More Evidence - Part 1

1.

The grosbeak sings with a completely cherishable roughness..

With what words can I convince you of the casualness with which the white swans fly..

Do you give a thought now and again to the essential sparrow, the necessary toad?

Just as truly as the earth is ours, we belong to it. The tissue of our minds is made of it, and the soles of our feet, as fully as the tiger’s claw, the branch of the whitebark pine, the voices of the bird, the dog-tooth violet and the tooth of the dog….

This morning I took a hike with our ectourist group in Guyana up to some caves with bats. Along the way we walked through a forest teaming with thousands of species biting, singing, crawling, hooting, growing, and photosynthesizing.  I love the tropical forest and after days and days in one, I begin to know I belong, as do all beings.  However, I am guessing that for you, like me, there are certain special places in your life that more clearly and strongly say, “You belong.”  For me it is swimming in natural body of water.

After this hike I mentioned I jumped off a bank of a forest river into clear cool water.  With fish swimming all around me, I circled round to see a Pygmy Kingfisher perched on a branch and below him, my species washing their clothes.   Clothes, fur, feathers  no matter how roughly or finely we are clad, we are the skin of the earth emerging from the mixing of mud with water. 

Belonging is the first step, and a hard one to be sure. I believe there is more struggles before us all - knowing we are necessary, and also not.

Where do you gain your greatest sense of belonging?

Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black river?

Did you see in it the morning, rising into the silvery air,

an armful of white blossoms,

a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

biting the air with its black beak?....

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Yesterday I got an email update of "birds to see" in  my north Florida area. One sighting is of a Tundra Swan that has been with us remarkably all winter.  I wonder about taking the time from my day to go look for the bird, to slap my eyes upon the beauty if only through the binocular or spotting scope lens.  Perhaps today it is enough to just know that such marvel exists out there, somewhere - a kernel of excitement and belonging that grows my faith this day.  If I can manage to wake up today ( at least dear god let me do so in part), I won't need special optics to see beauty.  I'll just open my heart and be the change I wish in the world.

What is beauty for?

First Days in San Miguel de Allende

1.

The flagellated Christ

is being carried

to San Miguel de Allende.

He must be very heavy

yet the carriers persist

upon the sun flashed road

and the people follow

in the same way that people would seek

a river heard of but never yet found.

they are that thirsty...

2.

I have come, for the first time, to Mexico.

And what has happened

to that intense ambition

with which I always wake?

Soaked up

in the colors, stolen

by the blood Christs.

I am feeling something, incredibly,

like peace...

3.

the tops of the northbound trains are dangerous.

Still, they are heaped with hopefuls.

I understand their necessity.

Understanding, however, it not sharing.

Oh, let there be a wedding of the

mind and the heart, if not today

then soon.

Meanwhile, let me change my own life

into something better.

Meanwhile, on the streets of San Miguel de Allende

it is easy to smile.

"Hola," I say to the children.

"Hi," they say, as I pass

with my passport, and money, in my pocket.

For many years I lived with the shame of being able to come and go from Mesoamerica, while I left my friends behind. They suffered violence, poverty, illness, brokenness, alcoholism, and dying children.  I could leave and they could not.  Now some of them are dead.

It is for that reason, in part, that we took into our homes two young men from Honduras who came up through Mexico on top of one of the trains that Mary speaks of - the Death Train.

Yes I know that all of life is journey towards death!  Yes I know that I can't save every child, bird, and tree!  Yes I know that there are pretty flowers to view along the dangerous path!

I know much and can learn more.

But for today, let there be a wedding of my heart and head.

May I vow with every breath, "I do!"

What is your vow today?

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say - behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.

2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs….

4.

Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,

The dancer, the potter,

To make me a begging bowl

Which I believe

My soul needs.

And if I come to you,

To the door of your comfortable house

With unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,

Will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.

I would like to give you this chance.

5.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we change.

Congratulations, if

You have changed.

6.

Let me ask you this.

Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?

And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure-

Your life-

What would do for you?

7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
through with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

Someday I feel like a child playing in the meadow, while bombs fly over head and digging parties put friends into the ground next to where I stare in wonder at the trees.  What do I mean by this?  Some days I grow weary of fighting – I just want to love the world. 

For instance I am at a bird conference now.  Many of these people, if not most, have wild parrots as companions in their home, or raise them for various reasons, including making a livelihood.  I am mostly of the clan, “mutual other” where I see birds as beings with their own inherent worth and dignity. After years of studying them in the wild, my heart hurts to have them in captivity where we humans make most of the choices for them.  Those surrounding me are mostly of the clan, “utilitarian.”  Humans have ultimate control over birds and it is not an ethical dilemma to control them and place them into our lives, where the birds live quite differently from their natural and evolved behavior.  Truly I guess that all of us belong to both clans, to the one clan called earth.

So I find myself torn – is it possible to fight with one’s self for any worthwhile reason? How do I speak of my truth, of my longing, and of my pain while letting the other know that I hold their needs tenderly and that we are of the family of things?

I go to the other, hold out my begging bowl, and ask them to fill it with their beauty.

As our cups fill together, may we forget to love only ourselves, and instead love the world.

Love the world…them’s good fighting words!

To whom or to what do you hold out your begging bowl today?

Invitation

Oh do you have time

to linger

for just a little while

out of your busy

and very important day

for the goldfinches

that have gathered

in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,

to see who can sing

the highest note,

or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,

or the most tender?

Their strong, blunt beaks

drink the air

as they strive

melodiously

not for your sake

and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning

but for sheer delight and gratitude—

believe us, they say,

it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in the broken world.

I beg of you,

do not walk by

without pausing

to attend to this

rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:

You must change your life.

I have recently come back from a weekend Zen Buddhist retreat. We spent the weekend in silence, sitting on black mats, and had some spots of laughter. Mostly though it was serious business this wanting to change our lives. Then one morning a Barred Owl came to a tree outside our meditation rom. S/he began cackling, hooting, and doing that mocking squirrelly laugh that they do. I broke out in smiles, laughing with this bird who might have actually been laughing at us, and not just with us. We humans engage in such ridiculous acts. I wonder if were to look at what triggered us with joyful mirth, perhaps a bit on the loving mocking side, we might be able to keep our hearts open a little longer and a little larger before we become triggered into rushing on to somewhere we might deem safe. No safety, on life and love in a broken world, this perfect world.

Where in your life do you see or engage in ridiculous acts?

Bailing the Boat - February 2, 2010

In Ohio, we did not have boats, we had horses...

...Well, we change, but we do not change much.

Done with bailing, I stow the gear

And cast off.

Snorting, the engine churns and comes alive!

And with arched neck she steps out over the water.

I wonder then if human kind has not fundamentally changed with the onset first of agriculture and herds which brought us the horse, and then technology which brought us motorized boats, cell phones, and the new iPad. Did we use to look at horses truly as mere objects as we do with our computers, or do we enter into the maze of intersubjective relationships with both machine and being with much of a difference between the two? So, if we have not changed much, then were we so heartless with horses before or do we love our gadgets and gears overly much? Somehow I believe that patting a horses neck and learning into her sweet neck, her responding in turn with snorts and leans, is more connecting to this earth than turning on the computer. But it also carries much more responsibility to enter into the dark barn with all those lives staring at you, depending on your time and your resources and your compassion to love them as your neighbor. A computer we put out at the curb side and head off to Office Depot with a traitor's gleam in our eye as we replace the new with the old. For many this is not so easily done with an animal, though for some it seems to be as we treat ourselves and other beings as machines to do our bidding, and if they don't, we cast them off and head for other shores.

Perhaps poet Mary is inviting us to think of none of that but of this: We all move over the waters of change, over the living waters that know no distinction of self.

What animals have claims on you and how do you treat them?