It is Early - March 7, 2011

It is early, still the darkest of the dark.

And already I have killed (in exasperation)

two mosquitoes and (inadvertently)

one spider.

All the same, the sun will rise

in its sweeps of pink and red clouds.

Not for me does it rise and not in haste does it rise

but step by step, neither

with exasperation nor inadvertently, and not with

any intended attention to

any one thing, but to all, like a god

That takes its instructions from another, even greater,

whose name, even, we do not know.  The one

that made the mosquito, and the spider; the one

that made me as I am:  easy to exasperation, then penitent.

I have recently been watching bit and pieces of various programs about the nature of the universe.  My spouse is doing a sermon series on this topic, so I join him in his musings.

Just last night we watched Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," that shows us the universe through the lens of mathematics and physics.  Last week I saw bits part of the series, "Cosmos" starring Carl Sagan. I never watched it when it first came out in the 1980's. As I see it now, I marvel how the words spoken there reveal to our kind how much the suns are like gods.  They are such a miracle in a vast ocean of mystery, and they bring so much life.  We are so small compared to the billions and billions of stars in the universe.  Yet, knowing this, we grow large and beautiful, for we are made of star dust.  We are stars.

Carl Sagan produced a fictional movie and book, "Contact," which is about how humans are stars, and also so childlike and fallible.  In this mix, always, is the awe and wonder of existence.  It is in my top ten favorite movies because the beauty there and the possibility of healing calls me to my better self.  Towards the end of the movie when the main character is hurtling towards other galaxies, she looks out on the birth and death of stars and says, "They should have sent a poet."

Well, they did.  The universe sent us Mary.  She calls me to my better self this morning.

What is the universe to you?

Beans Green and Yellow

In fall it is mushrooms

gathered from dampness

under the pines:

in spring I have known

the taste of the lamb

full of milk and spring grass;

today it is beans green and yellow

 and lettuce and basil from my friends' garden-

how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing,

we eat the blessed earth.

Just last week Mary spoke of eating a pine cone that had passed through the digestive system of a bear. Is there nothing she won't eat and be grateful for?

I for one have not been very grateful for the kinds of food that come in the form "green leaves."  I have not been able to eat kale, mustard greens, and spinach, even when covered in cheese such as in lasagna.  It took me years to be able to eat artichokes and Brussels spouts without gagging.  Maybe this has something to do with my mother serving canned spinach that was only slightly warmed up for dinner and became increasingly slimy as the meal progressed.  I was not able to leave the table until "...it's all gone! Don't you know children are starving in India?"

Then this winter my spouse and I joined a food coop at an organic farm.  Winter vegetables in this part of the world are nearly synonymous with leafy vegetables.  "Oh my gosh"  I moaned when we picked up the first bag, "How will you eat this before it all goes bad?"   He answered this with a weekly ritual of cooking a pot of beans and vegetables, and adding some of the green leaves.  I love his vegetable stews normally, so I agreed to give it a go.  It looked and smelled terrible, but that first spoonful was doable, as long as I didn't look to closely at what was going in the gullet.  Each week since then he has been slowly adding a greater percentage of the organic vegetables, including turnips, radishes, and various things with big leaves we don't know the name of.  Each week I eat more and more of it and that pot's contents has become my major source of nutrition.  We are almost into spring and I have not tired of it, and am ever so grateful for it. 

Maybe the difference is that these vegetables come straight out of earth that I live upon. They are sturdy, firm, and fierce in my eyes.  For they bring me health and interconnection in ways I never knew was possible. Once a food nonbeliever, now I am saved.  What amazing grace is this world that we eat. Blessings to my spouse and all those others who make this possible.  

Are there foods for which you are not grateful? 

Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black river?

Did you see in it the morning, rising into the silvery air,

an armful of white blossoms,

a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

biting the air with its black beak?....

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Yesterday I got an email update of "birds to see" in  my north Florida area. One sighting is of a Tundra Swan that has been with us remarkably all winter.  I wonder about taking the time from my day to go look for the bird, to slap my eyes upon the beauty if only through the binocular or spotting scope lens.  Perhaps today it is enough to just know that such marvel exists out there, somewhere - a kernel of excitement and belonging that grows my faith this day.  If I can manage to wake up today ( at least dear god let me do so in part), I won't need special optics to see beauty.  I'll just open my heart and be the change I wish in the world.

What is beauty for?

Today

Today is a day of

dark clouds and slow rain.

The little blades of corn

are so happy

Today is a day of darkened homes amongst the  terrorized citizenry, 

slowing revolutions, and assassinations of the brave.

Dare we be happy in such a world?

Percy Wakes Me

Percy wakes me and I am not ready...

Now he's eager for action:  a walk, then breakfast....

He is sitting on the kitchen counter where he is not supposed to be.

How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you needed me, to wake me.

He thought he would hear a lecture and deeply  his eyes begin to shine.

He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.

He squirms and squeals; he has done something that he needed and now he hears that it's okay.

I scratch his ears, I turn him over and touch him everywhere.  He is

wild with the okayness of it.  Then we walk, then he gas has breakfast, and he is happy.

This is a poem about Percy.

This is a poem about more than Percy.

Think about it.

In my spiritual practice of nonviolent communication I often struggle with accepting with ease the complaints of others.  When I first hear what they want, often expressed as a demand, or worse, as whining, I don't have much empathy for others or for myself.  It's also hard for me to get in touch with my gratitude that they let me know what was going on for them, for I know that when someone asks something of me, often in a an unskillful way, they are just letting me know what would make their life wonderful.  This is such a great gift, but so frequently I am reluctant to open the gift to appreciate how life flows through them.  Instead I have "shoulds" going on in my story telling brain, "Why can't they think of anyone else but themselves?" 

Reading this poem today, I sense a break through, a vision.  People around me are like bounding Percies, inviting me to make their life wonderful.  How lovely for them, and for me, if I could reply in word, thought, and action so that they could know how wonderful they are and the okayness of their needs.

Oh how our lives might shine. Though we may not be ready, may we awake to this possibility today.

To whom would you like to communicate "okayness?"

For Example

Okay, the broken gull let me lift it from the sand.

Let me fumble it into a box, with the lid  open.

Okay, I put the box into my car and started up the highway

to the place where sometimes, sometimes not, such things can be mended.

The gull at first was quiet.

How everything turns out one way or another, I won't call it good or bad, just one way or another.

Then the  gull lurched from the box and onto the back of the front seat and punched me.

Okay, a little blood slid down.

But we all know, don't we how sometimes things have to feel anger, so as not to be defeated?

I love this world, even in its hard places.

A bird too must love this world, even in its hard places

So, even if the effort may come to nothing, you have to do something.

It was generally speaking, a perfectly beautiful summer morning.

The gull beat the air with its good wing.

I kept my eyes on the road.

I have put thousands of broken birds into boxes, sometimes they have been mended, often not.

I have always wanted to label this state of bird injury and extinction as bad, my anger sometimes fueling my engagement in the overall broken world, and sometimes not.

There are just too many dying birds out there for anger to suffice.

So I awake this morning determined to love the world, even in its hard places, its impossible places.

What is impossible for you to love?

Passing the Unworked Field

Queen Anne's lace is hardly prized but all the same it isn't idle look

how it stands straight on its thin stems how it

scrubs its white faces with the rags of the  sun how it

makes all the loveliness it can

Two days ago my spouse and I went for a walk in San Felasco Park as opposed to where we often walk, La Chua Trail.  The Park  is a wooded expanse and the Trail  is wide open to prairie views and water.  In the park the walk ways are  arched with the tops of the tree; sun, moon, and birds hiding behind the towering green.

About 4 miles into the walk my partner said, "I love trees" meaning he had a preference for this walk with evasive birds versus the other walk where birds nearly jump on your binoculars demanding that you see their beauty.  I replied, "Yes, I hear you, however, these trees are evidence of the scarred land, for they are small and the woods are not diverse. It's been centuries since this last was the original forest. They tell us how this land has been worked over as fields for generations.  I see pain and loss here."

"Yes he said, but I see trees that are working hard for the rest of us."

These trees, indeed, healing the land, healing us, bringing beauty, being beauty.

All praise unworked fields which are working.

What is "unworked" and "working" in your life?