A Seeming Stillness

Breathe then, as if breathing for the first time,

as if remembering with what difficulty 

you came into the world, what strength it took 

to make that first impossible in-breath, 

into a cry to be heard by the world.

Your essence has always been 

that first vulnerability of being found, 

of being heard and of being seen,

and from the very beginning,

the one who has always needed, 

and been given, so much invisible help.

This is how you were when you first came 

into the world, this how you were when you took your 

first breath in this world, this is how you are now, 

all unawares, in your new body and your new life, 

this is the raw vulnerability of your 

every day, and this is how you will want to be, 

and be remembered, when you leave the world.

From ‘A Seeming Stillness’

David Whyte : Essentials

From Out the Cave

When you have been

at war with yourself

for so many years that

you have forgotten why,

when you have been driving

for hours and only

gradually begin to realize

that you have lost the way,

when you have cut

hastily into the fabric,

when you have signed

papers in distraction,

when it has been centuries

since you watched the sun set

or the rain fall, and the clouds,

drifting overhead, pass as flat

as anything on a postcard;

when, in the midst of these

everyday nightmares, you

understand that you could

wake up,

you could turn

and go back

to the last thing you

remember doing

with your whole heart:

that passionate kiss,

the brilliant drop of love

rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,

then you wake,

you stumble from your cave,

blinking in the sun,

naming every shadow

as it slips.

--Joyce Sutphen

From Straight Out of View

Short Stories

We are all short stories though we want to be novels

The long kind, the Russian kind,

War and Peace, any of the Dickens titles.

The thing is, we rarely get beyond seventy or eighty pages,

Making us novellas at best,

Not in the game with Methuselah,

Not living long enough to figure out the ending,

Instead having to settle for hoping

We and the characters in our story

Will all get out of this mess alive.

We don't.

I don't mean to spoil the ending, but there you are.

--Alberto Rios

 The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. 

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

--bell hooks

The greatest thing she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. 

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent but no faith that I could be. 

Martha said to me, very quietly, "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have a peculiar and unusual gift, and you have so far used about one-third of your talent." 

"But," I said, "when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied." 

"No artist is pleased." 

"But then there is no satisfaction?"

"No satisfaction whatever at any time," she cried out passionately. "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

― Agnes De Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham

For One Who is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,

Time takes on the strain until it breaks;

Then all the unattended stress falls in

On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.

Things you could take in your stride before

Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,

Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.

And you are marooned on unsure ground.

Something within you has closed down;

And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken

And sadness take over like listless weather.

The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

-- John O'Donohue

Excerpt from the blessing, 'For One Who is Exhausted,' from John's books:

Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too

marvelous to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with

those who say "Look!" and laugh in

astonishment, and bow their heads.

~Mary Oliver

When autumn winds blow

Not one leaf remains

The way it was

--Togyu (Died 1749)

Gratitude

is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face across the table, of a son's outline against the mountains, is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit even stranger inner lives beneath calm surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participants and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. 

Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.

--David Whyte 

In CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Revised Edition 

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2020

Gratitude

Rain after days of sunshine.

Sunshine after days of rain.

The chance to move after sitting,

and the chance to curl up and not move.

Mist rising as the frost melts.

Leftovers.

The bitey puppy and the tottery old dog.

Not knowing how much time you have,

but knowing it is always limited.

Internet friends.

Neighbors.

The mandolin, which I play badly

and often. Hormone pills,

which mostly mute the hot flashes.

Wool socks. Rain boots.

All of the mixed blessings,

which is the only kind of blessing there is.

--Lynn Ungar Nov 2022