Love Poem

Spring, by Shalisa Photography

A different kind of love poem, recycled from Ox Herding many months ago:

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
  —Love, by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Robert Hass

I hope your Valentine's Day is filled with much love.

Putting an End to Anger

by H. J. Ford for the story "The Comb and the Collar"

I want to share a sutra with you. It is the Discourse on the Five Ways of Putting an End to Anger, and I'm sharing it because it describes a process I have watched in myself. Maybe you will also find that you are practicing this already, or maybe you will be encouraged by what you hear. 

The full sutra is here, and it is relatively short. I think you will enjoy the story-like quality of the sutra. But if you want the short version, here is the fourth method:

"This is the fourth method, my friends. If there is someone whose words and bodily actions are not kind, and in whose heart there is nothing that can be called kindness, if you are angry with that person and you are wise, you need to find a way to meditate in order to put an end to your anger.

"My friends, suppose there is someone on a long journey who falls sick. He is alone and completely exhausted, and not near any village. He falls into despair, knowing that he will die before completing his journey. If at that point, someone comes along and sees this man’s situation, he immediately takes the man’s hand and leads him onward to the next village, where he takes care of him, treats his illness, and makes sure he has everything he needs by way of clothes, medicine, and food. Because of this compassion and loving kindness, the man’s life is saved. Just so, my friends, when you see someone whose words and bodily actions are not kind, and in whose heart there is nothing that can be called kindness, give rise to this thought: Someone whose words and bodily actions are not kind and in whose heart is nothing that can be called kindness, is someone who is undergoing great suffering. Unless they meet a good spiritual friend, there will be no chance for them to transform and go to realms of happiness. Thinking like this, you will be able to open your heart with love and compassion toward that person. You will be able to put an end to your anger and help that person. Someone who is wise should practice like this."
    —Discourse on the Five Ways of Putting an End to Anger

Samsara

Samsara wheel

Friends, I've been crying a lot over the news. The killing of twenty children is too much to bear, and the suffering of the killer is tragic as well. 

I know our civilization can be better than this, that we can give love and help to those who need it, that we can keep weapons out of the hands of the unwise. But I also know that no matter what we do, there will always be suffering. I have no uplifting message today; just the dull truth that there is so much joy and so much pain in this world.

May all beings be at peace.

Return to Center

Arrows, by Finch and Canary

Life has a way of pulling you away from your center in a hundred different directions at once. My favorite way to return to center is to follow a simple pattern: In. Out. Gratitude. 

1. Sleep. Return to center by letting your body and mind do it naturally, without all of your efforting. In. Move into your breath and the heaviness of your body to help you fall asleep. Out. Move out naturally as you give up control and fall asleep. Gratitude. Wake up grateful!
2. Move. It happened that I took Neesha's "Finding the Hub: Centering Mind, Body, and Heart" class on yogatoday recently. Just what I needed. The key to the class:  In. Move into the core of your body.  (My favorite example: draw your arm bones in before raising them above your head.) Out. Open from the heart to the periphery of your body.  Gratitude.  Be grateful and joyful that you can share in the practice.
3. Meditate. Try this bell meditation, which is available via the On Being website. The principles should sound familiar by now:  In. Move in by focusing on the sound of the bell.  Out.  Move out by letting your mind open and welcome everything.  Gratitude.  End with gratitude and extend this joy and peace to all beings.

May you all feel the peace and joy that comes with feeling centered!

Sacred Space: Impermanent Gifts

Danmala, by Kathy Klein
via Colossal

What is it about us humans that makes us want to rearrange natural objects into patterns? When I find myself in a beautiful setting, sometimes the most natural thing to do seems to be to make some sort of "offering" to the beauty I find myself surrounded by. An arrangement of shells, in some attempt to align my own perspective with the greater landscape. An arrangement of rocks, as a greeting to others, a sign of recognition that my own perspective can blend with others'. 

Kathy Klein's danmalas are a good example of this kind of art. Visit her gallery to see a quilt of technicolor patterns, all created from flower petals. She describes "centering" herself and creating the art in a state of devotional silence. The designs she creates seem to pulsate from the blending of her state of mind with the natural matter she works with.

Some of my favorite art is the kind that is meant to be impermanent. There's something so poignant about making something, knowing that when you leave it behind, it will eventually be returned to the earth. There's something beautiful, too, in leaving the art to be discovered for others who happen to be passing by. I sometimes want to hoard everything that's beautiful, and making something that can be left behind is a good exercise in sharing and letting go, even if a photograph allows us to hold onto the art in some sense!

Shell Offering by me

Postmodern Hymn: We Will Never Pass This Way Again

Tryptavision 4, a light painting by Joe Mehl of Tryptavision
via Deviant Art

Time has been playing funny tricks on me lately. I used to think of my life as one-directional, but lately I've been noticing loops and spirals in my life's story. Places, interests, and people that I didn't expect to ever reconnect with suddenly reappear.

It feels like I'm already in the eternal return, learning to affirm past choices and reintegrate them into the ever-growing pattern of my life. (I tend to think about my life in terms of quilting, even though I've only ever made one quilt). It's a bit of a relief to have these unexpected continuities, honestly, because I'm so intent on making the most of each scrap of experience. The scraps may be bigger than I had first imagined!

The discovery of spiraling time doesn't make each moment any less special, though. It makes me want to appreciate these pleasures now, so that when I perhaps return to a similar moment somewhere down the line, I will have double the joy in greeting it again. 

Love Will Be Preserved

Emblem 9 (of 12) from the
1752 Hermaphrodite Child of the Sun and Moon
by unknown alchemist L.C.S.,
reproduced by Adam McLean
via Unurthed

"Only what has turned to love in your life will be preserved."
    —Rule for a New Brother

Living with Poems

Illuminated Manuscript, by Sarah Cain
via Bryan Miller Gallery

I've been thinking about what poems I might like to carry around in me, memorized, to take refuge in when necessary. Already, my list of poems far outstrips the time I'm willing to put in to such a project. After making this list of future poems I will have in my head some day, I thought of one that I've already been living with for a decade now. I still don't have it memorized, but I am always returning to it. I think I first read this poem because my dad pointed it out to me in some publication (maybe the daily newspaper?), so it's always felt a little bit like a gift--something that I should appreciate and take care not to lose. 

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird. 

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands and
Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

 *

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward,' he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

    —"Saint Kevin and the Blackbird," by Seamus Heaney

Love Moves Us All

Marine bleue, Effet de vagues, by Georges Lacombe

I've been doing some house cleaning, and I came across an old program from a concert of classical music and poetry readings by Robert Pinsky. Flipping through the poems, I noticed several had stars marked next to them. This is one of them: 

As when far off in the middle of the ocean

A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten

And rise above the surgace, then rolling on

Gathers and gathers until is reaches land

Huge as amountain and crashes among the rocks

With a prodigious roar, and what was deep

Comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls 

Of sunken sand and living things and water—

So in the springtime every race of people

And all the creatures on earth or in the water,

Wild animals and flocks and all the birds

In all their painted colors, all rush to charge

Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all.

    —"The Wave," from Georgics, book III, by Virgil, translated by Robert Pinsky

Love Creates Universes

My Universe, by Rob Ryan

A totally personal post: Today makes three years since I married my husband. It blows my mind how our love has created new universe, a totally new reality.

Personal Myth: Humans

Humans, by me

Humans, by me

Here is my next chapter in my personal myth project, which explores what it means to be human in this world. For me, what's interesting about being a humans is how language, laughter, and story can be used to   mediate the natural cycles of life and death. Given that I love learning foreign languages, I really feel that language is an integral part of the human experience. Maybe it's because I feel that words fail me too often, and that stories uplift me, but my own experience of the world is closely related to the human faculty for language and for nonlanguage too.

Postmodern Hymn: Pig

Flowers in Your Hair, by Louise van Terheijden

I woke up with a fragment of a song floating in my head the other morning, and it took me a while to figure out which song I was singing to myself. It turned out to be "Pig," by the Dave Matthews Band.

Wash out this tired notion 

That the best is yet to come 

But while you're dancing on the ground 

Don't think of when you're gone 

Love! love!? what more is there?

Apparently I had the lyrics slightly wrong, because I was singing "wash out this time notion." Oh well, the message is still the same. Enjoy life as it comes, and open up to love.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

by J. J. Granville
via Little Hokum Rag

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

    —Matthew 7:3

Lately I've been thinking a lot about stories we tell ourselves, and the verse above keeps popping into my head. I feel like it has beautiful applicability to current postmodern concepts of personal narratives. 

There are times when I don't enjoy the stories other people tell about themselves. The stories seem so detached from the reality that I'm seeing. But then I remember that the stories I tell about myself are just as strange and unfathomable. So what can I do?

Surely there is a way to be gentle and loving that shows our friends the unexplored sides to the stories they tell. It probably doesn't do much good to get indignant about little mythologies (unless they're tending towards weirdo, evil delusions), because for the person who's telling them, these mythologies are true. If we are craving gentleness from others, it seems only kind to be gentle with others' stories.

And maybe we can open our own life story up to the contributing views of others. What do you think? Is it possible to allow someone else to share in the authorship of your life?

Ritual for a Bad Day

Cherry Blossom, by Kirra Jamison
via Black Eiffel

Some days just throw it all at you, and all you can do is go with the flow. Here is my ritual for a bad day:

1. Listen to Joni Mitchell sing about laughing it all away.

2. Look at art that looks back at you. Looking at Kirra Jamison's art is like having a conversation with all the magic in the world.

3. Cuddle your dog after a good walk, and trade your worried human mind for calm dog mind. 

4. Eat the most colorful food you can find.

Music, art, food, love are the things that can reorient your whole day. I'd seek these types of "rituals" out even on a good day, but there's something about having a bad day that makes you cling/take refuge to those things you know to be good for you.

The Gods Speak of God

by Stephen Mackey

I'd been thinking about God and I'd been thinking about poetry, and then this poem appeared:

It doesn't interest me if there is one God 

or many gods. 

I want to know if you belong 

or feel abandoned. 

If you know despair or can see it in others. 

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world 

with its harsh need 

to change you. If you can look back 

with firm eyes 

saying this is where I stand. I want to know 

if you know 

how to melt into that fierce heat of living 

falling toward 

the center of your longing. I want to know 

if you are willing 

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love 

and the bitter 

unwanted passion of your sure defeat. 

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even 

the gods speak of God. 

    —"Self Portrait," by David Whyte  

(I've posted a bit on David Whyte before, when I talked about Irene Belknap's art, so I guess I'm a fan, although every time I encounter his work I think it's the first time I've discovered him. What a wonderful feeling, to keep discovering someone I like.)

When I was thinking about God, I was wondering if I could verbalize what I believed to anyone, and if that someone could accept what I said without needing to hear her own view reflected back to her. So this poem affirms something that I feel deeply, that the question of God isn't as important as all that gets tied up with God, and that God is a word that means something more than God. Thank goodness for poets and poetry; I always feel so relieved to find someone who can artfully say what I feel.

Postmodern Hymn: Bowl of Oranges

Today's hymn comes from Bright Eyes, an indie group headed by Conner Oberst. I love Bright Eyes for the bravely earnest lyrics and for the creative melodies. "Bowl of Oranges" is one of their more uplifting songs: 

"And we'll keep working on a problem we know we'll never solve 

Of Love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole. 

But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall. 

Then I think we would see the beauty. Then we would stand staring in awe 

At our still lives posed like a bowl of oranges, 

Like a story told by the fault lines and the soil."

King of Hearts

Scene from The King of Hearts
via Bitchin' Flicks

The King of Hearts, the cult-classic anti-war film, offers an excellent commentary of the insanity of violence and modern society. In case you haven't seen it, it is about an ornithologist (Alan Bates) who is sent to save a French town from being destroyed by a bomb. The setting is World War II, but it has a classic late 60s feel.

Besides making an anti-war statement, it also offers a beautiful parable about the struggle that each of us faces with death and love. 

via Nader Library

The King of Hearts manages to dismantle the bomb, which is hidden in the great clock tower of the church, and thus acknowledges the suffering that can be caused by time. Shortly after comes his great scene of enlightenment: he takes of his clothes and stands at the gate of the insane asylum. 

Postmodern Hymn: Bottom of a River

Adam Arcuragi would like to share the gospel of death with us. Shall we listen?

I heard about Adam Arcuragi through a fantastic article on Sightings, where M. Cooper Harris describes the genre of Death Gospel and discusses the various artists who could be included in such a label:

"Death Gospel offers an interesting rejoinder to a culture that denies death and decay, insisting instead that particular individualities require a universal point of convergence; it addresses a generation of young adults (and their elders) who, despite their spirituality and electronic connections, feel alienated from their traditions (religious or otherwise), from their humanity, and from one another."

"Death Gospel offers no assurances. What it holds out for is the possibility that people may, together, be transformed in their attitudes toward living, may love and be loved, and thereby recognize in these fleeting moments of community a measure of authentic existence regardless of what lies beyond knowing."

Yes. Amen. I think I'll be learning the whole Death Gospel hymnal.

Golden Rule

Golden Rule Poster, by Koen, age 6

via Studio on Fire

And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of." (Matt 18:3)

When I think of grown ups becoming like little children, I usually don't think of them in positive terms--usually a childish adult comes across as petulant and insecure. But isn't there a better side of childishness, too? One that involves a willingness to laugh, to change focus instantaneously, to see the good in others? What aspects of children do you most admire?

Happy Valentine's Day

I Opened My Heart, by Rob Ryan
Via Emma Hill

Celebrate the day by opening your heart. What better way to center yourself in harmony with the world?