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Our Sufi community recently lost a dear matriarch from our local Seattle area, Murshida (teacher) Khadija Julia Goforth. She was a larger than life teacher and friend and I miss her so much.

Many people have written their tributes and remembrances in various email lists and forums but I was having a very hard time deciding how to put down in words what I was feeling.

Finally, I gave up, let my mind go in meditation and allowed this poem to arise:

For Beloved Murshida

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

I remember this same sense
When my mother died.

And here, now
With the sudden, shocking
absence of our dear matriarch

It rises again.

Strands of jet black sorrow
Wound together with blood-red
Yarn pulled out of the gaping
Wound left by your absence
dear teacher.

Wound together into a
Prayer shawl I crawl into
On my knees
In mourning, in confusion,

In profound perplexity…

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

As I look down
The earth is still there.
When I open my ears
The birds are still singing.

Appointments are still on my calendar
Cars are still whooshing down the street.
The sun came up again
The flowers still smell pungent and sweet.

I don’t get it…
How can it be…

I lift up the edge of the shawl
(that reminds me of every shawl you gave me)
And I can’t understand
How everything in this vibrating world

Somehow
Still exists.

How can it not have
Disappeared into that gaping black hole
Your going has left in my heart
And the heart of our community?

As I stare into that blackness
I reach out and someone
Takes my hand.
Touches my heart.

I look and all around that void
My beloveds are beginning to stand
To look into each other’s
Tear blurred gaze.

Our prayer shawls slip
From our shoulders
Filling that darkness with
The light of our prayers

Weaving together
How we will
somehow
Go on
Together.

I still don’t get it
But maybe…

I see how it can be.

~ Wakil David Matthews – 5/2021 ~

I was just introduced to this amazing feat of engineering and love and music by my friend and fellow bass, Steve, from the Seattle Peace Chorus. The first video in the series was done several years ago, and it brought me to tears.

Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/Us-TVg40ExM

Here’s another one – equally moving:

Bowing in gratitude to Amina Janet from whose “Love, Harmony, and Beauty” blog I found this lovely poem today.

***********

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

– Jo Harjo

I have been so incredibly blessed recently to have been inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa as we read her book, Borderlands La Frontera (recommended by my lovely daughter Nina!) in our Sufi Book Club.

She speaks and writes poetically of her place in the borderlands both physically and metaphorically as a Lesbian, Chicana, with indigenous and Mexican roots. And she defies the dominant culture by writing in both Spanish and English and even some indigenous languages unapologetically and without translating for all of us poor colonialized white folks who only know one language!

And then, after being introduced to her via a Spiritual Directors International conference, I am being deeply impressed and inspired by Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) – a Dine (Navajo) elder and teacher from whom I am taking a class called, “Surrendering to Spirit.” For our homework this week, she asked us to do this practice:

Several times a day recite this prayer, setting it as an intention. The prayer goes like this: “Help me to set aside everything I know about surrender so that I can be open to new possibilities.”

As I sat in my sit spot this afternoon by a beautiful creek praying that prayer, the following poetry arose in my heart. I have put the English translation (as far as I can guess con mi poco espanol) in between verses and I hope that any native Spanish speakers will feel free to correct any mistakes I’ve made.

La Rendición (Surrender)

El arroyo no puede volver
No quiere volver
No necesita volver

The creek can’t go back
Doesn’t want to go back
Doesn’t need to go back

Sólo es
Fluye
Limpia

It only is
It flows
It cleans

Belleza casi dolorosa
Exquisito, profundo
Ahogando todos mis sentidos

Beauty nearly painful
Exquisite, profound
Drowning all my senses

Gratitude to Hamid Francis for posting this poetry:

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- Adrift

I love this practice and I do it every day. It is the anchor that grounds me (pun totally intended).

From Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog:

Contemplative Walking

Christine Valters Paintner describes the ancient and accessible contemplative practice of walking or moving slowly through the natural world as a way of connecting with God. This is clearly the “road not taken” by too many of us in the modern world, even though it shaped and sustained the faith of our ancestors for millennia. If you find it difficult to sustain a practice of seated meditation, I encourage you to begin by moving outdoors.

In [the contemplative] path we cultivate intimacy with Earth and her creatures, and we allow ourselves to fall in love with nature. It is one of my deepest beliefs that we will not be able to address the environmental crisis we currently face without this intimacy, without learning how to cherish nature, without love.

I encourage you to make time each day to be outside. One of the ways to do this is to go on a contemplative walk with an intentional and reverential heart.

There is something about getting our bodies out into the world, in close contact with trees, bushes, flowers, squirrels, pigeons, and crows, that can invigorate us and offer us new perspective on life. In the book of Jeremiah, God asks, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24). These walks are times to really experience that truth.

Contemplative walking does not necessarily mean walking slowly, although at its heart it is not a rushed activity. When we walk contemplatively, we give ourselves over to the experience. This is not walking for fitness. It is walking to immerse ourselves in an encounter with whatever is calling us in the moment.

As you begin a contemplative walk, allow a few moments simply to breathe and connect to your heart. Set an intention for this time to be as present as you can to what is happening both within and without. Begin walking, but see if you can release any expectations or destination. As you walk, imagine that with each step your feet are both blessing the ground and being blessed by it. Let your breath be long and slow. Bring your awareness to the earth monastery all around you.

Notice what draws your attention. Look for what shimmers or what the Japanese poet Basho called “a glimpse of the underglimmer.” Listen for the sounds of life around you. Even if you are walking through a city, pay attention to the rustle of the breeze, the caw of crows, or any subtle elements of creation singing their song.

Pause regularly simply to receive this gift. Breathe it in. Let it have some space in your heart. Then continue on until something else causes you to stop.

This is the whole of the practice: simply [moving], listening, and pausing. We practice presence so that we might cultivate our ability to really hear the voice of nature speaking to us. This sounds simple, and yet we so rarely make the time to develop this skill.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Christine Valters Paintner, Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature (Sorin Books: 2020), xvii, xiv–xv.

This is a favorite of mine. It reminds that we are always on a journey if we open to the signs all around us.

The Journey

Above the mountains
    the geese turn into
        the light again

painting their black silhouettes
        on an open sky.

Sometimes everything has to be
        inscribed across
            the heavens

so you can find
    the one line
        already written
            inside you.

Sometimes it takes    a great sky
        to find that

first, bright
    and indescribable
        wedge of freedom
            in your own heart.

Sometimes with
    the bones of the black
        sticks left when the fire
            has gone out

someone has written
    something new
        in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
    Even as the light fades quickly now,
        you are arriving.

-David Whyte
In David Whyte: Essentials and The House of Belonging

As always his prose and poetry rise up and envelope with presence and meaning. He speaks to our need for solitude which truly resonates. I just attended a wonderful webinar on wilderness witnessing and retreat and all the many ways we can experience the wild within and without in our spiritual practice.

Here’s David Whyte:

One of the elemental dynamics of self-compassion is to understand how much we need to be left to ourselves, and how much, in a way, we need to leave ourselves alone. Aloneness begins with puzzlement at our own reflection, transits through awkwardness and even ugliness at what we see, and culminates, one appointed hour or day, in a beautiful, unlooked-for surprise, at the new complexion beginning to form, the slow knitting together of an inner life, now exposed to air and light. -David Whyte

The Well But the miracle had come simply from allowing yourself to know that this time you had found it, that some stranger appearing from far inside you, had decided not to walk past it anymore;  the miracle had come in the kneeling to drink and the prayer you said, and the first tears you shed and the memories you held and the realization that in this silence you no longer had to keep your eyes and ears averted from the place that could save you, and that you had the strength at last to let go of that thirsty, unhappy, dust laden pilgrim-self that brought you here, walking with her bent back, her bowed head and her careful explanations. No, the miracle had already happened before you stood up, shook off the dust and walked along the road beyond the well, out of the desert and on, toward the mountain, as if home again, as if you deserved everything you had loved all along, as if just remembering the taste of that clear cool spring could lift up your face to the morning light and set you free. -David Whyte Revised from ‘The Well’ inPilgrim

With gratitude to dear sister and friend, Nur Mariam who sent this out today.

Prayer of Love and Healing for Earth

O God of All Names and Beyond All Names,
I pray in great gratitude this holy day for Love.
Love raises the sun and greets me
in each drop of water I drink,
in each crumb of bread I taste,
in each smile and tear I touch,
in each child I meet.
In a mantle of awe I stand enwrapped.
My feet rest upon Earth and my head meets the moon.
O Holy One, our times are fraught with challenge.
Our Earth suffers climatic chaos,
Men, women and children suffer from wounds of conflict,
droughts, floods and crumbling economic systems.
All manner of suffering and questions press into my soul.
My small beating heart does not seem large enough…
yet daily it keeps expanding beyond body boundaries into Compassion.
Each morning Love rises beyond a known horizon in the unknown day.
Each morning Hope beckons me into my stardust destiny.
Each noontime Grace feeds me with Love.
Each evening an invisible Breath enfolds me in a shawl of mercy.
O Holy one Who Is Love, Hope, Grace and Breath
transform our sadness and doubt into songs for Life.
We pray for our beloved planet and all brothers and sisters.
May healing waters bathe the rivers and oceans.
May small, deliberate actions grow seeds of Earth justice.
May one prophetic note of the smallest birdsong courageously sung
on a busy street at dawn inspire leaders to free their voices to speak
for the Common Good and future generations.
O God of All Names and Beyond All Names, Whose Face is Love
May I and we collectively
Be the face of Transforming Love
In this moment, In this day, In these times. Amen.

From “Full Circle” by Howard Shapiro