Percy (2002-2009)

This - I said to Percy when I had left our bed and gone out onto the living room couch where he found me apparently doing nothing – this is called thinking. It’s something people do, not being entirely children of the earth, like a dog or a tree or a flower. His eyes questioned such an activity…Actually I like kissing better.

A Year's Rising with Mary Oliver's Poems 

January 1, 2010 - April 23, 2011

Oh Mary and readers, we are at our last poem together and it is one where I resist her words.  This happens so rarely.  For I feel that people are entirely children of this earth. Our thinking is as the sap rising in the tree and a dog drooling.  Maybe if I had the gift of genius of words that Mary had, I too would feel a separation from life around me.  For how can words capture the kiss of the morning sun upon one’s face and the caress of the wind or a feathered wing?

I suppose they can’t, but they do remind us where the path is.

So I thank you Mary for this time together, for keeping me on the path to see beauty, tragedy, interconnection - reality - in all moments.

And now I think I will lay down my pen, and go and kiss the ground and hug a tree  - my future and always daily nature meditation.

What might you share with others here about your experience of Mary’s poems and our shared reflections?

What is your daily nature meditation?

More Evidence - Part 2

2.

Where are you when you’re not thinking?

Frightening, isn’t it?

Where are you when you’re not feeling anything?

Oh, worse!

Except for faith and imagination, nature is that hard fortress you can’t get out of.

Some person are captive to love, other would make the beloved a captive. Which one are you?

As we travel through Guyana, conversations frequently turn to experiencing birds in the wild that in our home countries are kept in cages, often with harm, suffering, and death as a consequence.  There is no doubt that humans love their birds, but in so doing, they make the beloved a captive. What would it look like if instead we were bound by love instead of being the binders?

Perhaps I would not even be here to hear the sound of the White Bell Bird.  I would not be using the earth’s resources to travel so far to behold beauty and to save it.  Instead I would be at home with a simple bell calling me to meditation, to awakening, and to liberation.  I would be swooning with every sunrise that lights the grandeur of the tall pines in the oak hammock.  Yet it is the beloved birds that bind me and bring me to these places in Latin America to be with them, and perhaps contribute if I can.  I am ever captive, and the captor.

We go through our days, with cages around us and the door open. 

We can step out into freedom, or we can lure others in with us.

Which will you do this day?

The Trees

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again....

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?

Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and advancement!

But I think it would do us good if we would think about

these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

the trees, the trees, jut holding on

to the old, holy ways.

Today a couple of friends are coming over to home to help remove a fallen tree from our neighbor's backyard. This past Sunday, in our wooded back lot, a rotting snag fell over, luckily only hitting one wire fence.  The neighbor, whom we had not met before came knocking on our door asking me if we could clean up the mess.

The question comes up, who is responsible for the damage?  Do my spouse and I "own" the tree and it is up to us to repair damage and remove the broken log on their property?  Someone wrote us and said that if the tree had been alive and healthy, then it would be the resposibility of the neighbor to remove the downed tree, and not us.

Alas, it comes down to thinking of trees in terms of ownership, responsibility, and financial damage. 

So we walked our property line looking for any suspect trees that might cause damage, and discovered a plethora of downed trees on and near our property. While walking I noticed not just dead trees, but the skulls of several deer. What happened to them this winter?  Did coyotes take them down, the cold, or the lack of food?  What happened to the trees who will know no more green shoots, flowers, or the letting go of old leaves?

May I during the sound of chain saws today really listen to my siblings in the woods and wonder what their lives are and will be.

Who are your brothers and sisters?

.

Percy (nine)

Your friend is coming I say

To Percy, and name a name

And he runs to the door, his

Wide mouth in its laugh-shape,

And waves, since he has one, his tail.

Emerson, I am trying to live,

As you said we must, the examined life.

But there are days I wish

There was less in my head to examine,

Not to speak of the busy heart.  How

Would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not

Thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.

Yesterday, I was reading in “Ecotherapy:  Healing Nature with Mind” this quote from Okanagan Canadian author and activist Jeannette Armstrong as she writes about the Okanagan native peoples, “The Okanagan teaches that emotion or feeling is the capacity whereby community and land intersect in our beings and become part of us.  This bond or link is a priority for our individual wholeness or well-being.”

In this same book, David W. Orr writes, “.we indeed live in the lap of a great intelligence, as Emerson once said.  It is a practice acknowledgement that health, healing, wholeness, and holy are related not just by linguistic accident but by the fact that they are one and inseparable.”

Thinking of Percy’s running forward through the lens of the book, “Ecotherapy,” I’m guessing that Mary wishes to be one with the world through an acute and authentic response to the feelings and possibilities in the moment.   If we are in touch with our feelings, we are one with our animal selves, which also include human nature, cultures, and mind.  It seems to be then, that it’s not about Percy not thinking, but that we long for his seemingly effortless navigation between the shoals of thinking and feeling.  We long for an awareness of emotion and thinking in our minds and bodies. We long for healing, wholeness, and hope.

So I say, let us befriend our brains and our bodies.  Both are of this earth and belong.  If we can come into awareness and acceptance, maybe we can reach some semblance of effortless flow in this world.  

This awareness and acceptance is Sufi wisdom whose poetry reminds us that our deep longing is union with the Friend.  I know it is mine. To begin every day panting at the door, knowing that friendship awaits, running towards the Beloved, and hence to be loving. 

What awaits you outside your door today?