Brahmaviharas

Out of the rich soil of good will grows the beautiful flower of compassion, watered by tears of joy and shaded by the great tree of equanimity.

--Longchenpa

Blessing for the longest night

All throughout these months,

as the shadows

have lengthened,

this blessing has been

gathering itself,

making ready,

preparing for

this night.

It has practiced

walking in the dark,

traveling with

its eyes closed,

feeling its way

by memory,

by touch,

by the pull of the moon

even as it wanes.

So believe me

when I tell you

this blessing will

reach you,

even if you

have not light enough

to read it;

it will find you,

even though you cannot

see it coming.

You will know

the moment of its

arriving

by your release

of the breath

you have held

so long;

a loosening

of the clenching

in your hands,

of the clutch

around your heart;

a thinning

of the darkness

that had drawn itself

around you.

This blessing

does not mean

to take the night away,

but it knows

its hidden roads,

knows the resting spots

along the path,

knows what it means

to travel

in the company

of a friend.

So when

this blessing comes,

take its hand.

Get up.

Set out on the road

you cannot see.

—Jan Richardson

from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

The Opening

I feel it before dawn -

the longing not only for light

but for the vast embrace

of the dark,

the way it links me

to the farthest reachings

of the universe,

the way it holds

each dull planet,

each luminous star,

holds me with no question,

no reservation,

holds all I love

and all I have yet

to learn to love.

With each breath

I bring it into my body,

small sips of dark,

great gulps of dark.

Inside me it swirls

with my love of light,

and this is how the certainties

of the heart are erased-

when I love and ache

in two directions at once-

and what's left

is so raw, so open,

so alive.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The World I Live In

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

what's wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn't believe what once or

twice I have seen. I'll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever, possibly, see one.

-Mary Oliver

How to Survive

Love the small things of the earth.

The dust. The dark rain in the lemon trees.

The sound of moonflowers opening

at evening. Love them

even when the sky is burning,

even when a mother crouches with her child

in a dark room, wetting his lips

with a small glass of water. Love them

quietly, quietly but ferociously,

their hearts in them like flocks

the wind has furled.

And then, in the spring, if the world

has survived, walk out

with your gift that you have practiced,

your fresh gift that has ripened in secret;

lie down in the long, soft grass of summer

and wait for love, wait for it

to find you-

and when it lays its hand at last

upon your shoulder, open

to all that is about to happen;

rise up and walk off into the lemon trees

and live awhile, live awhile

with someone-their eyes, their scent, their curls-

and when love departs, when love

is done and fallen, stand there

in the coming winds of autumn

and turn back to the small things

that have been with you-

buttons, apples, chapters-

and then, because you've practiced this

forever, because you are ready now

for the hardest task of all of them,

lay your hand on the changed face in the mirror

and look at it-its wounds, its crimes, its changes-

and tell yourself what you see

deserves your mercy-that face, that name, that stranger-

and place your palms on that one life in the mirror

and open to the whole of it, the whole of it,

and love it like the last chance of the world.

-Joseph Fasano

Gus Speth, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, says, "I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that."

Yonatan Neril, Leo Dee

Eco Bible: Volume 1: An Ecological Commentary on Genesis and Exodus

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

--William Stafford

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;

Every year the green ivy grows longer.

No news of the affairs of men,

Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe;

When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.

I have nothing to report, my friends.

If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after

so many things.

- Ryōkan Taigu (1758 - 1831)

From 'One Robe, One Bowl', the Zen Poetry of Ryōkan, translated by John Stevens.

The Paradox

When I am inside writing,

all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

When I am outside living,

all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.

When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,

I hunt patience with a vengeance.

On the mornings when my brother's tired muscles

held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,

For every moment you aren't playing basketball,

someone else is on the court practicing.

I spend most of my time wondering

if I should be somewhere else.

So I have learned to shape the words thank you

with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful

for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

All those places I made it to,

all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,

I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

--Sarah Kay

Winter Poem

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and i loved

it so much and i kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and i squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and i stood perfectly

still and was a flower

--Nikki Giovanni 

Where did the middle go?

It's always near the end

that I'm startled into presence-

my morning walk nearly over,

my coffee down to its last sip.

Where have I been? Where did

the middle go? I've been asking

all my life. But then what's ending

shakes me back into my body,

the way autumn calls to you

with its waving yellows

and falling reds: "Witness me!"

it seems to shout. "I'm here

only for a moment."

--James A Pearson

a love note to my body:

first of all,

I want to say

thank you

for the heart you kept beating

even when it was broken

for every answer you gave me in my gut

for loving me back

even when

I didn't know how to love you

for every time you recovered when I pushed you past our limits

for today,

for waking up.

- cleo wade

A Journey

It's a journey ... that I propose ... I am not the guide .. . nor

technical assistant ... I will be your fellow passenger ...

Though the rail has been ridden ... winter clouds cover ...

autumn's exuberant quilt ... we must provide our own guide-

posts . . .

I have heard ... from previous visitors ... the road washes out

sometimes ... and passengers are compelled ... to continue

groping ... or turn back ... I am not afraid ...

I am not afraid ... of rough spots ... or lonely times ... I don't

fear ... the success of this endeavor ... I am Ra ... in a space

.. . not to be discovered ... but invented

I promise you nothing ... I accept your promise ... of the

same we are simply riding ... a wave ... that may carry ... or

crash ...

It's a journey ... and I want ... to go ...

--Nikki Giovanni

you are not on call

for the pain of the world

I know you feel every hit of the hammer, beating

plowshares into swords,

and people into plowshares

and every time you fail to step between

the blow and it’s target

the injustice is sewn into your bones, too

and so

when the hammer rises, you must rise with it

raising your voice your eyes your awareness your body

whatever part of you that can given as an offering

you cannot stay this way forever

sewn to this cacophony of blows

every movement of yours a follow

until your body is owned by the drumbeat of

the raising of weapons

until your days string together in a stuttering heartbreak of rage

and you can’t

       catch

             your breath

but this is what you promised

to those who don’t get to choose whether or to to show up for the fight

you promised

that you would hold nothing back

I know

except, you cannot be on call

for the pain of the world

it is not work that can be done

without sleep

when we said that people are too sacred to be

beaten into plowshares 

or swords

we meant you

we need you

for the fight

and we need you for all the things

that are less, and more, than fighting

we need you to be ready to listen in the soft way earth listens

to rain in the hours before dawn

to be tender, to cradle precious things, to hold the smell of dew in your hair

to hum the song that flowers 

will rise up through the earth to hear

I need you 

to stay

in love with the world

--Liz James

Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me

The world asks, as it asks daily:

And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

I count, this first day of another year, what remains.

I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.

Can admire with two eyes the mountain,

actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.

Can make, from last year's late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.

For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain,

then to the question.

The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old,

and still they surprised.

I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea,

brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace.

Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.

Today, I woke without answer.

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend

don't despair of this falling world, not yet

didn't it give you the asking

--Jane Hirshfield

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

--JOHN O'DONOHUE

What the Day Gives

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November

what I hoped to do comes back,

asking.

Across the street the fiery trees

hold onto their leaves,

red and gold in the final months

of this unfinished year,

they offer blazing riddles.

In the frozen fields of my life

there are no shortcuts to spring,

but stories of great birds in migration

carrying small ones on their backs,

predators flying next to warblers

they would, in a different season, eat.

Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world

that plunges in a single day from despair

to hope and back again, I commend my life

to Ruskin’s difficult duty of delight,

and to that most beautiful form of courage,

to be happy.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

Nothing Wants to Suffer

after Linda Hogan

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind

as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff

being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want

to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.

The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see

their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.

The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.

These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth

to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,

made quickly, and without much suffering.

The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.

A table, the weight of years of argument.

We know this, though we forget.

Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.

Nor the worm, content in its windowless world

of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.

The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.

Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,

looking down at all of us— their offspring—

scattered so far beyond reach.

-- Danusha Lameris

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” 

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” 

The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1951), p. 474

Consecration

Even a song can be an altar,

a place to bring an offering—

as on this anxious day

when I can’t stop giving my heart

to love songs for the broken world.  

And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar

on which the song is placed,

which would mean what is sacred

might be ever flowing through us,

a space where we might meet the divine,

which is exactly what I believe.  

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Neighbors in October

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

-- David Baker

From The Truth About Small Towns.

The Clearing

At the center of every fear

is a clearing, and though you must

trudge for miles in the dark woods

to get there, it’s worth the trip:

now you can sit down for a while

among grass and hawkweed, you can

bask in unfiltered light, and see

the heavy clouds shifting overhead.

At the center of every fear,

if felt completely, is an empty

space where the wind tickles

the hairs on your neck, then arcs

an arm around your shoulder,

pulling you closer like a father

at last unafraid to show affection,

here to let you know you’re not alone.

—James Crews

If you know your Creation story,

Then you know from where you have come

And you know where you are going

And what you were meant to become

You'll know how to love your partner

How to raise your babies to be women and men

who'll meet the purpose of their creation

And you can live your life so, too, you can.

If you know who you are, 

and what you must do

Then you’ll know what to say 

When your time is through,

When asked by the ones who have gone before, 

“Did you always love all of the people,

though they may never have loved you back?”

“Did you lift up the ones who had fallen?”

"Did you stand in the way of attack?"

“Did you help those to walk who had stumbled?”

"Did you help them to straighten their back?"

“Did you listen to stories they needed to tell?

...never judging their wrong from their right?“

"Did you make sure they knew you believed them?"

"And to see beyond darkness, some light?"

"Did you share with all those who had nothing?”

“Did you comfort those crying inside?”

“Did you listen to those who were angry?”

“Did you take away pain they were trying to hide?”

“Did you take care of all of Creation?”

“Did you keep it a beautiful place?”

“Did you love all the things that were put here?”

“On the earth, in the sky, and the water that flowed and helped nourish this place?

“Did you hold true to all of your teachings?”

“Were you the best Anishinaabe you could be?” 

"Step forward and tell us your answers

....the Ancestors are anxious to hear and to see.”

                       Mizanagiizhik

--Murray Sinclair

Hope Waits Inside

The day dawned as it always does,

milky light nuzzling the drapes

then leaking through the cracks like love

in a time of grief. I want to meet

this moment with arms swung wide open,

a gate that welcomes everything—

but dread rusts the hinges, and fear keeps

the latch from popping free. As usual,

I’m called to see hope where it seems

there is none, just as I must trust that

inside rain-slick, stripped-bare branches

wait the buds of new leaves, ready to

burst forth, like a happiness that doesn’t

depend on what happens.

—James Crews

Inviting Spaciousness

Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,

I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings

in a desperate attempt to unravel it.

I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.

Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it

with my hands like something precious,

something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.

I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.

I imagine all the other frightened hearts

and imagine them all being held in love.

And I breathe. I breathe and feel

how the breathing invites a spaciousness.

I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing

as I open and soften. Open and soften.

And nothing changes. And everything changes.

The heart, still a knot, remembers

it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer