Be Where You Are

Beloved friends,

Perhaps the hardest practice in these distracting times is to simply breathe and remember presence. There is much work to be done, yet we need to be willing to accept where we stand and forgive ourselves when we fall or feel we may have fallen short.

We distract ourselves in our pain. We distract ourselves because we just can’t hear another story of injustice, fear, and horror. We use our toys, our media, our mind-numbing day to day routines, drugs, alcohol, or just not managing to get up in the morning. It is easy to understand why. 

In the end the solution lies in the courageous parting of the veils; the willingness to engage despite the pain; the conviction that although the work we do can seem futile and not nearly enough, it is like the intrinsic hope of the seeds floating on the autumn winds, the salmon fighting up the stream to die, the pieces of onion, garlic, and potato we push into the cold, wet soil. If we can allow ourselves space to simply be with whatever is present in this moment, we may step into the next moment a little lighter and with a bit more grace and compassion for ourselves and the rest of creation.

Here are some poems that speak well to this idea:

Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.

By John Welwood

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Why I Wake Early)