Trees

Heaven knows how many

trees I climbed when my body

was still in the climbing way,

how many afternoons, especially

windy ones, I sat

perched on a limb that

rose and fell with every invisible

blow....

every leafy height

a happiness that came without even trying.....

Now I walk under them-

the household of such tall, kind sisters.

Yesterday, thanks to a reader here, I read a recent interview of Mary Oliver. She spoke of her troubled childhood when she has suffered abuse.  I can see her seeking to escape this, and climbing a tree so that she counteracted the violence done to her by beholding beauty within and without from the lofts of trees.  She sought to transcend the world below.

In the interview she spoke of the happiness and healing she had found in her older age. Though no longer a tree climber, I believe, or so project my own life journey on to hers, that she feels truly like she belongs on this world, walking with all beings as her siblings.

May we this day not feel like we need to climb over any body or being, but call them family, kindly.

Who are your siblings?

Wind in the Pines

Is it true that the wind

streaming especially in fall

through the pines

is saying nothing, nothing at all,

or is it just that I don't yet know the language?

The trees are our interpreters. They tell us what the world is saying.  From which direction does the wind come, how strong is it, how variable is it, and how long does it last? From this we know if  a storm approaching, a front coming through, or the breeze rising from the changing heat or from the water.

Once I was in Nashville when there had been storm warnings all day.  Towards the end of the storm I turned off the TV and radio, figuring any tornado possibilities were gone.  Suddenly it got very dark and I looked out at the trees, some of which were bending to the point of snapping in two. The tornado passed by just a few blocks away, though I couldn't tell except for the trees..

Another time I was in Northern California and couldn't figure out what a door had shut in the house and why my clothes were swaying in the closet.  I looked out at the trees, and in seeing their rocking, I knew an earthquake had struck.

So I look often to the trees, for they speak in birds, in flowers and seeds, in wind, and in beauty. Such a lovely language.

What different languages are there in your life?

I Want - February 10, 2011

I want to be in partnership with the universe

like the tiger lily poking up its gorgeous head

among the so-called useless weeds in the uncultivated fields

that still abide.  But it's okay if, after all,

I'm not a lily, but only grass in a clutch of curly grass

waving in the wind, staring sunward: one of those sweet, abrasive blades.

I wonder if Mary knows that the translation of the words lilies and grasses to English is very similar in the Christian Scriptures.  When Jesus then asks us to "consider the lilies" we are also "considering the grasses."

We have been trained all our lives to be the rising star, and the emerging lily. We know that there is something beautiful inside of us.

We have been trained all our lives to be the course, abrasive grass. We know there is something fundamentally wrong inside of us.

What if we are neither beautiful or wrong, and are both?

Today I saw a sick squirrel on our outside water bath. S/he looked weak and had a hard time walking.  We agonized in our family what to do besides throwing out some peanuts for the squirrel.  Do we take the squirrel into captivity, only to have its last hours probably interlaced with heavy stress as we do invasive and manipulatory procedures to determine diagnosis and implement treatment?  Or do we let the squirrel be in her/his home yard, with friends and home trees and nests, and let the owl take her/him hopefully quickly?

In the midst of such suffering and beauty, how can anything I do or not do be anything but wrong, for I cannot assure that beauty never dies or lessens?

But if I am wrong, then so too is the owl and the squirrel. 

I want to live in a world beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, which means being fully partnered with the universe and all of what we are, and can be!

How do you wish to partner today?

When I Was Young and Poor - February 7, 2011

When I was young and poor,

when little was much,

when I was nimble and never tired,

and the hours of the day were deep and long,

where was the end that was already committed?...

nowhere, nowhere!

Just the gift of forgetfulness gracious and kind

while I ran up hills and drank the wind-

time out of mind.

Which is it?  Do we struggle to forget? Or not to forget?  In the older years, we seem not able to forget that our "self ending" is coming, though we might long too as we did in our younger years.  Paradoxically don't we also strive to remember that there really is "no self?" How glorious are the days when we merge into the river and the wind, our extinction into beauty a welcome relief.

If you could forget something, what might it be?

The Gift

After the wind-bruised sea
furrowed itself back
into the folds of blue, I found
in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune -
tawny and white,
spherical,
with a tail

and a tower
and a dark door,
and all of it
no larger

than my fist.
It looked, you might say,
very expensive.
I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic's
wind-pounded bowl
and wondered
that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was
that door
that held only the eventual, inevitable
emptiness.

There's that - there's always that.
Still, what a house
to leave behind!
I held it

like the wisest of books
and imagined
its travels toward my hand.
And now, your hand.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for Arnie Bleiweiss, a fellow member of my congregation.   We celebrated his life as we heard sharing after sharing about the remarkable life he had led. He had given a great gift of science, mentorship, and companionship to those around him.   The house was packed with people who had come to cherish, and to say goodbye.  Though there were moments of laughter, there were also tears. For the sanctuary was so empty without him. 

But what a house he left behind! I thank him for his wisdom and his memories, that travel from my heart and now to yours.

What house do you know that now stands empty, but is evidence of pricelessness?

Someday

Even the oldest of trees continues its wonderful labor.

Hummingbird lives in one of them.

He's there for the white blossoms, and the secrecy.

The blossoms could be snow, with a dash of pink.

At first the fruit is small and green and hard.

Everything has dreams, hope, ambition.

If I could I would always live in such shining obedience

where nothing but the wind trims the boughs.

I am sorry for every mistake I have made in my life.

I'm sorry I wasn't wiser sooner.

I'm sorry I ever spoke of myself as lonely.

Oh, love, lay your hands upon me again.

Some of the fruit ripens and is picked and is delicious.

Some of it falls and the ants are delighted.

Some of it hides under the snow and the famished deer are saved.

Perhaps our love is never enough, but love, no matter how small, feeds some being.  Maybe we don't see the results, only the small hardness of our hearts when love is not accepted or acknowledged. 

Just today when I was out walking upon our local prairie, I gave a list to my companion of what I regretted in my life.  We had been looking at the birds upon the flooded grassland, and as a pair of dowitchers or lesser yellowlegs or something along that line flew over I said, "I wished I knew birds better."  Then without  missing a beat, I added to the list, "I wish I knew Spanish better."  I wish I was in better shape.  I wish my knee didn't hurt so much.  I wish I wasn't so old.

 All of this comes from seeing such beauty and feeling such love, and wanting to dance with the world and give back to this earth all that she has invested in me.

One day the winter of my years will come upon me.  Then, all my gifts may well be hidden by snow white hair and withered hands. My labor then will be that I can still love and be loved. This work, perhaps the only work that ever really matters, never ends.  Amen.

What is on your list of regrets?

Now Comes the Long Blue Cold

Now comes the long blue cold

And what shall I say but that some

Bird in the tree of my heart

Is singing.

The same heart that only yesterday

Was a room shut tight, without dreams.

Isn't it wonderful the cold wind and

Spring in the heart inexplicable.

Darling girl. Picklock.

There is a saying that is often in my head, “surprised by love.”  I don’t know why love should be a surprise, because the world is so beautiful.   I forget though. One moment thoughts are all dark and gloom, and then, and let me say it, through grace love arises.  Like the sun ever faithful, love will come again.

Sometimes though relief comes not soon enough.  As the pain tortures us cold disconnection seems everlasting. But just when you think you can’t take it anymore, love’s sorrow does its work to open the heart.  In this case it’s not like a picklock, but more like a thief dynamiting a safe. 

Let me today blow up the allusion of safety, exploding my heart so that love and beauty may be enter freely.

When have you been surprised by love?

Not This, Not That

Not anything,

Not the eastern wind whose other name

Is rain,

Nor the burning heats of the dunes

At the crown of summer,

Nor the ticks, that new, ferocious populace,

Not the President who loves blood,

Nor the governmental agencies that love money,

Will alter

My love for you, my friends and my beloved,

Or for you, oh ghosts of Emerson and Whitman,

Or for you, oh blue sky of a summer morning,

That makes me roll in a barrel of gratitude

Down hills,

Or for you, oldest of friends: hope

Or for you, newest of friends: faith;

Or for you, silliest and dearest of surprises, my

Own life.

I see a turning outwards of Mary in this later run of poems.  She speaks of power, politics, environmental and species lost and suffering, and what we humans might do in response.  Today she tells me that though the world seems to suck the life from us as ticks in the summer, we still have the ability to love, to be grateful, and to have hope, faith, and perspective on the insignificance of our own lives.

Okay, let’s see if this list of responses is at all possible.   Last night I led a count of Yellow-naped Amazons at a roost site in the south coast of Guatemala.  Fifteen years ago there were during this time of year about 250 parrots that spent the night there.  Last night we counted only 8.  Decades of poaching chicks from the nests and habitat loss have taken their toll.  Though  the birds are becoming as flying ghosts over the desert of sugar cane crops, I love them still.  Gratitude is a bit harder to touch this morning, yet, I am glad that I can still know love,  In that love I have hope that the beauty of birds and our world will win out, perhaps ending in extinction, yet, also giving rise to something newly created that will give birth a  different beauty.  I don’t have faith that we will save this land, but I pray and meditate so that I may grow my faith that I am not separate from any being. 

May that faith help me see my  own life with humor, curiosity, and precious acceptance – which fills me with gratitude.  The circus of my own life brings me full circle.

I end with a poem that my spouse sent to me that captures the gratitude in the midst of so much loss.

Thanks - W.S. Merwin

 

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

smiling by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

What helps you have perspective in your life, and gratitude?

Percy Books (Eight)

Percy does not like it when I read a book.

He puts his face over the top of it and moans,

He roils is eyes, sometimes he sneezes.

The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.

The tide is out and the neighbor's dogs are playing.

But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!...

Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.

Let's go.

Oh dear Percy, are you Mary's wise teacher? Mine too?

I am reminded of a famous Zen Buddist Koan:

A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."

Here "Mu" means, more or less, "No." And yet, Chao-Chou says that all sentient beings have Buddha nature. What is going on here?

Without getting tangled up in Buddhist paradox which takes a life time to get untangled up in the web of interdependence, here's my quick take. Understanding being is beyond words, beyond teaching, beyond books, beyond scripture, beyond dogs, and beyond you and me. Inter-being is. There is nothing to understand. I suppose that is why there is another Buddhist saying, "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him."

So if Percy was to meet Buddha on the road, what would happen?

The Teachers - November 1, 2010 -

Owl in the black morning,

mockingbird in the burning

slants of the sunny afternoon

declare so simply

to the world

everything I have tried but still

haven't been able

to put into words,

so I do not go

far from that school...

I listen hard

to the exuberances

of the mockingbird and the owl,

the waves and the wind.

And then, like peace after perfect speech,

such stillness.

In purposeful meditation, we invite in the silence and listen to ourselves, and hence the world. In walking meditation and nature walks, we listen to what is about us, and are able to hear ourselves as we become still. So then, I ask, is there stillness without listening? Is there listening without stillness? The two seem like a pair of wings of liberated interdependence. Perhaps stillness is not a state to invite or at which to arrive, but is woven into the chatter of house wren, the beating of our heart, and the spat with a loved one. Each is perfect speech, yelling at us that we can love, even still.

Where do you encounter the silence?

The Orchard

I have dreamed

Of accomplishment.

I have fed

Ambition.

I have traded

Nights of sleep

For a length of work.

Lo, and I have discovered

How soft bloom

Turns to green fruit

Which turns to sweet fruit

Lo, and I have discovered

All winds blow cold

At last,

And the leaves,

So pretty, so many,

Vanish,

In the great, black

Packet of time,

In the great, black

Packet of ambition,

And the ripeness

Of the apple

Is its downfall.

This morning I awake to blackness in the town of Tucker, outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m here for a workshop on Restorative Circles. As I awoke, I had a clear image of the good work of my mother. In her middle years she was a quilter. These later years though she mostly sleeps, and when awake, challenges those who care for her and wish for her a better life. She has dementia. The gravity of the years is upon her and she is an apple on the way down. As her Power of Attorney and her Medical Power of Attorney it often falls to me to be the enforcer and persuader for her to make decisions that benefit her, and do not harm her. Many days my discomfort, pain, and loneliness of having her slip away so slowly leaves me judging the worth of myself, her, and the world at large – for surely such sweet blooms should never turn to moldy apples littering the ground.

But her quilts endure. She worked on one quilt a good part of my adolescent, a patchwork of embroidered birds. Later she gave me an appliqué penguin quilt. I have both still and they are used every winter, a little worse for wear. My mother’s brain may be fragmenting into pieces, as will my precious quilts she made for me, and frankly, my body is a little worse for wear. Somehow though as I think of the beauty and warmth of love and care sewn into these quilts I seem at peace. For the pieces of her life will endure in quilt, in me, and in those that come after. There is no way to restore her to her youth, and there will come a time when her quilts are beyond restoring, but life will have come full circle. Thank you mother for your loving work. Thank you all for the work you do.

What is your work and how does it bear fruition?