Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate.  Give in to it.  There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are no wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left.  Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches of power in the world. It could be anything, but very like you notice it in the instant when love begins…..

In my younger years I had a period where I was not proud of my behavior.  Though love was behind my actions, the strategies I picked to respond to the love had consequences for others.  A few days ago, after nearly 16 years I spoke with someone that had been negatively (and positively – ain’t that the way of things) impacted by me.  I was surprised to find her voice on the phone. After a few minutes I jumped right into expressing my regrets about my behavior in those days. She told me, “It has been forgotten.” 

Such a rich gift!  Such a joy! Not because I had been forgiven, but because I had a chance to redeem a time when my wisdom was not very apparent by speaking of harm.

Still I wonder, if we give into joy, may harm arise?  Is there any way to minimize the harm, or avoid it?  

Maybe not.

So my plan, dear Mary, is yes perhaps to let joy rule the day when it surprises me, but to communicate this with others and with my deeper wisdom so that we together come up with a plan where kindness and peace have a chance.

When have you give into joy with delight, or regret?

Lark Ascending - Back from Guyana

I am now back from Guyana, and this my first morning, spent some time looking at the pictures that do no real justice to the beauty there.  Two in particular are my favorites - Kaieteur Falls and a pair of Red and Green Macaws flying in front of the falls.  They are rising in the cloudy mists of the thunderous water.  As so frequently, such a coincidence that Mary's poem is of birds rising to the clouds. So I include those pictures here for you.  The rest of the poems that will finish out this 15.5 months of Mary's poems, were all written while in Guyana.

Lark Ascending

galloped up into the  morning air

then floated

a long way

whispering, I imagine,

to the same mystery

I try to speak to

down here. ...

if I could

carry a message of thanks

to the doors of the clouds.

I don't know whether it would be

of the or the mind. I know

it's the poem I have yet to make

There are so many ways to give thanks - poets do so with their words, birds perhaps in their own way with their songs, and children with their giggling runs.  Writing, singing, laughing - these are but just three ways to live the day in gratitude.  I imagine there are thousands of ways.  Here are some of mine:

Looking up at the stars and smiling

Bowing to the trees

Kissing the ground

Hugging a person

Identifying a bird species

Biking instead of driving the car

Writing this blog

What are some of your ways of giving thanks?

We Shake With Joy

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

Housed as they are in the same body.

Last night I had an enjoyable evening discussing how we might take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.  I am in Puerto Rico teaching Nonviolent Communication and my inspiring dinner companion is Psychologist, Animal Therapy Facilitator, and President of the Puerto Rico Alliance for Companion Animals, Dr. Ursula Aragunde Kohl.  We spoke of how our learning comes through trial, pain, and grief.  Not all learning of course comes to us on this path, but in my life, the really important learnings of how to love and stay engaged with others with an open heart have come through much pain.  I wondered out loud to her if then what my days would look like if I were to be fully present to others and to life. I’d probably spend half the day sobbing, and the other dancing like a mad person in public.  

Such extremes in the same day!

What “extremes” do you mix in the same day, or the same body?

Then Bluebird Sang - January 14, 2010

Bluebirds slipped a little tremble out of the triangle of his mouth

And it hung in the air until it reached my ear

Like a froth or a frill that Schumann

Might have written in a dream.

Dear morning you come with so many angels of mercy

So wondrously disguised in feathers, in leaves,

In the tongues of stones, in the restless waters,

In the creep and the click and the rustle

That greet me wherever I go

With their joyful cry: I’m still here, alive!

My angels of mercy this morning:

Tropical lofty clouds framing the ocean with the light of the new born sun

A stranger who offered me her apartment while I visit Puerto Rico

The stray dog, the stray cat, my stray thoughts

The chance to serve, and to be served

The creep and the click of my arthritic knees

To breathe. 

Who or what are you angels of mercy this day?

Eleven Versions of the Same Poem: Am I Lost?

Am I lost?

I don't think so.

Do I know where I am?

I'm not sure.

Have I ever been happier in my life?

Never.

Am I lost?

I am lost.

Do I know where I am?

I am lost.

Have I ever been more joyful in my life?

I am lost.

How Zen is this?  I am lost, I am not lost, I am lost.  It's like Dogen's saying "There is a mountain, there is not a mountain, there is a mountain."  When we look at a mountain we see it as an entity.  But when we look closer, we see that the mountain is made up of rock, water, ice, snow, trees, birds, and bugs.  There is no mountain "self" but only an intersection in the web of existence. 

But we have mountains to climb in our lives.  So we exist in the phenomenal world, interacting with this thing called "mountain" so that life may flow through us in all our particular manifestations. At the same time, we awake to knowing that no matter whether we climb, move, or ignore the mountain, all life flows through us.  We cannot stop it. 

On one hand we are not lost. We operate in a way that says, "I am separate. I know where I stand."  On the other hand, there is no self as we lose ourselves into the world. 

There is no joy, no happiness, and no bliss. There is just this...

Where and how might you lose yourself today?

From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink

But when I came back I found

That the body of the river was dying.

“Did it speak?”

Yes, it sang out the old songs, but faintly.

“What will you do?

I will grieve of course, but that’s nothing.

“What, precisely, will you grieve for?”

For the river.  For myself, my lost

Joyfulness. For the children who will not

Know what a river can be – a friend, a

Companion, a hint of heaven.

“Isn’t this somewhat overplayed?”

I said: it can be a friend.  Companion.  A hint of heaven.

Here I am back in Guatemala after a 6 month absence. When last here I posted my blogs in the form of tweets. Somehow this seemed appropriate to use a medium of communication that relates to the diminishing bird song.  The calls of Scarlet Macaws are long gone from nearly all of Guatemala, and the Yellow-naped Amazon calls are fainter each time I come.  I mourn.

There was a time when I was unsure of my mourning. It was if I was the only one who knew how abundant the harmony of multiple species of parrot calls here was in the south coast of Guatemala.  People who would see my tears and read my words wondered if I was overplaying the loss. They hadn’t looked into the regretful eyes of older campesinos who tell stories of macaws, amazons, and parakeets all nesting in one giant tree.  Now it’s hard to find even the trees, let alone the birds.

In this poem Mary repeats to the skeptic about her friendship with the river. Perhaps she too has felt isolated with the rivers going with no one on the shores to grieve with her, as if the river song was nothing of importance.  But it is.  Mary, you, and I have company now as the rivers leave us high and dry.

In the book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, I red yesterday how psychologists, counselors, therapists, and scientists are increasingly aware of the illness and woundedness of humans who witness ecological devastation and extinction.  Writes Mary Watkins in the chapter, Creating Restorative Ecotherapuetic Practices, “I grasped and acknowledged that the plant and animal worlds were a source of primary attachment, a significant contributor to their (her patients) resilience in the face of great difficulties and disappoints in human life, and a wellspring of faith in beauty and goodness.”  Rivers, trees, birds, mountains, oceans, and flowers all befriend our kind.  So I am glad that it is more mainstream to grieve together as a community of mixed species.  That’s step one and it is hardly nothing.  We must hear and sing death songs, as Mary describes in my blog of two days go.  But what next?

What will you do?

 

On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)

5.

So it is not hard to understand

Where God’s body is, it is

Everywhere and everything; shore and the vast

Fields of water, the accidental and the intended

Over here, over there. And I bow down

Participate and attentive

It is so dense and apparent. And all the same I am still

Unsatisfied. Standing

Here, now, I am thinking

Not of His thick writs and His blue

Shoulders but, still, of Him. Where, do you suppose is His

Pale and wonderful mind?

6.

I would be good-oh, I would be upright and good.

To what purpose? To be shingling not

Sinful, not wringing out of the hours

Petulance, heaviness, ashes. To what purpose?

Hope of heaven? Not that. But to enter

The other kingdom: grace, and imagination,

And the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,

A dolphin, a wave rising

Slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch

The limpid air, to be God’s mind’s

Servant, loving with the body’s sweet mouth-its kisses, its

Words-

Everything.

7.

I know a man of such

Mildness and kindness sit is trying to

Change my lie. He does not

Preach, teach, but simply is. It is

Astonishing, for he is Christ’s ambassador

Truly, by rule and act. But, more,

He is kind with the sort of kindness that shines

Out, but is resolute, not fooled. He has

Eaten the dark hours and could also, I think,

Solider for God, riding out

Under the storm clouds, against the world’s pride and unkindness

With both unassailable sweetness, and consoling word.

8.

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
west to the firm green

flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

I went to Vanderbilt Divinity School because of a professor there, Sally McFague. I read her book, The Body of God where she speaks of God being immanent in the world, and being the world. Sally would describe this as panentheistic – God is in everything and also timelessly extends beyond everything. In her world of Christianity, or so as I understood her, one could not be pantheistic and be a Christian, for a pantheist says God is the world, and nothing more. I wondered why she and others feared taking the final step? Is it because they felt somewhere in them such puzzlement in their minds, or perhaps a call to goodness and kindness that could not be explained by the mere world around them? Or was it that they feared the loss of self that knows no distinction between self and slug?

Also while attending Vanderbilt Divinity School I would tire of statements that contained this phrase, “Humans are the only ones that_________.” Every instance where I heard that I would think, no, that’s not true, this or that kind of nonhuman animal also does this. In the secular world I hear the same thing. When ever I hear such sentiments, I offer a kind thought to the author, for they will be found out eventually. Either someone will show them current scientific understanding, or it will only be a matter of time before we discover, no that’s not true. Nonhuman animals also do what humans do. For instance, a news article this week argued that that nonhuman animals have spiritual experiences.

Similarly I also heard in Divinity school that evolution leads to humans so the universe would have a mind to comprehend itself and could know itself. Again, I shudder at the audacity of our kind to think that we are the purpose of the Universe, as evidenced by the fact that no other animals are like us.

Enter Mary and her poem. She wonders where God’s mind is and aspires to be that mind – to be goodness and kindness and to love the body earth and all her beings. She does not say that humans are the only ones who can be God’s mind, only that she devotes her life to glory. This glory is to be God’s servant with intentionality to love all bodies, which are also hers and herself.

Reading Mary and thinking back on school and countless theological discussions and sermons written, I think she has captured almost all of my imagination. We are here not to be separate from others, or God. In fact, we cannot be. We are God’s body. Where I differ from Mary, perhaps, as I haven’t asked her, is that the mind is body. So if we are God’s body, so is our monkey mind – imperfect yet perfect, and fumbling and bumbling yet graceful. We have no climbing towards an external perfection to do. As my favorite poet said, we only have to love what the soft animal of our bodies love.

Today, what do you struggle to love? Wherever or however you struggle, I invite you to think of this as you take with me today one breathe. As you breathe in, ponder the peace of interconnection, and as you breathe out, breathe out love.

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?

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention - September 11, 2010

“As long as we are able to be extravagant we will be

Hugely and damply extravagant. Then we will drop

Foil by foil to the ground. This is our unalterable task,

And we do it joyfully.”

And they went on. “Listen,

The heart-shackles are not, as you think,

Death, illness, pain,

Unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

Lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, selfishness.”

Their fragrance all the while rising from their blind bodies, making me

Spin with joy.

Today is 9/11. It is not a day of lassitude. There is too much death and pain associated with this date, though last year the date seemed to slip by noiselessly. Not so this year, for we have in our own town the threat of a small congregation burning a Koran. The media response is spinning out of control, and the whole circus gives rise to more violence, hatred, and fear. In the crowds that may gather if this church goes through with it, I heard of a stealth plan. A group of people trained in non-violent communication hope to infiltrate the gathered and offer empathy where they may.

They, roses in the garden.

If ever there was a day to do so, let us breathe in the fragrance of beauty, so that we may breathe out joy.

The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts - September 9, 2010

For a long time

I was not even

In this world, yet

Every summer

Every rose

Opened in perfect sweetness

And lived

In gracious repose,

In its own exotic fragrance,

In its huge willingness to give

Something, from its small self,

To the entirely of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands,

In many lands,

Whenever summer came to them,

Rising

Out of the patience of patience,

To leaf and bud and look up

Into the blue sky

Or, with thanks,

Into the rain

That would feed

Their thirsty roots

Latched into the earth-

Sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,

What did it matter,

The answer was simply to rise

In joyfulness, all their days.

Have I found any better teaching?

Not ever, not yet.

Last week I say my first Botticelli

And almost fainted,

And if I could I would paint like that

But am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs

About roses: teachers, also, of the ways

Toward thanks, and praise.

Mary paints with words, roses with petals, and golden age artists with strokes of color. All teach us to rise in joy, giving prayers and thanks. What else do they teach us? Beauty yes, but what of the thorns? Looking deeper would we see a prickly poet and a painter who fears women? Inside all are evolved harsh lessons, to fear and to protect.

When I was a child I often walked among my father’s rose garden. The flowers were nice, but I entered my father’s world with trepidation. In the rose plants not only were there thorns and reminders of my father’s tough standards, but other risks. The roses were full of bees, ants, spiders, Japanese beetles, and toxins my father sprayed on the roses to keep them whole, to keep them safe.

Roses do teach me to give thanks and praise, and also, in that gratitude, rightly claim the stabbing pain of this world as beauty too.

Today, I ask you to join me in looking out at the “harsh” reality of the world, and breathe once in and out together, and feel the energy of the wholeness.

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?

Circles

In the morning the blue heron is busy

stepping, slowly, around the edge of the

pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded

against his body, fit so neatly they

make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise

into the air, a great surprise. Also

he carries so light the terrible sword-beak. Then

he is gone over the trees.

I am so happy to be alive in this world

I would like to live forever, but I am

content not to. Seeing what I have seen

has filled me; believing what I believe

has filled me.

The first words of this page are

hardly thought of when the bird

circles back over the trees; it floats down

like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light

coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:

maybe it is or it isn't the same bird-maybe it's

the first one's child, or the child of its child.

What I mean is, our deliverance from Time

and the continuance, if we only steward them well,

of earthly things. So maybe it's myself still standing here, or

someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and

filled with praise.

Yesterday a young coyote walked across our lawn in the ripening dawn. Along the way to kayak the Suwannee, families of turkeys and deer adorned the highways, as did one lone feral pig. In the water one gator swam under our boats and mighty sturgeons jumped to our joy nearby. Juvenile Red-shouldered hawks and immature Little Blue Herons Herons kept closer to us on the banks than their parents would have, and on the way back, a raccoon scampered in front of my speeding car, closer to me than s/he should have been. So maybe it's myself writing to you this morning, or the gator, or the turkey, or the coyote - our very being a joy of this world worthy of incessant praise.

What would you do differently if you lived forever?