The Living Together

The spirit says:

What gorgeous clouds.

The body says: Good,

The crops need rain.

The spirit says:

Look at the lambs frolicking.

The body says:

When’s the feast?...

The spirit says:  Body,

How can we live together?

The body says:  Bricks and mortar

And a back door.

In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, we see that the fundamental needs of protection, security and nuturturance are below the higher needs of spiritual development. If the people are not fed and safe, it is hard for them to ponder the beauty of the clouds and the inherent worth and dignity of others.  Notice I say hard, not impossible. 

It is a difficult task though to embody spirit in our daily lives. Aren’t we always in some ways, or at least perceiving so, under threat or at risk of not having enough?  So we look to the lambs to slaughter them, our relationships, our communities, and our earth.

May we look to this day, and not sneak out the back door to meet our desires and our fears, but go boldly through the front door, and leave the door to our hearts open as we journey forward together.

Do you have tension between your body and spirit?  What is spirit?

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?

Patience

What is the good life now? Why,

look here, consider

the moon's white crescent

rounding, slowly, over

the half month to still another

perfect circle-

the shining eye

that lightens the hills,

that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees,

that summons the flowers

to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.

I used to hurry everywhere,

and leaped over the running creeks.

There wasn't

time enough for all the wonderful things

I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience

comes to the bones

before it take root in the heart

as another good idea.

I say this

as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns

of the moon shadows,

or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also

caught the fever, and hardly move

from one eternity to another.

Here we go again, no answers as we teeter on the brink of relativism. Is there no absolute "good life" but only stages that we go through? The good for some is to hurry and do wonderful things in our earlier years, and for others a welcome idea is patience as we come to the edge of eternity's seduction in the form of decay, dying and death? I do believe that our experiences and our bodily sensations in our daily lives define how we may live the best that we may, offering us insight and wisdom.

I spent many months of my childhood on crutches with a knee gone bad and no current surgical techniques available to fix the injury. Rather abruptly I was forced to slow down in a big way, not able to run, catch balls, and jump over creeks with the other kids. It was in this time that I discovered reading and how much I loved my little parrot companion. Both kept me company during the painful healing and the reoccurring injuries. Eventually the doctors were able to stabilize the knee and I was able to run again, play sports, and take to the woods. I did not lose, however, the reading or the parrot companionship, and both are a big part of the good life for me today. My bones taught me in those years patience, and to accept what the body tells us is good for us, and what is painful. I pray today that I might be open to the very simple messages of my body, that this breath and this heart beat is what connects me to eternity and to you.