’t the “cause” of emotion, or at least not the pure cause. Our cognition and history of bear stories informs our emotional response. So we can choose: to flee from this life or to be embraced by wondrous clarity and interconnection.

Do you have themes in your life that cause fear, such as bear stories, shark stories, or broken relationship stories?

Snow Geese - July 10., 2010

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun

so they were, in part at least, golden. I

held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,

but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.

The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

When I lived in El Paso, Texas, every year I attended the Crane Festival up at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. I would camp out as part of my ministerial study and retreat time, a spaciousness I gave myself so that I could return to my congregation seeing the world joyfully and clearly. One week the congregation’s families joined me on a Sunday and we took the children on the wildlife viewing loop. We came to a large flock of snow geese in the field. It had been difficult to tell exactly how engaged the children were or what they were thinking. Then suddenly the snow geese took to the air in a clap of wings and flew right over our group. The children too exploded. Some started jumping up and down, others running under the geese, and all eventually making their way to parents and adults to say, “Did you see that?” There was laughter, glee, and even tears in the children. They didn’t need us to tell them about wonder. It was born into them, and into us to see through the artificial veil of separation, to a life of joy.

What causes you to jump for joy?