Three Things to Remember

As long as you're dancing, you can

   break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just

   extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

This reminds me so much of a posting we had on our refrigerator when I was a child.

Household Rules

Rule #1: Dad is always right

Rule #2:  Refer to rule #1

Today it brings a chuckle, and also a caution:  Be wary of rules, especially if they report to be simple or give power over to oppressive schemes, such as patriarchy.

Yet we humans live with rules.  Might we also find a way to live with the constant breaking of rules as a way to double check on institutionalized rigor mortis that restricts flourishing, joy, and love?

Make rules, then break them by letting your heart break.

Here are some of my rules:

Earth Rules

Kindness first

Love fast

Joy not last

Forget the past

Live with thirst

What rules would you make if you could have just one, or what one thing will you strive to remember today?  Then how will you let your heart break?

More of the Unfinishable Fox Story

Dear Readers,

I have been in touch with Beacon Press and I learned that by printing so much of the poem I might be infringing on copyright issues.  So from here until the end, I shall write only a few lines of each poem and encourage you to get the book.  It's so hard for me to only include such a small portion, because the poems in their entirety are so complete. I have loved to type each line  as a form of prayer - so instead let us whisper the words to one another through the ethernet. 

Today's Poem

And what did the fox look like?...

He was rough and smelled of skunk.

But he was beautiful,

and beauty is not to be taken lightly....

Mary is still on to that fox she saw. She doesn't remember where she was going and cannot imagine what the fox is doing on the road, but she does know what beauty is and for.  First and foremost we are to remember beauty. 

We are to remember that beauty exists.

We are to remember that it is all around us.

We are to remember that it is in us, is us, is everyone, is every being.

We are to remember that the story of beauty ever continues and never ends, so that our days may be finished in beauty.

What story do you have that is unfinished, or unfinishable?

A Fox in the Dark

A Fox in the Dark

February 26, 2010

A fox goes by in the headlights like an electric shock.

A fox goes by in the headlights like an electric shock.


Then he pauses at the edge of the road
and the heart, if it is still alive,


feels something--a yearning for which we have no name


but which we may remember, years later, in the darkness,


upon some other empty road.

Feels something-a yearning for which we have no name

But which we may remember, years later, in the darkness

One time upon a blizzard impacted remote road in Alaska a fox stopped dead center in the road ahead of my van.  It was hard at first to see who it was given the blowing snow, but as the fox did not move I was able to get quite close.  Almost upon the wild one, I wondered if he or she had been hit by a car or was sick, or like the rest of us on this journey, sticking to the road like a prayer that would keep us out of ditch and doom.  The fox began to trot and moved with me for a while down the road.  It felt a loss when the beauty finally decided to pause by the side of the road, and as I went on my way north, I could see the fox staring at me through the rear view mirror.

Looking back now, I still see those eyes, whispering through snow dusted whiskers  - I am with you, you do not journey alone. 

Who journeys with you?

Grass

...How many of us have weighted the years with groaning and weeping?..

I walk over the green hillsides, I lie down...

The grass cares nothing about me, it doesn't want anything from me, it rises to its own purpose, and sweetly, following the single holy dictum: To be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let a young girl be a young girl freely-to let a middle-aged woman be, comfortably, a middle-aged woman.

Those bloody sharps and flats-those endless calamities of the personal past. Bah! I disown them from the rest of my life, in which I mean to rest.

I have been investigating a new field - interpersonal neurobiology. It is a way to look at our pasts so that we can rest in the potentially loving present. It is a multidisciplinary field that offers hope in the form of neuroplasticity. No matter our past, no matter our genetics, and no matter our perceived sense of our character flaws, as long as we can form attachments, we can heal. That hope is summarized in this poem.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense. - Rumi

I awake hopeful this morning, running with a middle-aged carefulness through such fields of dreams.

From what character generalizations of yourself of others would you like to rest today?

Tecumseh - March 14, 2010

I went down not long ago

to the Mad River, under the willows

I knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call it

what madness you will, there's a sickness

worse than the risk of death and that's

forgetting what we should never forget.

Tecumseh lived here.

The wounds of the past

are ignored, but hang on...

Sometimes

I would like to paint my body red and go out into

the glittering snow

to die.

His name meant Shooting Star.

From Mad River country north to the border

he gathered the tribes

and armed them one more time. He vowed

to keep Ohio and it took him

over twenty years to fail...

his body could not be found.

It was never found...

if we ever meet him, we'll know it,

he will still be

so angry.

The Buddhists have a saying, "if you ever meet Buddha on the road, kill him." They mean it to say that growing our hearts and compassion goes beyond Buddhist teachings and writings. The way is instead being open to what is before us on the road, and behind us, what is up river, and from whence flows the rivers, no matter the pollution or blood flowing within them. The thing is, we have already killed Tecumseh. So if we meet him, what shall we do to him? What shall he do to us? Maybe we can grow out of our sickness, and remember what should not be forgotten, who has died and why, and what we have lost and why, so that we can grow our hearts and compassion. So if we come upon one another, it shall not be with anger, but first with a mourning wail that open hearts, minds, and hands, and perhaps after a night of stories beside a fire, laughter to greet the sun.

The Family - January 30, 2010

The dark things of the wood

Are coming from their caves...

...We remember the cave.

In our dreams we go back

Or they come to visit.

They also like music,

We eat leaves together.

They are our brothers.

They are the family

We have run away from.

In the movie "Avatar" there is much running, and the overwhelming public response that echoes too in my heart is a running back towards the family of all things. Last night I saw the 1988 war movie, "The Thin Red Line," and it too has lots of running, fearful running away from "the bad guys," running from who we are and the darkness within. The last lines in that movie are "everything shining." In the dark cave of our inner being, everything shinning.

What are you running away from? Towards? How might this running fuel your sense of separation from the family that is this earth and her beings, and yes, human beings?