And Bob Dylan Too

Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.

Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow.

Songs to the gods, who have so many names.

Songs of the shepherds sing, on the lonely mountains, while the sheep are honoring the grass, by eating it.

The dance-songs of the bees, to tell where the flowers, suddenly, in the morning light, have opened.

A chorus of many, shouting to heaven, or at it, or pleading

Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin and a human body.

And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead.

I think of Schubert, scribbling on a cafe napkin.

Thank you, thank you.

It is July 1st - the beginning of Bob Dylan month in our household.  This is really just one family member's idea and the rest of us groan and roll our eyes.  "How is this music exactly?" we ask, and have been asking for years. 

Something has shifted over the years, however. On my Leonard Cohen Pandora Radio Station, frequently pop up songs by Bob Dylan, and to my surprise, I do not change the channel. As both Bob and Leonard croak, I hear beauty and life. They both are singing, thank you, as so scribbles Schubert on a napkin.

Our thoughts are but a few notes, and our lives but a bar of the infinite measures that make up the song of the universe.

Come, you, whoever you are, let us go where no two notes have gone before.

May we open ourselves across the universe.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life

Are ringing through my opened ears 

Inciting and inviting me.

Limitless undying love, which

Shines around me like a million suns,

It calls me on and on across the universe

- From "Across the Universe" by the Beatles

What Can I Say

Begin Book Swan

 

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your buy heart to the art museum and the

chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you

were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,

and the leaf is singing still.

I recall now how as a young child, in the years before elementary school began and up until adolescence I would go to the woods, and sing.  I sang to the trees and to the birds.  I don't remember the words I uttered or what I heard back.  Whatever were the melody or lyrics, I knew I did not sing alone. 

Then in the rush for acceptance and career, I quit singing and listening although the pied piper allure of the earth still pulled on me to follow. Eventually I went to work in conservation in Latin America, and I once again heard the notes loud and clear in the tropical forests.

A few years ago I spent about 3 weeks in the largest, wildest forest yet of my life - the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala.  When it came time to leave, I spontaneously wept for I was leaving my friend and journeying far from the beauty.

What I strive for in my days is to know that beauty is never far from me, for it is in me, in leaf, in bird, in you.  There is beauty all around, and it sings.

To whom do you sing?

I Am Standing

I am standing

on the dunes

in the heat of summer

and I am listening

to mockingbird again

who is tonguing

his embellishments

and, in the distance,

the shy

weed loving sparrow

who has but one

soft song

which he sings

again and again

and something

somewhere inside

my own unmusical self

begins humming:

thanks for the beauty of the world.

Thanks for my life.

My shortest sermon ever:

There is beauty everywhere

It connects all beings

Listen to  this song of interconnection

Sing in grateful praise

Stand on the side of love

What would be your shortest sermon ever?

Deep Summer

The mockingbird opens his throat among the thorns for his own reasons

but doesn't mind if we pause to listen and learn something

for ourselves; he doesn't stop, he nods his gray head

with the frightfully bright eyes, he flirts his supple tail, he says:

listen, if you would listen.  There's no  end to good talk, to passion songs,

to the melodies that say this branch, this tree is mine,

to the wholesome happiness of being alive on a patch

of this green earth in the deep pleasures of summer. What a bird!

Your clocks, he says plainly,

which are always ticking,

do not have to be listened to.

The spirit of his every word.

We are in deep winter in North America.  The mockingbirds are here, but not as flamboyant as they will be come this summer.  I suppose that if I listened hard enough I would hear the happiness of being alive from other sources, whether it's on a patch of urban sidewalk, suburban strip mall, or brown fields of last year's harvest. 

I step outside and I hear street traffic, a dog barking, some identified bird, my own heart, and a ringing in my ears.  I have hearing loss accompanied by a constant ringing and have for years. So  I don't always hear the bird calls that others might.  Instead I let my imagination wonder, for I know that beauty flits among the wet branches this grey morning.

Whatever our perceived flaws or losses, don't we each have to find our way to compensate, to be able to listen to the spirit of this world?

What do you hear when you walk out this morning?  In what ways do you compensate for who you are so that you may know happiness?

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?

Mink

A mink, jointless as heat, was

tip-toeing along the edge of the creek,

which was still in its coat of snow, yet singing-I could hear it!-

the old song of brightness....

the mink had a hunger in him

bigger than his shadow, which was gathered

like a sheet of darkness under his

neat feet which were busy

making dents in the snow. 

He sniffed slowly and thoroughly in all

four directions, as though

it was a payer to the whole world...

For me, it was a the gift of the winter

 to see him.  Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,

he stood up-and then he ran forward, and was gone. 

I stood awhile and then walked on

over the white snow:  the terrible, gleaming

loneliness.  I took me, I suppose,

something like six more weeks to reach

finally a patch of green, I paused so often

to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across

 the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.

In the winter of our lives, are there patches of experience for which we can be grateful? And the ultimate test, can we see beauty in the harshness and the dying back?  My sister recently was diagnosed with bone cancer, probably metastasized from a previous bout of breast cancer.  For me, this is devastating news.  There are some hard years for her coming up, and I'm guessing, not too many of them either.  Yet, in our phone calls she has times of laughing, nearly giggling.  Yesterday her retort to the mess her affairs are in, was, "At least I got to see a hawk."  She had seen a Sharp-shinned hawk foraging around in her snow covered bushes for sparrows, and fly away talons empty. 

She is like a beautiful sleek mink, and now is the time for me to look at how her life is a prayer to the whole world.

Who or what is your mink in the winter time?

Red Bird Explains Himself

Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart..

Mary, you are the brilliance and the song.  You bag of tricks includes obedience to work, to paper and pen, to breaking the heart open like an egg - but what delicious sweetness you cook up with your words!

I will stay with you and listen.

For the song of my heart I hear more clearly in your song - you help me grow, love, and weep.

You are both of this earth and of the ethereal vision that beauty resides here with me, down in the mud, and over and around me, bathing me in light and feathers with each rising sun. 

You were sent to this life to teach us our hearts.

I bow in gratitude to you - your feathered soul now flying with mine.

What does redbird, Mary, and this day teach you?

Of Goodness

How good

That the clouds travel, as they do,

Like the long dresses of the angels

Of our imagination,

Or gather in storm masses, then break

With their gifts of replenishment,

And how good

That the trees shelter the patient birds

In their thick leaves,

And how good that that in the field

The next morning

Red bird frolics again, his throat full of song,

 And how good

That the dark ponds, refreshed,

Are holding the white cups of the lilies

So that each is an eye that can look upward,

And how good that the little blue-winged teal

Comes paddling among them, as cheerful as ever

And so on, and so on.

How good it is that we travel from one side of the family to the other

On this Thanksgiving weekend

Disappearing fathers on one wing and diminishing mothers on the other

We soar down Interstate 20 and 95

Like an eagle, seeing, and taking in all

Cheer, yes, there is some to replenish the spirit

But what I would give to see a teal to deal

With the heartache and the loss

And so on and so on.

What would you see today to replenish your life?

Iraq

I want to sing a song

For a body I saw

Crumpled

And without a name

But clearly someone young

Who had not yet lived his life

And never would.

How shall I do this?

What kind of song

Would serve such a purpose?

This poem may never end,

For what answer does it have

For anyone

In the distant

Comfortable country,

Simply looking on?

Clearly

He had a weapon in his hands

I think

He could have been no more than twenty.

I think whoever he was

Of whatever country,

He might have been my brother

Were the world different.

I think

He would not have been lying there

Were the world different

I think

If I had known him

On his birthday,

I would have made for him

A great celebration.

Were the world different?

Alas, I can mourn, dream, wish, and make concrete requests

Of the world.

But what would this carrying on amount to?

Were I different

I would know that all beings are my family

And I would make for this day

Every day

A celebration of birthdays

Singing my death song.

Were the world different what would you have it be? If you were different, what would you be?

Red

All the while

I was teaching

in the state of Virginia

I wanted to see

gray fox.

Finally I found him.

He was in the highway.

He was singing

His death song.

I picked him up

And carried him

Into a field

While the cars kept coming.

He showed me

How he could ripple

How he could bleed.

Goodbye I said

To the light of his eye

As the cars went by.

Two mornings later

I found the other.

She was in the highway.

She was singing

Her death song.

I picked her up

And carried her

Into the field

Where she rippled

Half of her gray

Half of her red

While the cars kept coming.

While the cars kept coming.

Gray fox and gray fox.

Red, red, red.

Once, when I was a teen I was in the car with my father when across the road flew two flickers in front of the car ahead of us.  One made it across safely, the other not.  The injuring car kept going. My father stopped. Wordless we went to the side of the road to see what might be done for the stricken bird.  There was the male, quite dead, and so amazingly beautiful in his stillness. Over his body was his mate, uninjured, unmoving - protecting?  Saying goodbye?  I didn’t know what we could do for either bird, so I looked to my father who had tears falling down his face.  While the three of us stood vigil, the cars kept going by, the drivers unaware of the beauty and tragedy they were passing by.

We are the cars Mary speaks of.  We participate in death, of course, for we are alive and we die and we cannot escape this interdependence that claims us.  Perhaps though there are more songs of death we could hear, could write, and could sing.  I will give this day to hear, write, and sing the songs around me. 

Will you join me?  And then tell me what you songs you partook of?

Self-Portrait

I wish I was twenty and in love with life

and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!

There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side

the roses are blooming and finding their labor

no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea

shining like a song, like a body

I want to touch

though I'm not twenty

and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still

in love with life. And still

full of beans

So here it is Tuesday for me, and as I said in yesterday's blog, this is the day where I "hit the week running." Looking back at yesterday's "undoing" I pray that I gave enough time to touch the essence of life, so my love can fill over into compassion in the week to come.

Honestly, though, my listening never seems enough to take in all the love and wonder there is. As I meditate in the morning on our backyard porch I am ever distracted. First I see the gopher tortoise working on her burrow, splashing sand in an ever widening expanse, and then comes the chattering Pileated Woodpecker foraging on the ground with her ridiculous red top hat. I want to jump up from my cushion and go running out to be with them, to be a digger and a pounder. But I too, like Mary, have old legs. It takes a while to get up from the cushion as the arthritic pain signals my mid age.

A curse perhaps this age? Hmmm. Maybe not. For in my increasing stillness, my Monday day offs, my meditation, and my slowing down physically, I find that through my companions I am indeed running, digging, flying, giggling, playing soccer, and dancing with the best and worst of them. I am twenty again on the verge of adulthood just having scored a goal during soccer and I am the confused octarian with dementia in the home down the road.

Somehow in the alternating lost and found quality to our shared lives, may the blessing of loving life stay with us.

How do you paint your self-portrait? Where do you find that you are full of beans, running and climbing in spirit if not in spirit?

A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?

This isn't a play ground, this is

earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence

to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.

And I say to my heart: rave on

I once had a dream in my early thirties. This was a time of me of conflict and pain, and my dreams captured this by having reoccurring themes of loss. In this one dream, I actually dreamed a music video that sang, "Love is not enough, and it ain't dead yet." Somehow in my wisdom I knew that the loss would never go away and the only response was to love all the harder, even though there was no guarantee that it would solve anything or lessen the pain.

Just this past weekend I helping to facilitate a Unitarian Univeralist spiritual retreat for the Mississippi congregations. In that time we as a group reflected on joys and sorrows and came up with a response to this. Our joy is the source of our sorrow - for we desire love and connection, and not getting "enough" of this causes pain. So our answer? Well, more love, more connection, more hope, and more joy. It's pretty much a "no brainer" and an "all hearter." What could be more simple, or more harder/hearter?

Today, whatever is your loss, please join with me in responding my loving more. For when we sing, "There is more love, somewhere" it can be now, with you, with us, this next breath.