Vira - Hero

Truly strong

among those 

who think themselves 

strong.

Truly unafraid

among those 

who hide their

fear.

A hero

among those

who talk of herose.

Don't be fooled by outward signs--

lifting heavy things

or picking fights with weaker opponents

and running headfirst into battle.

A real hero 

walks the Path

to its end.

Then shows others the way.

--from The first free women, by Matty Weingast

Coming Together

It seems too slow,

this moving toward each other,

toward peace.

The heart is eager for union,

longs for grounding between continents,

longs for connection, for wholeness,

instead of all this fracture.

Do the tectonic plates

remember what it was

to be Pangaea? Can the heart

remember a time before

it was defined by rifting

and brokenness?

I have read that the next supercontinent

will form in 200 million years—

that we’re halfway through

the scattered phase.

Oh, we are so scattered.

They say the pace of the plates

is comparable to the speed

at which our fingernails grow.

Oh, so slow, this coming together.

Yet it happens. It happens.

Let the heart know

what the earth knows: It happens.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The Grand Quilt

I don’t believe we can stitch together

only scraps of beauty, squares of light.

I don’t believe in a quilt that doesn’t also

have patches of sorrow, blocks of ache.

Such pieces are, of course, much harder

to want to stitch in. But it matters

that we do not exclude them.

It matters that we don’t pretend

they do not exist.

It matters that we sew every piece

into the grand cloth.

Now I know it matters

how we sew these pieces in,

perhaps using our finest silk thread,

perhaps with an elaborate stitch

our grandmother taught us,

or perhaps we must use

a stitch we make up

because no one ever taught us

how to do this most difficult task—

to meet what at first seems unwanted

and to incorporate it into the whole

knowing everything depends on this

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"Just a minute," said a voice...

"Just a minute," said a voice in the weeds. 

So I stood still

in the day's exquisite early morning light.

and so I didn't crush with my great feet

any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by

where I was passing by

on my way to the blueberry fields,

and maybe it was the toad

and maybe it was the June beetle

and maybe it was the pink and tender worm

who does his work without limbs or eyes

and does it so well

or maybe it was the walking stick, still frail

and walking humbly by, looking for a tree,

or maybe, like Blake's wondrous meeting, it was

the elves, carrying one of their own

on a rose petal coffin away, away

into the deep grasses, After awhile

the quaintest voice said, "Thank you." And then there was silence

For the rest, I would keep you wondering.

-- Mary Oliver

I cannot tell you

how the light comes.

What I know

is that it is more ancient

than imagining.

That it travels

across an astounding expanse

to reach us.

That it loves

searching out

what is hidden

what is lost

what is forgotten

or in peril

or in pain.

That it has a fondness

for the body

for finding its way

toward flesh

for tracing the edges

of form

for shining forth

through the eye,

the hand,

the heart.

I cannot tell you

how the light comes,

but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way

into the deepest dark

that enfolds you,

though it may seem

long ages in coming

or arrive in a shape

you did not foresee.

And so

may we this day

turn ourselves toward it.

May we lift our faces

to let it find us.

May we bend our bodies

to follow the arc it makes.

May we open

and open more

and open still

to the blessed light

that comes.

   - Jan Richardson

 Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance.

-Morgan Freeman, actor and producer

Winter Grief

Let the rest 

in this rested place 

rest for you.

Let the birds sing quietly

and the geese call

from far off

and let the sky race

from west to east 

when you cannot 

lift a wing to fly.

Let evening trace 

your loss in the branches

against a fading sky.

So that you can give up

and give in

and be given back to,

so that you can let

winter come and live

fully inside you,

so that you can

retrace the loving path

of heartbreak 

that brought you here. 

So you can cry alone

and be alone

so you can let yourself alone

to be lost,

so you can let the one 

you have lost alone, 

so that you can let

the one you have lost 

have their own life 

and even

their own death

without you.

So that the world

and everyone who has ever lived 

and ever died can come and go 

as they please.

So you can let yourself not know, 

what not knowing means.

So that you can be

even more generous in your letting go

than they were in their leaving.

So that you can let winter 

be winter.

So that you can let the world alone

to think of spring.

…

WINTER GRIEF 

From THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD

Poetry by David Whyte

Stubborn Praise

Bless the unkind, the mean, the petty

who remind us how not to move

through our lives. True, we can allow

the anger of others to turn us bitter,

fool us into thinking the whole world

is made of nettles ready to sting us

wherever we touch. But let's instead

go around stubbornly praising those

whose hearts stay closed, though we

can't yet see the line of light shining

beneath the locked door, though we

can't quite trust that kindness stirs

in each of us like the child we were,

wanting only to run through a field

with friends at dusk, holding hands

and chasing the sun.

—James Crews

While we can’t control what’s happening around us, we can cultivate the capacity to be with what is with more ease, joy, and freedom.

--Sebene Selassie

Kinds of Silence

After heavy snow.

After the last breath.

Before lightning strikes.

Before the first breath.

In a spider’s web.

In a musical rest.

Of a sleeping dog.

Of a stone general’s breast.

With an old friend.

With a favorite brother.

From the mouth of God.

From a cold mother.

On closing a book.

On fearing what’s to come.

Under a witch’s spell.

Under a dictator’s thumb.

By a frozen river.

By a stone that’s leaning.

At the end of a war.

At another war’s beginning.

-- Elisabeth Murawski

Sudden Hymn in Winter

What if, after years

of trial,

a love should come

and lay a hand upon you

and say,

this late,

your life is not a crime

--Joseph Fasano

Splendor

One day it's the clouds,

one day the mountains.

One day the latest bloom

of roses - the pure monochromes,

the dazzling hybrids - inspiration

for the cathedral's round windows.

Every now and then

there's the splendor

of thought: the singular

idea and its brilliant retinue -

words, cadence, point of view,

little gold arrows flitting

between the lines.

And too the splendor

of no thought at all:

hands lying calmly

in the lap, or swinging

a six iron with effortless

tempo. More often than not

splendor is the star we orbit

without a second thought,

especially as it arrives

and departs. One day

it's the blue glassy bay,

one day the night

and its array of jewels,

visible and invisible.

Sometimes it's the warm clarity

of a face that finds your face

and doesn't turn away.

Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,

that will radiate farther

than you might imagine.

One day it's the entire day

itself, each hour foregoing

its number and name,

its cumbersome clothes, a day

that says come as you are,

large enough for fear and doubt,

with room to spare: the most secret

wish, the deepest, the darkest,

turned inside out.

-- Thomas Centolella

From Views from along the Middle Way

to hold

So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I

make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,

we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,

measuring by eye as it falls into alignment

between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,

she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we’ll lie down and not get up.

One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize

what we love, and what it takes

to tend what isn’t for our having.

So often, fear has led me

to abandon what I know I must relinquish

in time. But for the moment,

I’ll listen to her dream,

and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling

more and more detail into the light

of a joint and fragile keeping.

-- li-young lee

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

Spell to be said against hatred

Until each breath refuses they, those, them.

Until the Dramatis Personae of the book’s first page says, “Each one is you.”

Until hope bows to its hopelessness only as one self bows to another. 

Until cruelty bends to its work and sees suddenly: I.

Until anger and insult know themselves burnable legs of a useless table.

Until the unsurprised unbidden knees find themselves bending. 

Until fear bows to its object as a bird’s shadow bows to its bird. 

Until the ache of the solitude inside the hands, the ribs, the ankles. 

Until the sound the mouse makes inside the mouth of the cat. 

Until the inaudible acids bathing the coral.

Until what feels no one’s weighing is no longer weightless.

Until what feels no one’s earning is no longer taken.

Until grief, pity, confusion, laughter, longing know themselves mirrors.

Until by we we mean I, them, you, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger.

Until by I we mean as a dog barks, sounding and vanishing and

    sounding and vanishing completely.

Until by until we mean I, we, you, them, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger, the lonely barking of the dog before it is answered.

--Jane Hirshfield

Too lazy to be ambitious,

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

--Ryokan

After Love

Now that you have lost

the way you'd taken,

walk out through the new moon

in the spruces

and lie down in the deep leaves

of the clearing.

Listen: they are still here,

the wild things,

migrations moving on again from winter.

All your life

you heard a word 

of the singing,

all your life 

admitted just a bit of it;

all your life

you played your one

small part.

Wake now. Stay here

with your parting

arms

and do it, finally

do it: open

to the whole of it, the whole of it,

the wind that sings

what's been since the beginning.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

There is no one

you're betraying

in your changes

when you become the whole wild song of what you are.

--Joseph Fasano

I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

Reaching Back From Here

Reaching back from here

All that I remember of my life

Are the great round rocks and not

The unimportant stones.

I know that I experienced pain and yet

The scars have healed so that

I am like the tree covering itself 

With new growth every year.

I know that I walked in sadness and yet

All that I remember now

Is the soothing autumn light.

I know that there was much to make my life unhappy

If I had stopped to notice how

The world sings a broken song.

But I preferred to dwell within

A universe of fields and streams

Which echoed the wholeness of my song.

-- Nancy Wood, in Many Winters

We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness. It saves us from ambiguity. It has an answer for every question: "There's just no point." Hope, on the other hand, is messy. If it might all work out, then we have things to do. We must weather the possibility of happiness. 

--Jarod K Anderson, the CryptoNaturalist

 

Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard.

--Morgan Harper Nichols

We need a politics of tenderness more than ever. Not tenderness as capitulation to particular conclusions that have already been made. Not tenderness as "if you don't see the world as I do, there's something wrong with you." But tenderness as the nurturing of grace that allows something different, something even beautiful, to be born in the midst of the fires. 

--Báyò Akómoláfé

Praise Song

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

-- Barbara Crooker

I Am a Prayer

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of rain in the desert when the flowering ones need a drink

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of sun when there is no end to night

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of ocean when there is no more blue

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of clouds when few make rain songs

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of roads that lead everywhere but home

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of white birds who cannot fly through a storm of fear

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of fire who arrived to care for humans, then was misused to destroy

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of wind, whose breathing carries seeds, pollen, and songs to feed the generations

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of moon who wears the night as a shawl to hide that which should never be spoken

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of grief, when life gambled with death and gave up families for guns

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of smoke, wandering the broken houses, the littered ground looking for a white flag of reason

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of mountains, those tall humble ones who agreed to lift our eyes to see

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of forever making a path of beauty through the rubble of eternity

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of poetry speaking the soundlessness of the dead who return to speak in prayer

I am a prayer with children on my back roaming the earth house of destruction and creation

I am a prayer without end

--Joy Harjo

Published in The New Yorker, November 27 2023 issue

How to Open Your Heart

Do not try to open your heart now. That would be a subtle movement of aggression towards your immediate embodied experience. Never tell a closed heart it must be more open; it will shut more tightly to protect itself, feeling your resistance. A heart unfurls only when conditions are right; your demand for openness invites closure. This is the supreme intelligence of the heart.

Instead, bow to the heart in its current state. If it's closed, let it be closed; sanctify the closure. Make it safe; safe even to feel unsafe. Trust that when the heart is ready, and not a moment before, it will open, like a flower in the warmth of the sun. There is no rush for the heart.

Trust the opening and the closing too; the expansion and the contraction; this is the heart's way of breathing; safe, unsafe, safe, unsafe; the beautiful fragility of being human; and all held in the most perfect love.

--Jeff Foster 

Today I am taking sides.

I am taking the side of Peace.

Peace, which I will not abandon

even when its voice is drowned out

by hurt and hatred,

bitterness of loss,

cries of right and wrong.

I am taking the side of Peace

whose name has barely been spoken

in this winnerless war.

I will hold Peace in my arms,

and share my body’s breath,

lest Peace be added

to the body count.

I will call for de-escalation

even when I want nothing more 

than to get even.

I will do it

in the service of Peace.

I will make a clearing

in the overgrown 

thicket of cause and effect

so Peace can breathe 

for a minute

and reach for the sky.

I will do what I must

to save the life of Peace.

I will breathe through tears.

I will swallow pride.

I will bite my tongue.

I will offer love

without testing for deservingness.

So don’t ask me to wave a flag today

unless it is the flag of Peace.

Don’t ask me to sing an anthem

unless it is a song of Peace.

Don’t ask me to take sides

unless it is the side of Peace.

     —Rabbi Irwin Keller, Oct. 17, 2023

With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble

I do not live happily or comfortably

With the cleverness of our times.

The talk is all about computers,

The news is all about bombs and blood.

This morning, in the fresh field,

I came upon a hidden nest.

It held four warm, speckled eggs.

I touched them.

Then went away softly,

Having felt something more wonderful

Than all the electricity of New York City.

-- Mary Oliver

Before Dark

From the porch at dusk I watched

a kingfisher wild in flight

he could only have made for joy.

He came down the river, splashing

against the water’s dimming face

like a skipped rock, passing

on down out of sight. And still

I could hear the splashes

farther and farther away

as it grew darker. He came back

the same way, dusky as his shadow,

sudden beyond the willows.

The splashes went on out of hearing.

It was dark then. Somewhere

the night had accommodated him

—at the place he was headed for

or where, led by his delight,

he came.

by Wendell Berry

From Collected Poems.

Adrift

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief. The light spraying

through the lace of the fern is as delicate

as the fibers of memory forming their web

around the knot in my throat. The breeze

makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh

of the next stranger. In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

--Mark Nepo

Perhaps the most radical act of resistance in the face of adversity is to live joyfully.

--Ari Honarvar

Song for Autumn

In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep

inside their bodies? And don’t you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

-- Mary Oliver

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 

― Howard Zinn

Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end. In time’s maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

-- Wendell Berry

The World Has Need of You

everything here seems to need us…

—Rilke

I can hardly imagine it

as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient

prayer of my arms swinging

in counterpoint to my feet.

Here I am, suspended

between the sidewalk and twilight,

the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.

What if you felt the invisible

tug between you and everything?

A boy on a bicycle rides by,

his white shirt open, flaring

behind him like wings.

It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much

and too little. Does the breeze need us?

The cliffs? The gulls?

If you’ve managed to do one good thing,

the ocean doesn’t care.

But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,

the earth, ever so slightly, fell

toward the apple as well.

-- Ellen Bass

"When someone strips another of his clothes, he is called a thief. Should not someone who has the power to clothe the naked but does not do so be called the same? The bread in your larder belongs to the hungry. The cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked. The shoes you allow to rot belong to the barefoot. The money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. You do injustice to everyone who you could help but do not." 

--St. Basil the Great 

 Intoxicants take you away from reality; meditation takes you toward reality. Which do you want? You are already intoxicated by ignorance, anger, and attachment and suffer as a result. Why do you want to take more intoxicants?

Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron

 “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

― Jean-Paul Sartre

Dear Failure,

It is easy to meet you in meditation.

Today, when I failed to focus on my breath,

I kept breathing anyway. Easy to meet you

in the garden where I planted the green beans too late

and harvestless, bought some at the store.

Harder to meet you when I fear

I am failing as a wife because

I missed my anniversary

to stay bedside with my mother.

Harder to meet you when I am afraid

I am failing as a daughter

when I leave my mother’s bed

to go to my own daughter.

I so want to get it right,

this showing up for the people I love.

I so want to get it right,

this longing to be enough.

Oh failure, I have not wanted

to learn your lessons, have wanted

to believe I could fix, could be all.

And you, great teacher, have humbled me

again and again, helping me see

how much I care.

There’s more than getting it right at stake.

You help me debunk perfection,

offering yourself as a friend.

Each time I fall,

you reach out to take my hand

saying, Fail on, sweetheart.

Wouldn’t you like

to try again with your loving?

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

How to Listen

Listening is a form of worship,

but you don’t have to kneel

on the floor with folded hands

or mouth the perfect prayer.

Just open the door of yourself

to another, become the space

they step through to show you

who they are. This is holiness:

two people seated together

on the pew of a park bench,

at the altar of a kitchen table.

Even if no one says a word

for a while, receive the silence

until it’s like a new language

only the two of you can speak.

—James Crews

Only Love

Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world.

— Sharon Salzberg 

And so I imagine the entire earth

as one beating heart held in the space

of this universe, inside a larger body

we can’t fathom, filling with enough

love to lead each of us out of the cave

of our personal pain and into the light—

enough love to lead all humans as one

out of collective fear, rage, and hate

into a place of peace that is found only

within our own hearts, beating in sync

with the pulse of this planet we were

born to inhabit, despite the daily storms

which overtake us and make us forget

we are the lifeblood pumped into these

veins, every particle of love we generate

running into rivers, lakes, and creeks,

evaporating into the air we breathe,

give back, and breathe again.

-- James Crews

Halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy

   and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

   almost forgetting how wondrous the world is

      and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you too decided that probably nothing important

   is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

-- Mary Oliver

the sun is hanging

a little lower

these days.

that means it's

time for you to

become another 

source of light

for this angry world.

this is your vocation: 

to become a hip-swaying 

candle in the breezeless

 October night.

~ oh how you will make 

every midnight murk

become a mid-day miracle.

my love,

the earlier the darkness comes

the brighter you are asked to burn.

the longer the shadows

~ the hotter your fire.

this is how we survive 

the coming fall. 

we will gather under your signal fire

and watch how you transform 

the lingering gloom

into sunsoaked glory.

--John Roedel

Little Hope

Some days, what we need

is a clean, hard rain to wash

away the world’s troubles,

to pool in each crack of the

buckled sidewalk, the divots

of the newly-mended street.

See how that fresh water

offers itself to drinking robins,

gives back the blue of sky

as if hope itself had gathered

in puddles overnight.

—James Crews

Mimesis

My daughter

wouldn’t hurt a spider

That had nested

Between her bicycle handles

For two weeks

She waited

Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said

It will simply know

This isn’t a place to call home

And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others

Become refugees isn’t it?

--Fady Joudah

"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

- Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams)

One of the ways that you can work for freedom is to change your mind and to move away from the space of binaries, of simplistic either / ors, and to be able to look at the picture that offers us complexity.

--bell hooks 

What to Do with Sadness

When sadness lingers,

When loneliness creeps in to sit beside you

And will not leave,

When you can no longer feel a spark of joy

In even a hidden corner,

Find something,

Anything

That is burning–

A star

A porch lamp

A candle on the table.

Then, imagine that light

At the center of your heart

And remember

You are molten love.

The only thing to do

With sadness

Is to introduce it to

Indestructible Beauty–

To the flame

Of love Present in every

Living thing.

Start with a Morning glory

Or a sparrow.

Start with the Spirited eyes

Of the woman

Who serves you Coffee.

Start with a poem.

Say,

Sadness meet cherry blossom.

Lethargy meet the Ninth Symphony.

Despair meet the eyes of a child.

And then,

Be very, very quiet,

Take a few deep breaths,

And

Let them converse for a time.

--Heidi Rose Robbins

It’s easy to look at the contours of a forest and feel a bone deep love for nature. It’s less easy to remember that the contours of your own mind and body represent the exact same nature and deserves the same love.

 The Cryptonaturalist

Gate A-4

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning

my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:

"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please

come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just

like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"

said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We

told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.

"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-

se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly

used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled

entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the

next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is

picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would

stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to

her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just

for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while

in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I

thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know

and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,

answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool

cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and

nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a

sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the

lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered

sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two

little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they

were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—

by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,

some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-

tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This

is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that

gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about

any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

By Naomi Shihab Nye

From Honeybee.

In Those Years

In those years, people will say, we lost track

of the meaning of we, of you

we found ourselves

reduced to I

and the whole thing became

silly, ironic, terrible:

we were trying to live a personal life

and yes, that was the only life

we could bear witness to

 

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged

into our personal weather

They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove

along the shore, through the rags of fog

where we stood, saying I

 

--Adrienne Rich

Summons

Last night I dreamed

ten thousand grandmothers

from the twelve hundred corners of the earth

walked out into the gap

one breath deep

between the bullet and the flesh

between the bomb and the family.

They told me we cannot wait for governments.

There are no peacekeepers boarding planes.

There are no leaders who dare to say

every life is precious, so it will have to be us.

They said we will cup our hands around each heart.

We will sing the earth’s song, the song of water,

a song so beautiful that vengeance will turn to weeping,

the mourners will embrace, and grief replace

every impulse toward harm.

Ten thousand is not enough, they said,

so, we have sent this dream, like a flock of doves

into the sleep of the world. Wake up. Put on your shoes.

You who are reading this, I am bringing bandages

and a bag of scented guavas from my trees. I think

I remember the tune. Meet me at the corner.

Let’s go.

--Aurora Levins Morales

 "...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]

"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]

"And what do they think? Against it, are they?"

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray."

"Nope."

"Pardon?"

"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."

"It's a lot more complicated than that--"

"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."

"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"

"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

--from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

To feel as if you belong is one of the great triumphs of human existence — and especially to sustain a life of belonging and to invite others into that… But it’s interesting to think that … our sense of slight woundedness around not belonging is actually one of our core competencies; that though the crow is just itself and the stone is just itself and the mountain is just itself, and the cloud, and the sky is just itself — we are the one part of creation that knows what it’s like to live in exile, and that the ability to turn your face towards home is one of the great human endeavors and the great human stories.

It’s interesting to think that no matter how far you are from yourself, no matter how exiled you feel from your contribution to the rest of the world or to society — that, as a human being, all you have to do is enumerate exactly the way you don’t feel at home in the world — to say exactly how you don’t belong — and the moment you’ve uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile, you’re already taking the path back to the way, back to the place you should be.

You’re already on your way home.

--David Whyte

Love after love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

--Derek Walcott

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962) from his 1920 collection of fragments, Wandering: Notes and Sketches

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing

that is more than your own.

Let it brush your cheeks

as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,

you where the heart begins:

You are the bow that shoots the arrows

and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back

into the earth;

for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown

too heavy. You cannot bring them along.

Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

trans. Macy and Barrows

************

O ihr Zärtlichen, tretet zuweilen

in dem Atem, der euch nicht meint,

laß ihn an eueren Wangen sich teilen,

hinter euch zittert er, wieder vereint.

O ihr Seiligen, o ihr Heilen,

die ihr der Anfang der Herzen scheint.

Bogen der Pfeile und Ziele von Pfeilen,

ewiger glänzt euer Lächeln verweint.

Fürchtet euch nicht zu leiden, die Schwere,

gebt sie zurück an der Erde Gewicht;

schwer sind die Berge, schwer sind die Meere.

Selbst die als Kinder ihr pflanztet, die Bäume,

wurden zu schwer längst; ihr trüget sie nicht.

Aber die Lüfte … aber die Räume …

The News

Each morning we listen for what is breaking—

the sound of a thousand tragedies fills the air,

shattering that never stops,

headlines, a fleet of anchors tangled at our feet.

We watch, worried

if we turn away even for an instant,

it will all crumble the rest of the way.

Forget with me for a moment.

Take an unguarded breath.

Do it now, the world needs your attention here, too,

on the rise and fall of your shoulders,

the rustle of leaves outside the window,

the warm space between your gaze and mine.

--Emilie Lygren

Roses, late summer

If I had another life

I would want to spend it all on some

unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree

full of waving branches.

I wouldn't mind being a rose

in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred 

to them, nor ambition.

Reason they have not yet thought of.

Neither do they ask how long they must be roses,

and then what

or any other foolish question.

--Mary Oliver

You Can’t Have It All

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands

gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger

on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look

of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite

every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,

you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,

though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam

that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys

until you realize foam’s twin is blood.

You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,

so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,

glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,

never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you

all roads narrow at the border.

You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,

and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave

where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,

but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands

as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful

for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful

for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels

sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,

for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,

the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.

You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,

at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping

of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.

You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd

but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,

how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,

until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,

and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind

as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,

you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond

of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas

your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.

There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,

it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,

but there is this.

-- Barbara Ras

 Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

- Simone Weil

Enjoyment

I get that you are looking for joy--

the moment that swoops down like an eagle

and carries off your soul like some 

enraptured and glistening trout.

We are all seeking those memories

we can pull out when we need to remember

the ways we still can shine. But what

about enjoyment, the practice of 

becoming en-joyed, as one becomes enrobed, 

wrapping yourself in a cloak of small beauties? 

What of the rain-washed leaves, the ripe 

tomatoes, the persistent bees? what of the 

squirrel burying hazel nuts, working on 

surviving the winter, never realizing 

how possible it is for planted things to grow?

--Lynn Ungar

Any Morning

Just lying on the couch and being happy.

Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.

Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has

so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t

monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.

When dawn flows over the hedge you can

get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven

left lying around, can be picked up and saved.

People won’t even see that you have them,

they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.

You can shake your head. You can frown.

 – William Stafford

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

 -- Emily Dickinson

Everything is waiting for you

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the

conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

--David Whyte

every night before I go to sleep

I invite all of my beloveds who have 

died to join me around my bed to

sing with me.

when I was younger 

the attendance was sparse 

it was like a barbershop quartet 

of a few deceased loved ones and me 

squeaking out a few

sweet improvised tunes

about the miracles of

this life and afterlife 

in the echo chamber of

my quieting heart 

but the older I get

the more crowded my 

bedroom has gotten 

and the louder the singing 

has become. 

lately some of my beloveds

are even bringing their instruments

to play around my bed. 

it’s not a seance 

it’s a symphony. 

there are so 

many beloveds

showing up to

help me compose 

that I’ve had to ask

them to stand close 

to each other.  

now, at bedtime 

my bedroom has become 

a bustling concert hall. 

some nights we play

the rock and roll of 

gratitude

and some nights we all

hold violins and 

play songs about

the energy of love

that radiates out

of the beating heart

of the universe. 

some nights we play the jazz

of how wonderfully terrifying it 

can be to give our hearts   

to each other. 

some nights we 

sing a capella. 

some nights 

we just hum.

it doesn’t really matter 

what style we play 

because, with every chord

this community of 

beloved ghosts and

I create together, 

the less afraid of death I become.

as it turns out

this adventure we 

are all on together 

is all music

and the beat goes on and on and on

~ john roedel

To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.

—Audre Lorde

Sometimes people can get tense about ‘enlightenment’, and that brings up worries, pressure, and all kinds of views; but often what we really need is to feel welcomed and blessed. This is quite a turnaround from our normal mind-set; but when we are sitting somewhere where we feel trusted, where there’s benevolence around us, we can let ourselves open up. And as we open our hearts, we can sense a clarity of presence, and firm up around that. This firmness arising from gentleness is what the Buddha-image stands for. It reminds us that there was an historical Buddha whose awakening is still glowing through the ages – but when this is also presented as a heart-impression in the here and now, rather than as a piece of history, it carries more resonance. Then the image serves as a direct impression of what bright kamma feels like.

--Ajahn Sucitto

Flare

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

It is not the sunrise,

which is a red rinse,

which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,

or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,

will go on sizzling and clapping

from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,

that are billowing and shining,

that are shaking in the wind...

The poem is not the world.

It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.

It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,

like the door of a little temple,

so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,

and less yourself than part of everything.

--Mary Oliver

Another Country

I love these raw moist dawns with

a thousand birds you hear but can't

quite see in the mist.

My old alien body is a foreigner

struggling to get into another country.

The loon call makes me shiver.

Back at the cabin I see a book

and am not quite sure what that is.

--Jim Harrison (2016)

Secondhand Joy

Maybe someday we’ll find a way

to reuse the happiness that others

have refused or given away, claiming

they were too busy to tend to it.

How lucky to find someone else’s

secondhand joy hanging from a rack

at the Goodwill for just a dollar,

and what a deal: Feel how it 

shimmers in your hands, unloved,

unworn, the tags still dangling

from each empty sleeve.

--James Crews

On a Day When Stillness Seems Possible

and the river is a long white stroke

of roiling and continuous surge,

and the grass, gone to seed,

wavers in the wind, then stills,

wavers, then stills, and the swallows

spiral, the leaf shadows spangle

and the ants braid a path

across the stones.

But I rhyme today with the cottonwood trunks,

my own body unmoving in the breeze.

It feels good in this moment

to be more tree than cloud,

more silence than song.

So easily, the stillness opens me,

softens me. How simple, really,

to do nothing. How is it I so often resist?

If there is no in me now, I do not notice it.

Stillness has made a home in me

and there seems to be nothing

the stillness refuses. Come,

it seems to say. There is room here

for everything. It opens me wider.

The world rushes in.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 

Be Kind

Not merely because Henry James said

there were but four rules of life—

be kind be kind be kind be kind—but

because it’s good for the soul, and,

what’s more, for others; it may be

that kindness is our best audition

for a worthier world, and, despite

the vagueness and uncertainty of

its recompense, a bird may yet wander

into a bush before our very houses,

gratitude may not manifest itself in deeds

entirely equal to our own, still there’s

weather arriving from every direction,

the feasts of famine and feasts of plenty

may yet prove to be one, so why not

allow the little sacrificial squinches and

squigulas to prevail? Why not inundate

the particular world with minute particulars?

Dust’s certainly all our fate, so why not

make it the happiest possible dust,

a detritus of blessedness? Surely

the hedgehog, furling and unfurling

into its spiked little ball, knows something

that, with gentle touch and unthreatening

tone, can inure to our benefit, surely the wicked

witches of our childhood have died and,

from where they are buried, a great kindness

has eclipsed their misdeeds. Yes, of course,

in the end so much comes down to privilege

and its various penumbras, but too much

of our unruly animus has already been

wasted on reprisals, too much of the

unblessed air is filled with smoke from

undignified fires. Oh friends, take

whatever kindness you can find

and be profligate in its expenditure:

It will not drain your limited resources,

I assure you, it will not leave you vulnerable

and unfurled, with only your sweet little claws

to defend yourselves, and your wet little noses,

and your eyes to the ground, and your little feet.

--Michael Blumenthal

From No Hurry.

Country of Water

I know who I am because I believe it

The breath in my chest

Insistent in its choice

The skin that I’m in

The bones and blood and veins

It carries like a promise

       Have you witnessed the ocean

Moving with so much gust and life

Have you witnessed the river

Still waters bubbling the rebirth of school

       Have you witnessed your body

Its own country of water

Moving against the tide of a world

So heartbreaking     it’s forgotten its own voice

Be still friend

Be still

Be kind to yourself in the gift of stillness

I know who I am because I believe it

I know

I know 

Who I

Who I

Believe

Believe

Believe

In three’s we will come

A drip of water moving against a boulder

Water slow and steady can turn rock

Into a pebble

Like anxiety

Life self-doubt

Smaller

Smaller

Until gone

Let your love for yourself be the water

Be the rise

Be the mist

Let you be

I know who I am because I believe it

I believe I am my mother’s daughter

I believe I am my grandmother’s prayers

I believe I am my great-grandmother’s backbone revealed

I am I am because I believe so

I am because a woman believed in me

What a continent I became

What a country of water I be

I flow and fluid and rise and ebb and I believe in me

         I am not wrong

I am wronged

In this skin I’ve reclaimed

From this trap of this country’s tourniquet

Only to find the sweet solace is a river bed

Its mud beckons me closer to its silt

Small fish and forgotten glass unearth themselves

Like baby teeth

Only one can cut into flesh purposely

Only one does not know what it is capable of

I believe in the air as much as I believe in the fire

I believe in the fire as much as the water consumes

I believe in a higher source

Energetic and wise

I believe in my ability to thrive

This body

       This body is a good thing

Turning two miles walked over a bridge into a family’s meal

Creating poems that become cashier’s checks

Dentist bills and rent

I’ve three holes in my teeth

And a nation that pretends I didn’t almost die for it to survive

I am I am still here still here

I am still here and like the ocean, full of salt and shells

Full of ship remnants and noble ones

I bleed and the sand grieves

I be because someone survived for me to be here

Today

Breathing this almost air

Marching for cleaner belongings

My front seat beneath the deadening stars

Is still a seat

Is still a ground

Is still a home that I can pronounce my given name

To write amongst the forgotten names

The taken and the ignored

But today

            There are no tombstones

Today 

There is no true death

Only life

Only life

Only a song of the living

Maybe even a belief system

With water as its minister

         I am water

I dive into my own currents

I dress my dreams in the satin breath

Of my ancestors

I know 

I know

I know who I am

I know who I am because I believe it

--Mahogany L. Browne

The World Loves You Back

Even if no one ever touched you

with the tenderness you needed,

believe that the world’s been

holding you in its arms since

the day you were born. You are

not an accident or afterthought.

Let rain on the roof remind you.

Let sun on the skin, and the neon-

orange of the Mexican sunflower

at which a hummingbird pauses

to drink. There are so many ways

to hold and be held, and you

could spend your whole life

tallying them up, without ever

reaching the end of the list.

—James Crews

August Sunrise

Our minds give off the light

that reveals the connections

linking us one to the other

like the newly risen sun

making visible the dew-

tipped spider webs spun

in the fields last night:

each shining thread drawing

the separate blades of grass

closer together, weaving

a wide patchwork net

which catches everything

that flies into its path.

—James Crews

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

- Wendell Berry

For all that has been — thanks. For all that shall be — yes.

--Dag Hammarskjold

 No matter where life takes you, the place that you stand at any moment is holy ground. Love hard, and love wide and love long and you will find the goodness in it.

--Susan Vreeland

 No amount of regret changes the past. No amount of anxiety changes the future. Any amount of gratitude changes the present.

-Ann Voskamp

 Embodied presence is an invitation, again and again, to soften, to settle, to relax, to open up to what’s here. When we’re driven along by our habitual thinking patterns, we’re holding those tensions. A free body is a relaxed body, an open body.

--Martin Aylward

 Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity.

--Robin Wall Kimmerer

 Attention is the doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity.

--Robin Wall Kimmerer

 Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily, and I must return the gift.

–Robin Wall Kimmerer

Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.

--bell hooks 

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

Joan Didion

Stone

And what am I doing here, in a yurt on the side of a hill

at the ragged edge of the tree line, sheltered by conifer and bay,

watching the wind lift, softly, the dry leaves of bamboo?

I lie on the floor and let the sun fall across my back, 

as I have been for the past hour, listening to the distant traffic,

to the calls of birds I cannot name. Once, I had so much

I wanted to accomplish. Now, all I know is that I want

to get closer to it - to the rocky slope, the orange petals

of the nasturtium adorning the fence, the wind's sudden breath.

Close enough that I can almost feel, at night, the slight pressure

of the stars against my skin. Isn't this what the mystics meant

when they spoke of forsaking the world? Not to turn our backs to it,

only to its elaborate plots, its complicated pleasures - 

in favor of the pine's long shadow, the slow song of the grass.

I'm always forgetting, and remembering, and forgetting.

I want to leave something here in the rough dirt: a twig,

a small stone - perhaps this poem - a reminder to begin,

again, by listening carefully with the body's rapt attention

- remember? To this. to this.

--Danusha Lameris

The Traveling Onion

When I think how far the onion has traveled

just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise

all small forgotten miracles,

crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,

pearly layers in smooth agreement,

the way the knife enters onion

and onion falls apart on the chopping block,

a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion

for causing tears.

It is right that tears fall

for something small and forgotten.

How at meal, we sit to eat,

commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma

but never on the translucence of onion,

now limp, now divided,

or its traditionally honorable career:

For the sake of others,

disappear.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

The Way It Is

Over and over we break

open, we break and

we break and we open.

For a while, we try to fix

the vessel—as if

to be broken is bad.

As if with glue and tape

and a steady hand we

might bring things to perfect

again. As if they were ever

perfect. As if to be broken is not

also perfect. As if to be open

is not the path toward joy.

The vase that’s been shattered

and cracked will never

hold water. Eventually

it will leak. And at some

point, perhaps, we decide

that we’re done with picking

our flowers anyway, and no

longer need a place to contain them

We watch them grow just

as wildflowers do—unfenced,

unmanaged, blossoming only

when they’re ready—and my god,

how beautiful they are amidst

the mounting pile of shards.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 In a world pocked by cynicism and pummeled by devastating news, to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality – it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.

—Maria Popova

What is there beyond knowing

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction

but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—

moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass 

    and the weeds. 

--Mary Oliver

 Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

- John Lubbock

The Ask

Among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing.

            —Tony Hoagland, “The Word”

 Perhaps it looked like I was dancing,

but I was being danced, was being twirled

by some great mystical spinning wheel

turning the straw of my thoughts into gold.

What a gift to have a body, to be alive

on a night when the sun is warm

and the grass is green and the mountains

are not yet tinder dry and the music is joyful

and the minutes slip through the hours

like page after page of happily ever

and there is no imp to be seen, just

the glory of brass shining in the air

and the miracle of hands clapping

as if applause is the only response that makes sense,

and the only thing the world asks of me

is to love it.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Joy

The asters shake from stem to flower

waiting for the monarchs to alight.

Every butterfly knows that the end

is different from the beginning

and that it is always a part

of a longer story, in which we are always

transformed. When it's time to fly,

you know how, just the way you knew

how to breathe, just the way the air

knew to find its way into your lungs,

the way the geese know when to depart,

the way their wings know how to

speak to the wind, a partnership of feather

and glide, lifting into the blue dream.

-- Stuart Kestenbaum

 This universe is much too big to hold onto, but it is the perfect size for letting go.

--Sharon Salzberg

The Runes

In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the

arms — so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down.

-Denise Levertov

 Bad times, hard times – this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: such as we are, such are the times....You are hoping for the good; be what you hope for.

--St Augustine of Hippo

We will never be the same again.

But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.

"Welcome to Night Vale"

The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The woman who cherished her suffering is dead. 

I am her descendant.

I love the scar tissue she handed on to me,

but I want to go from here with you

fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

--Adrienne Rich

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light–

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

-- Mary Oliver

Counting blessings

I'm stringing together my gratitudes

like these unruly pre-schoolers I see

crossing the street in a snaking line,

tethered to each other by a strong

neon-green rope, protected from traffic

as they shout and strain to break away.

I count my blessings to keep them close: 

this body, this house, this one heart

creaking open to let in the spring sun

as I say thank you to the black-capped

flashes of chickadees at the feeder,

to sudden sleet, and stones half-buried

in our yard, having melted the snow

from around their mossy skin, each one

now somehow warmer to the touch.

--James Crews

 The practice of generosity is not as simple as it may sound. The idea is to be attuned to the motive—whatever it is—and to learn from our direct experience. Ajahn Chah said we begin doing away with selfishness through giving. Selfishness leads to a sense of discontent, and yet people tend to be selfish without realizing how it affects them. A selfish heart takes us in the direction of self and separation from happiness. On the other hand, a selfless heart is one of the most powerful tools we have for overcoming the suffering states of greed, hatred and delusion. We override self-absorbed impulses and replace them with concern for the welfare of other people.

As a spiritual practice, dāna is about learning from the giving and from the holding back—to see for ourselves which feels best, to learn the subtle attachments that cause us to hold back or to think only of ourselves, and to know the release of letting go.

In this world, monks, there are three things

[of value] for one who gives.

What are these three things?

Before giving, the mind of the giver is happy.

While giving the mind of the giver is made peaceful.

After having given, the mind of the giver is uplifted.

(A 3.6.37)

Excerpt from "There’s More to Giving Than We Think" by Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia, Insight Journal 2006

 @rosamund

I want to get the same slack that your racist uncle does, like instead of "oh he grew up that way, he's very traditional" can I get "oh, she just believes in a future that doesn't depend on white supremacy or the gender binary, it's fine."

 When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. There are times of great uncertainty in every life. Left alone at such a time, you feel dishevelment and confusion like gravity. When a friend comes with words of encouragement, a light and lightness visit you and you begin to find the stairs and the door out of the dark. The sense of encouragement you feel from the friend is not simply her words or gestures; it is rather her whole presence enfolding you and helping you find the concealed door. The encouraging presence manages to understand you and put herself in your shoes. There is no judgement but words of relief and release.

John O'Donohue, Excerpt from his book, Eternal Echoes

A cure against poisonous thought

Believe the world goes on 

and this bee bending

in honeysuckle just one

of a mighty nation, golden

beads thrumming

a long invisible thread.

In the green drift of an afternoon,

the body is not root but wick:

the press of light surrounds it.

--Annie Lighthart

Fireflies

Some insights come like lightning—

blinding and fierce—while others arrive

as firefly-flashes that brighten only

an inch or so of air around them.

Yet even these can gather power

over time, like the summer night

I woke and stood at the window 

to watch all that pulsing outside—

like thousands of prayers flaring up

above the houses, saying here 

and here and here, as I made my way

down the stairs using only the light 

of those small bodies to guide me.

—James Crews

The Valuable Time of Maturity

I counted my years and discovered that I have 

less time to live going forward than I have lived until now. 

I have more past than future. 

I feel like the boy who received a bowl of candies. 

The first ones, he ate ungracious, 

but when he realized there were only a few left, 

he began to taste them deeply. 

I do not have time to deal with mediocrity. 

I do not want to be in meetings where parade inflamed egos. 

I am bothered by the envious, who seek to discredit 

the most able, to usurp their places, 

coveting their seats, talent, achievements and luck. 

I do not have time for endless conversations, 

useless to discuss about the lives of others 

who are not part of mine. 

I do not have time to manage sensitivities of people 

who despite their chronological age, are immature. 

I cannot stand the result that generates 

from those struggling for power. 

People do not discuss content, only the labels. 

My time has become scarce to discuss labels, 

I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry… 

Not many candies in the bowl… 

I want to live close to human people, 

very human, who laugh of their own stumbles, 

and away from those turned smug and overconfident 

with their triumphs, 

away from those filled with self-importance, 

Who does not run away from their responsibilities .. 

Who defends human dignity. 

And who only want to walk on the side of truth 

and honesty. 

The essential is what makes 

life worthwhile. 

I want to surround myself with people, 

who knows how to touch the hearts of people …. 

People to whom the hard knocks of life, 

taught them to grow with softness in their soul. 

Yes …. I am in a hurry … to live with intensity, 

that only maturity can bring. 

I intend not to waste any part of the goodies 

I have left … 

I'm sure they will be more exquisite, 

that most of which so far I've eaten. 

My goal is to arrive to the end satisfied and in peace 

with my loved ones and my conscience. 

I hope that your goal is the same, 

because either way you will get there too .. 

--Mário de Andrade

 The Cryptonaturalist

@cryptonature

I can't understand the sky the way a vulture does. I can't know what a pond is the way a musk turtle knows. I will never comprehend a tree as a footpath like a squirrel can. But I will sense the presence of these unknowable perspectives like the sun on my face and I am grateful.

Practicing generosity is the intention to find release from attachment by giving freely of whatever you have of value. The form your generosity takes is up to you, as it can only come from your values and what you have to offer. What you have to give may be material in nature or it may be your time, energy, or wisdom. Practicing generosity eradicates the attachment that comes from feelings of scarcity and separateness.

--Phillip Moffitt

On Blueberry Picking

Mostly it consists of pretending 

not to pick them, since the wild bush--

more a tree really, thrives in plain 

view among scrub pines, along the road

that leads to the Truro sea. So when cars

near, we turn from the bush, busying

our hands in air, as if plucking a thread

of conversation started ages back--

which, between my mother and me,

must be the case. When a car gets far 

enough away, we resume our harvest:

hands and lips stained with what

the season tenders: the fat or compact

berries that will never be sweeter than

this moment. I say this in the present 

tense, as if the harvesting goes on.

I recall my mother doubled over

in laughter, midsummer, by that bush, 

and a man in a blue truck stopping.

I'm a doctor, he said. Are you ill?

Physicians are trained to see what's 

amiss, what they might fix. Bliss,

from a distance, can look like pain.

But it was bliss, I'm thinking now,

speeding past all those ghosts in flower.

--Andrea Cohen

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready

to break my heart

as the sun rises,

as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —

pools of lace,

white and pink —

and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes

into the curls,

craving the sweet sap,

taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —

and all day

under the shifty wind,

as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,

and tip their fragrance to the air,

and rise,

their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness

gladly and lightly,

and there it is again —

beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.

Do you love this world?

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,

and softly,

and exclaiming of their dearness,

fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

nothing, forever?

-- Mary Oliver

How to walk an old dog

Give up your agenda: this 

is exploration, not exercise.

She can't hear you calling her on,

but then, you can't smell whatever

is so intriguing about that clump of grass,

so maybe just relax. Stop counting steps.

Don't even count birds, or minutes

or the things you have left to do

on your pressing and eternal list.

Move gently into the immeasurable.

Stop to greet children. Consider

that the most fascinating thing in the world

could be your neighbour's garbage can.

Observe without judgement

what is near to hand--even if what you see 

is the halt in her step, the way

her spine has begun to show. Walk

just long enough to remember

that love is not an antidote to death,

but loss is not the opposite of life.

--Lynn Ungar

The First Green of Spring

Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold,

this sweet first green of spring. Now sautéed in a pan melting

to a deeper green than ever they were alive, this green, this life,

harbinger of things to come. Now we sit at the table munching

on this message from the dawn which says we and the world

are alive again today, and this is the world’s birthday. And

even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we

will never be young again, we also know we’re still right here

now, today, and, my oh my! don’t these greens taste good.

-- David Budbill

From Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse.

 An ethical precept is a question to be held up to the light of circumstance, an inquiry rather than an answer. And the nature of this inquiry is not so much the dubious enterprise of trying to figure out the right thing to do as it is an offering of an unaided heart.

Lin Jensen

A Letter in Return

And how do you live?

With grief. With fear. With laughter.

With boredom. With glee. With contentment.

With fury. With hope.

With the firm conviction that no thing

cancels any other thing out.

Death does not cancel life.

Grief does not cancel joy.

Fear does not cancel conviction.

Nor any of those statements in reverse.

Make your heart a bowl

that is large enough to hold it all.

Imagine that you are the potter.

Stretch the clay. Cherish the turning wheel.

Accept that the bowl

is never going to be done.

- Lynn Ungar

 I used to believe that the only way I could change was if I had a peak experience, or a nevous breakthrough, or won a noisy battle with a relentless pattern. This emphasis on dramatic transition was a reflection of my dramatic early life, one where nothing ever seemed to happen subtly. But I was wrong. Some transitions do have to happen in the heart of intensity, but not all do. In fact, many cannot happen that way: the drama just intensifies the armor that surrounds the pattern. Instead, some patterns transform slowly, carefully, subtly over time. We unravel one thread, then another, then another, until the structure melts into the next way of being on our path. So much happens in the quiet within. So much.

--Jeff Brown

 ... [B]efore we are able to relax unwhole­some thoughts, they must be recognized as such. One characteristic of the unskilled mind, of course, is its inability clearly to dis­tinguish between wholesome and unwhole­some thoughts. Just as the unskilled mind has difficulty even knowing when it is absorbed in thought, it finds it hard to know when a thought is edifying or corrosive—or even the importance of this distinction. An apocryphal anecdote from the life of Sigmund Freud puts this difficulty in an amusing light. Freud sup­posedly asked one his patients if she were ever troubled by lustful thoughts. “No,” she re­plied, “I rather enjoy them.”

Excerpt from an article by Mark Muesse, "Taking Responsibility for Our Thoughts: Reflections on the Vitakkasaṇṭhāna Sutta," Insight Journal 2001

Storage

When I moved from one house to another

there were many things I had no room

for. What does one do? I rented a storage

space. And filled it. Years passed.

Occasionally I went there and looked in,

but nothing happened, not a single

twinge of the heart.

As I grew older the things I cared

about grew fewer, but were more

important. So one day I undid the lock

and called the trash man. He took

everything.

I felt like the little donkey when

his burden is finally lifted. Things!

Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful

fire! More room in your heart for love,

for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing–the reason they can fly.

-- Mary Oliver