Mist in the Morning, Nothing Around Me but Sand and Roses

Was I lost?  No question.

Did I know where I was?  Not at all.

Had I ever been happier in my life?  Never.

Yogi Berra said once, "We're lost, but we are making good time."

I wonder if Mary's happiness while being lost and Yogi's since of accomplishment while in the same predicament might be a way to live our lives?

Let's just go ahead and admit we are lost, and that all our knowing might help in some ways, but not in the ultimate sense.

A few weeks ago I heard a term, "undefending."  To undefend oneself is to live knowing that without the interdependent relationships all around us, we are lost, and to act out of this ultimate knowing in a daily fashion.

So let me begin this day with nothing of me, and everything around me.

I am lost.

Without you, I am nothing.

You are lost, and with me, are nothing.

Have there ever been any happier fools?

Where are you lost in happiness?

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?

Maker of All Things, Even Healings

All night under the pines the fox

moves through the darkness

with a mouthful of teeth

and a reputation for death which it deserves.

In the spicy villages of the mice he is famous,

his nose in the grass

is like an earthquake,

his feet on the path

is a message so absolute

that the mouse, hearing it, makes himself

as small as he can as he sits silent

or, trembling, goes on

hunting among the grasses for the ripe seeds.

Maker of All Things,

including appetite, including stealth,

including the fear that makes

all of us sometime or other,

flee for the sake

of our small and precious lives,

let me abide in your shadow-

let me hold on

to the edge of your robe

as you determine what you must let be lost

and what will be saved.

Here is the teeth of the matter. What is in your life that you do not accept, yet because it exists at all, comes from the Maker of All Things (however you so describe the process/power by which you came to be)? Here's my short list:

• · The two-party political system in the U.S.
• · The power of money
• · Nonhumans treated as if objects without inherent worth or dignity
• · Alzheimer's, especially in my mother and father-in-law
• · Women subjugated to men
• · The loss of biodiversity and the abundant nonhuman wildlife that existed before the industrial age

So my anger or despair, so the suffering and the fear, so absolutely everything belongs here in this world and in my life. How hard this is to accept, and how I anguish that the world cannot be different. My big powerful brain complains that I feel so separate from the rest of life, and brings this suffering upon itself. For if I do not accept what must be lost, including myself and all I love, how can I be saved and all that I love?

What does your short list look like? What are you doing to accept that which you currently reject?

Dreams - February 15, 2010

When the rain is over

I go to the woods...

And the creeks!

...Now they are swollen and driven with muds and

ambitions...

they sense ahead-and desire it-

A new life in a new land...

...they remind me of...

Two great -uncles who went west years ago

And got lost in Colorado...

...watching the tame creeks boil away,

My heart in sympathy pounds like a quick hoof.

I think with pride of my uncles who went west

Full of hope and vision;

I think they became healthy as animals, and rich

as their dreams

Before they turned some corner and became

Two graves under the leaves.

It is not clear to me in this poem if the two uncles died in Colorado pursuing their dreams, or perhaps some decades into their older years. I want to know if the richness of deep meaning and purpose accompanied them all their years, or if they gave into the softness of tamed compromise. Either way, the tame creek or the swollen river, they both flow into the ocean where all become one, and in that knowing, all becomes won.

What dreams to you have that you pursue? Do you tame your passion because the next moment you may find disappointment, fear, or death?

Hattie Bloom - January 13, 2010

...That love, which made my gentle uncle wild,

Might also change a painted girl to gold.

The dream that smiled and trailed it's silken wing

Was what my uncle grieved for; and I thought

The truth of love was that in truth, for him,

Lost Hattie Bloom became that perfect thing.

I am also reading a Rumi (Sufi poet) poem a day, and I smile in seeing that Mary and Rumi merge in union today, nearly undifferentiated except by about 700 years. The poetry of Mary I suspect might be recited one day as millions memorize Rumi, though Mary's messages of love alchemy for the soul are not as direct as Rumi, Hafiz, and other poets of this tradition. Rumi used images of camels, wine, emeralds, and mirrors while Mary uses bird and tree. Both though speak of grief, loneliness, and the gift that life is. If we could but only accept loss and death we might see our perfection in both silken and broken wing.

Has love ever grown stronger for you after you lost the stimulus for that great desire?

A Letter From Home - January 4, 2010

She sends me news of bluejays, front,

Of stars and now the harvest moon

That rides above the stricken hills,

Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain,

And lists what is already lost....

Here where my life seems hard and strange,

I read her wild excitement when

Stars climb, frost comes, and bluejays sing.

The broken year will make no change

Upon her wise and whirling heart:-

She know how people always plan

To live their lives, and never do.

She will not tell me if she cries...

Strange that there can be wild excitement in listing what is already lost. In this knowing of our true lives, as I look up at the stars in this cold January morning, I think of my father who died 20 years ago this season. He never told me if he cried, though I saw him once do so over the death of a woodpecker whose mate would not leave her side. I believe he cried for the plans he and the woodpeckers had made, for naught. I wonder though that if holding that list of disappointment if a heart beats in open wonder a ever growing list of abundance.