The Faces of Deer

When for too long I don’t go deep enough into the woods to see them, they being to enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches then lefts away from the ground. Unless you believe that heaven is very near, how will you find it? Their eyes are pools in which one would be content, on any summer afternoon, to swim away through the door of the world. Then, love and its blessing. Then: heaven.

In the movie, Princess Mononoke, there is a Forest Spirit that appears as the great stag of the forest. This magical being represents wisdom and hope, and the other characters have fear of him. Towards the end of the movie we finally glimpse this being and wonder if suddenly the world will be made right by his presence. Each time he places his hoof upon the ground, a bounty of flowers and plants emerge from his hoof prints, and then they die and shrivel as he lifts his foot. This forest wisdom manifests as a cycle of life and death with every step. Heaven indeed is everywhere, and it encompasses suffering, harm, and death. Wisdom comes from seeing beauty in death and life, everywhere.

I know this is hard to live with. It’s hard for me. When I see the young fawn dead on the side of the road from a car impact, I cringe. Surely it isn’t right that such a soft and innocent being should go through this tragedy, so young? When I hear of the millions of dollars of damage that comes from cars hitting deer each year in the U.S. and the loss of human and deer life because of these collisions, I am stunned. We want deer in our lives, and the results is death and suffering. I think of the great Forest Spirit, so powerful, so achingly beautiful, and so clearly the bringer of life and death. What is love but the foolishness to see blessings in such a frightening, lovely world?

What kind of life do you wish to live – one of modesty and praise as Mary suggests?

Of What Surrounds Me

Whatever it is I am saying, I always
Need a leaf or a flower, if not an
Entire field. As for sky, I am wildly
In love with each day’s inventions, cool blue
Or cat gray or full
Of the ships of clouds, I simply can’t
Say whatever it is I am saying without
At least one skyful. That leaves water, a
Creek or a well, river or ocean, it has to be
There. For the heart to be there. For the pen
To be poised. For the idea to come.



Whatever it is I am doing I would like a feather to be there. If not a feather, then may I pray for the grace of birds to be nearby – in the yard, in the tree, or in sky, full of my wings’ love´? For where there are birds, there is also the heart. The trick is how to have the heart be present, without caging beauty, and hence ourselves. Otherwise we might end up saying, “I can’t be happy until I have this, or go see this.” Where would desire end, but in our own end?

This week I am visiting a veterinary clinic that only sees birds and exotic animals. The clinic is nestled into a strip mall arrangement, a bit plain I suppose like much of the Ohio suburbs. But then you open the door to the clinic and the rainbow of life dazzles your eyes. The doctors and the technicians smile and look you right in the eye, and the multiple birds in residence fly across the room to perch near brightly decorated walls. One rode my shoulder for the afternoon, my face touching, oh God, actually touching feathers once again. The world seems nearly as it should be in these rooms, for isn’t everything we need right there? Then the clients come in with their companion birds – sick, caged, behaviorally down shifted from their evolved possibility. I am not saying that there isn’t love or care or heart in the humans there, but do we as a species truly “need” these rooms full of cages and medicines for the idea of interconnection to come? I am poised for there to be another way, and in my longing may I remain alert for letting desire go so that life may come.

What do you desire or need, that if in letting it go, would lead to fuller lives for you or for others?

Tiger Lilies - August 16, 2010

They blew in the wind softly, this way, that way; they were not disappointed when they saw the scissors, rather they braced themselves sweetly and shone with willingness. They were on tall and tender poles, with wheels of leaves. They were soft as the ears of kittens. They felt warm in recognition of the summer day. A dozen was plenty. I held them in my arms. They were silent the way the deepest water is silent. If they wondered where they were going they didn’t show it, as they sprinkled freely over my shirt and my hands their precious gold dust.



Is Mary saying that the Tiger Lilies were going to their death willingly, or without disappointment? Would the Tiger Lilies, if given a choice, choose to be cut and taken away from their tribe to enter into domestic dying? Is this poem a way of justifying human domination over nature? But surely, you might argue, the Lilies are a domestic species, planted for our benefit and so we have the right to harvest them. Perhaps the Lilies are “silent” because we don’t yet know how to really hear them – of what they “want” and how “need” and how life strives to flourish in their existence. How often do we silence the oppressed or marginalized voices – pretend we don’t hear them or that they don’t have needs or inherent worth and dignity? If Lilies, then why not trees, birds, pigs, and people? I am just reading today in the book “conservation psychology” of how plants and animals in the home and garden benefit humans in a variety of ways. We evolved to interact with nature and to derive benefit from it. But at what cost? Ironically, our desire for beauty and wildness must be tamed for the benefit of all. Perhaps in that taming and discipline of a measured response to life, we give ourselves and our world even more freedom that we even though possible. Who needs to cut flowers or pigs if we know we are the forest and the porcine, seeing their beauty and listening to their suffering where they are instead of commanding them to be where we want them to be. Oh Mary, Mary, I am so contrary. How together can we have our earth garden grow?

Where do you experience silence from another when really there is much to be heard and experienced?

Circles

In the morning the blue heron is busy

stepping, slowly, around the edge of the

pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded

against his body, fit so neatly they

make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise

into the air, a great surprise. Also

he carries so light the terrible sword-beak. Then

he is gone over the trees.

I am so happy to be alive in this world

I would like to live forever, but I am

content not to. Seeing what I have seen

has filled me; believing what I believe

has filled me.

The first words of this page are

hardly thought of when the bird

circles back over the trees; it floats down

like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light

coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:

maybe it is or it isn't the same bird-maybe it's

the first one's child, or the child of its child.

What I mean is, our deliverance from Time

and the continuance, if we only steward them well,

of earthly things. So maybe it's myself still standing here, or

someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and

filled with praise.

Yesterday a young coyote walked across our lawn in the ripening dawn. Along the way to kayak the Suwannee, families of turkeys and deer adorned the highways, as did one lone feral pig. In the water one gator swam under our boats and mighty sturgeons jumped to our joy nearby. Juvenile Red-shouldered hawks and immature Little Blue Herons Herons kept closer to us on the banks than their parents would have, and on the way back, a raccoon scampered in front of my speeding car, closer to me than s/he should have been. So maybe it's myself writing to you this morning, or the gator, or the turkey, or the coyote - our very being a joy of this world worthy of incessant praise.

What would you do differently if you lived forever?

Mountain Lion on East Hill Road, Austerlitz, NY

Once, years ago, I saw

the mountain cat. She stepped

from under a cloud

of birch trees and padded

along the edge of the field. When she saw

that I saw her, instantly

flames leaped

in her eyes, it was that

distasteful to her to be

seen. Her wide face

was a plate of gold,

her black lip

curled as though she had come

to a terrible place in the long movie, her shoulders

shook like water, her tail

swung at the grass

as she turned back under the trees,

just leaving me time to guess

that she was not a cat at all

but a lean and perfect mystery.

that perhaps I didn't really see,

but simply understood belong here

like all other perfections

that still, occasionally, emerge

out of the last waterfalls, forests,

the last unviolated mountains, hurrying

day after day, year after year

through the cage of the world.

Once a wild cat stepped out of a cloud of mist and saw me. I was in Tikal, Guatemala - a magical place of Mayan ruins suggesting unheard of possibilities. It was early morning and as I walked along an ancient promenade between temples, an ocelot stepped upon the same path facing me. Such mystery, such beauty, and such a brief moment of a gift I instantly appreciated. Then the unexpected happened. The cat started walking towards me, closer and closer. I grew alarmed - perhaps the cat was sick, or had rabies because this was certainly atypical behavior. I also held onto the hope that somehow I had been chosen by the wild world as one fit to be in relationship with non human animals, that I was not a cager, but a liberator. I could be trusted. While thinking this the ocelot came to within touching distance and I squatted to put our eyes on the same level. She stared at me, and then jumped into my lap! She purred, rubbed her head on my hand, and every time she stole glimpses in my eyes my heart leaped. Ever the wildlife rescuer, I walked around the ruins with her in my arms until she grew tired of this, and then she followed us for a while, and then she disappeared. Later that morning I discovered that she was frequently seen being friendly to tourists, for she had been raised as a kitten by humans, her mother killed. She was now free to roam the forests, and still she choose to interact with her possible cages. I know, I know. She was probably still able to obtain food more easily than hunting and that is what kept her close to us. But what if, we are as wild as her, and as free as her, and there are no such things as cages, human made or otherwise. We, like her, have a choice to be free and in so doing, liberate others.

Where do you feel caged, or cage others?

Climbing Pinnacle

It is only a small mountain

as mountains go,

too stubby for any map.

But still, in my boots,

I climbed and climbed until at last there was nothing

but the blue sky

and a single final pasture

and a few not-very -tall trees-

and from under these came running

a fawn on its tumbly legs,

the sound of its wanting falling

from its pink, pursed mouth.

But I knew the rule:

Don't touch it, or the doe

might never come back!

So what could I do? It almost

reached me

before I slung myself into a tree.

And there I was

higher even than the mountain,

perched for hours

while beauty held me tightly...

I didn't move

until the doe came back,

angry and snorting

and she and the fawn tiptoed away.

And so I was free.

And there was nothing to do,

as there is never anything to do,

after rapture,

but to swing down

bough after bough-

to hurry down, field after field,

through the pale twilight,

to be greeted by the people

who loved me, far below.

I read recently in a book about wildlife that humans evolved to focus on wildlife - either responding in fear or awe. We did so because we needed to run away or to hunt, so it behooves us to be caught up in other life. Perhaps also we evolved to be caught by wildlife so that we might cooperate - paying attention to life helps life. For instance, in this same book, "Who Cares About Wildlife," there are studies that show it is nearly impossible to keep people from feeding the wildlife. The authors suggest that we evolved to care for wildlife.

Mary in the tree is our wild heart - caring, hunting, and fearing. She, like us, is caught by our evolved natures. She, like us, is also freed by our evolved natures and our intention. For we may constantly strive to remember that there is never anything better to do than to be in rapture and to love and to be loved. We can bring ourselves into this possibility by climbing each our own kind of mountain, be it small or looming impossibly high. With the sun squeaking through my back yard pines, oaks, and magnolias I set my sight on climbing this day so that I, by day's end, may greet the sunset with love.

What mountain do you climb?

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

Oh my gosh, my last posting was about responding to a desperate need for union, or perhaps better said a plea for awareness of the already existing beloved union. My solution was to breathe, to share our lives with this next breath, the only gift we truly have to give and to receive. Then Mary writes this to my heart. Taking in one poem every day I am struck by the story I am retelling of our lives here on this planet. Mary's poems speak to me like a book of Rumi poems, like a book of Koans, like the Bible, like the Talmud, like the Quran, like an African chant, like a Hopi dance., and like a woodpecker's tapping on a tree. All these scriptures knock on the soul's door so that we may open to awareness, and if we just focus with intent, we can retell the stories of our lives based on love, and not on domination and power over others. It doesn't really matter what we choose to help guide us, especially since it seems that guides choose us. And Mary, you have chosen me so that I may with joy greet the sun's rising knowing that the air I take in and that becomes part of my body's molecules comes from the same air you have taken in, that the dinosaurs snorted out, and that Jesus cried. To breathe is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

What does breathing mean to you?