Can I weave a nest of silence

The phoebe sits on her nest

Hour after hour,

Day after day,

Waiting for life to burst out

From under her warmth.

Can I weave a nest of silence,

weave it of listening,

listening, listening,

Layer upon layer?

But one must first become small,

Nothing but a presence,

Attentive as a nesting bird,

Proffering no slightest wish

Toward anything

that might happen or be given,

Only the warm, faithful waiting,

contained in one’s smallness.

Beyond the question,

the silence.

Before the answer,

the silence.

--May Sarton

The Unbroken

There is a brokenness

out of which comes the unbroken,

a shatteredness

out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow

beyond all grief which leads to joy

and a fragility

out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space

too vast for words

through which we pass with each loss,

out of whose darkness

we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound

whose serrated edges cut the heart

as we break open to the place inside

which is unbreakable and whole,

while learning to sing.

--Rashani Rea

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display

the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't

mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;

for example - I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

--Mary Oliver

Could It Happen Anywhere?

Listen to the rhythm of things that never die.

                  —Mark Nepo, “For a Long Time”

Worried about what was to come, I went to the river

and listened to the constant song as water met stone,

met log, met wall. The endless white hush of it.

Song of building up banks. Song of tearing them down.

Song of surrender to invisible force. Song of change

that is ever the same and not the same. And in the listening,

I found refuge—not in the longing to hide, not in the sound—

I found refuge in the listening. Refuge in the opening

of the senses. In attuning to what is here. Wave and current

and eddy and flow and the attentiveness that lives

through this woman. And I listened and listened, listened

to it all, and was opened by listening. At some point

the listener disappeared. What was left was

listening itself. For a time, peace found me there.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Camas Lilies

Consider the lilies of the field,

the blue banks of camas opening

into acres of sky along the road.

Would the longing to lie down

and be washed by that beauty

abate if you knew their usefulness,

how the native women boiled

the bulbs for food?

And you — what of your rushed and

useful life? Imagine setting it all down —

papers, plans, appointments, everything,

leaving only a note:

"Gone to the fields to be lovely.

Be back when I’m through

with blooming."

--Lynn Ungar

Medicinal

I start accepting food from the neighbors:

Handful of tomatoes before they rot.

Annual s’more at the bonfire. I savor

odd things—quick knock at the door, apricot

pit in the window. Small shrines appear.

There are flats of strawberries. Homemade

broth to help a harmed esophagus heal.

We all mend, somewhere, in the exchange.

Little gifts evolve into meals, board games

after lunch. One day my son is with grand-

mother neighbors, pulling weeds in the yard.

I’m at their side before I understand.

We kneel together, chewing on mint leaves,

like it’s no miracle, like it’s ordinary.

--Megan Nichols

Keep Reaching

The trick is to keep reaching

for the light you will never touch,

and to be nourished by the stretch

toward impossible things.

The trick is to bloom where you are,

not calling it a failure because

you wanted a different outcome.

Live each day devoted to awe, 

so that when a monarch lands 

on the tip of a coneflower, seeming 

to swell with that sudden infusion 

of sweetness, you don’t miss it. 

So that, while you watch, a pair 

of hard-won wings seems to open 

and close and open again in you.

—James Crews

Beyond Patience

If I knew another word for patience,

would it open me to the act?

Perhaps something that invokes the patience

in the zinnias after first central flower has died

and before the next buds are formed.

Something that speaks to the patience of winter

while the field is greening more deeply every day.

To be patient is to believe there is a moment

beyond now that will be better than now. 

So perhaps instead of patience, the word

I’m longing for is presence. The capacity

to be only here. Only now. Here in the garden

where the zinnia row is thick with leaves.

Here in the meadow where it’s warm and

the tall grass tickles my bare thighs. Now

in the week before my sweet girl arrives.

Ah, there it is, back to the anticipation.

Try again. Presence, as in now, in this moment

when swallows swoop and skate and swirl.

Now, when my breath opens in my chest,

opens like a zinnia, many petalled and red.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Heron rises from the dark, summer pond

So heavy

is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,

always it is a surprise

when her smoke-colored wings

open

and she turns

from the thick water,

from the black sticks

of the summer pond,

and slowly

rises into the air

and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,

I take the deep breath

of happiness, and I think

how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,

how improbable

that ascension is not possible,

though everything seems so inert, so 

nailed

back into itself —

the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,

the turtle,

the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful

that the summers are long

and the ponds so dark and so many,

and therefore it isn’t a miracle

but the common thing,

this decision,

this trailing of the long legs in the water,

this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden

gray-blue sheets of her wings

strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing

takes her in.

—Mary Oliver

One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes. All manner of ups and downs. Many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst. One never gets the total impact of what we call ‘the thing itself’. But we call it wrongly. The thing itself is simply all these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea.

— A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes

--Stanley Kunitz

She Let Go

She let go.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice.

She didn’t read a book on how to let go.

She didn’t search the scriptures.

She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back.

She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go.

She didn’t journal about it.

She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.

She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.

She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.

She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.

She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.

She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.

She didn’t call the prayer line.

She didn’t utter one word.

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

--Safire Rose

Dogfish

...

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

*

And probably,

if they don't waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

--Mary Oliver

The Myth of Sisyphus

We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, condemned by the gods

to shoulder his rock sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever.

The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. He cherishes every roughness

and every ounce of it. He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the mysterious Other.

He even dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. Life is unimaginable without it,

looming always above him like a huge gray moon.

He doesn’t realize that at any moment he is permitted to step aside, let the rock

hurtle to the bottom, and go home.

Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.

--Stephen Mitchell 

Symphony

In the womb, we learn to listen

long before we can even breathe.

Maybe this is our body’s way

of saying, listening is a form of

breathing, and hearing is more 

essential than air. Maybe we spend 

our lives trying to get back to a time 

when the voices around us sounded 

like a distant music, strange song 

of the everyday that plays even now 

when I pause at the street corner 

before crossing, and just listen—

to snippets of phone conversations, 

someone’s radio, a mother calling 

to her child to keep him near—this 

endless symphony of the world.

—James Crews

How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

--Omar el Akkad

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the monsters won't find you. 

 But it's all an illusion, because they die too, these people who roll up their spirits into little tiny balls to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. 

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. 

--Sophie Scholl, executed 22 February 1943

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”

― Naomi Shulman

In a time of hate  

Love is an act of resistance  

In a time of fear  

Faith is an act of resistance  

In a time of misinformation  

Education is an act of resistance  

In a time of poor leadership  

Community is an act of resistance  

In a time like this  

Joy is an act of resistance  

Resist. Resist. Resist. 

–Loryn Brantz

Authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities. and if people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger for an authoritarian to rise. Whatever those things are that you bring to the community - do them and do them with joy. And don't stop doing the things you love because you are scared, because that actually is a form of resistance. Showing up and doing things that you love says to an authoritarian: 'You have no place to root here.' " 

--Heather Cox Richardson

Right now all movements for love, care, material well-being, diversity, this earth, and humans having a future on this earth need to remember that we need each other. We must remember that there are organized forces working to disorganize and confuse us, turn us against each other and diffuse our power. We are not immune to the chaos of the world, but we can choose to be a grounding force together.

–Adrienne Maree Brown

You can’t expect anyone to save a world they’re not in love with.

--Josie George

Go to where suffering is aligned with your capacity to meet it. You don’t have to go to death row or live in a monastery. You don’t have to sit with the unsheltered if that’s not your work. Go to where you can care safely and deeply and broaden that capacity over time.

--Roshi Joan Halifax

Light

I want to write of the light

but I do not know

whether words can illuminate

the way it hangs

upon branches and bird wings

and broken things

returning beings to beauty.

Can words spin substance

from sunshine and decay?

Can words cajole

celebration from night-weary

birds?

Can words warm surfaces

of stones and sorrows?

Can words reveal richness

in mundane

and battered

things?

I do not know.

But if we would write

a tomorrow

which is wider than wounds

we have worn,

we might wield words

like benedictions

and remember

blessings

within brokenness,

beginnings

within endings,

and beauty

within all things.

-- Bernadette Miller