In our Sufi tradition we practice Zikr which is about remembrance. This beautiful poetry (with thanks to Sister Amina who published this in her blog, “Love, Harmony, and Beauty”), speaks to an indigenous perspective on remembrance by the current U.S. poet laureate and first indigenous person to hold that role, Joy Harjo.

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.

– Joy Harjo

This year’s Parliament will take place virtually in November. You can find out more and register to attend here: https://parliamentofreligions.org/2021-parliament-worlds-religions-registration

They have just published their Visual Statement which unflinchingly illustrates the current state of the world and the intention of this year’s participants.

Whether you are able to attend yourself or not, this statement is a powerful, poignant, and timely reminder of where we stand and what we stand for, and what we are willing to do about it.

I encourage everyone to watch this and consider adding your name as an endorsement of this vision and intention: https://xbil.trk.elasticemail.com/tracking/click?d=QE9G9jtWHmKKHV8QExr7XMZLbcWnZJ1yOBbkj5YFhrEnR4QddA2-u1v78Iu4JxE2V2EtRr3riJEqeT5wqvl5O82_QgvYZklU-BcVpzC-wycAGAeGdE-wQuoV2P028YA90R-0qxayD4tU_-84RGpn_lQTR3yVkHg0I3IO8EB77h9Tf7m0UJmZ_Q0lvFU_fZp6yA2

Loving Kindness, Discovering Compassion

Activist and author Rev. angel Kyodo williams was a presenter at CAC’s 2017 CONSPIRE conference. Raised in a Christian home, Rev. angel ultimately found her calling as a Zen Buddhist priest engaged in the pursuit of radical justice.

Compassion seems like a nice buzzword, and we all want to have it. But compassion isn’t an idea that can be taught. You can’t pick it up at the bookstore. Compassion has to be felt. It’s one of those things that reveals itself without your having realized that it was at your disposal all along. You can’t manufacture what was always there, but you can create the condition in which it is most likely to thrive. [1]

Rev. angel offers these suggestions for ways of developing compassion for self and others:

[Make] a practice of being open. Practicing being intimate, getting close. Not just to the people that you already feel love for and want to be close to, but to everyone. Open to the dentist, the bus driver, the clerk. Little by little you open up more and more. Open to Republicans if you’re a Democrat. To the Liberals if you’re Conservative. Your capacity to appreciate difference deepens. Open to white folks, Asians, Latinos, and East Indians. You accept the whole world with open arms not because you have been told you should, but because you realize in your heart that we are all ultimately deserving of love and compassion. Open to the poor and homeless, the sick and dying.

There’s no magic involved here, and it isn’t nearly as impossible or distant as it may sound. The way to get to this place of openness and compassion is to practice opening more and more to yourself. All of yourself. The rough, unrefined parts as well as the areas you are proud of and like to recognize. The practice of meditation helps us call on the gentle “watcher” inside us who views all the contradictions that make us who we are without judging any of it. When you are sitting there counting your breath and a thought comes up, acknowledge it for just what it is . . . a thought. . . .

There are no good thoughts or bad thoughts. When you name them like that, they all end up just the same. . . . Each [thought] gets a name and is then allowed to move on. . . . Through meditation, every bit of us gets to be seen and acknowledged, rather than forced into a corner. We gain our sense of wholeness from that self-acceptance. . . .

Armed with the open mind and open heart that come from self-intimacy and self-acceptance, you can begin the very possible task of truly accepting others. When you practice accepting yourself in many different forms and moods, you naturally develop an ability to see your own self in other people. As you learn how to accept yourself, you learn how to accept them. That’s the true meaning of compassion.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

[1] angel Kyodo williams, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace (Viking Compass: 2000), 152–153. 

[2] williams, 146–147, 151–152. 

With a bow to dear sister Amina and her beautiful blog, “Love, Harmony, and Beauty.” This is from today’s blog post and it deeply moved me.

We are all called to be aware of the many names of the One in all its forms, both beautiful and painful. Only by holding that balance can we truly integrate that oneness and be fully alive and functional in this world.

Please Call Me By My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second 
to be a bud on a spring branch, 
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, 
learning to sing in my new nest, 
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, 
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, 
in order to fear and to hope. 
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and 
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time 
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, 
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, 
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, 
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, 
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to 
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, 
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, 
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, 
so I can wake up, 
and so the door of my heart can be left open, 
the door of compassion.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

In these challenging and overwhelming times, it is all too easy to fall into fear. Much of the violence and oppression we witness is motivated by and rooted in fear.

In this poignant poem, Khalil Gibran speaks to fear and the remedy of radical acceptance and surrender.

The surrender it calls for brings to mind a poem I wrote a while back in Spanish that I share again in an updated version (with translation) below.

FEAR

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

~ Khalil Gibran

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

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, misterioso
Ahogando todos mis sentidos

Beauty nearly painful
Exquisite, profound, mysterious
Drowning all my senses

Creo que
Yo no puedo volver
No quiero volver
No necesito volver

I think
I cannot go back
Don’t want to go back
Don’t need to go back

Yo solo soy.

I only am.

~ Wakil David Matthews

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke from ‘Book of Hours’
Translated by Joanna Macy

As we have witnessed many of our beloveds moving across the veil recently this seemed especially poignant.

This body of mine will disintegrate, but my actions will continue me. In my daily life, I always practice to see my continuation all around me. We don’t need to wait until the total dissolution of this body to continue – we continue in every moment. If you think that I am only this body, then you have not truly seen me. When you look at my friends, you see my continuation. When you see someone walking with mindfulness and compassion, you know he is my continuation. I don’t see why we have to say “I will die,” because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations.

Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death. I will continue, always.

• Thich Nhat Hanh

Oneness #Interbeing

I really love this from a recent blog post on Fr. Richard Rohr’s site. In it the inimitable Cynthia Bourgeault talks about the value of centering prayer in learning to let go, and new neuroscience that verifies its benefits.

[A definition and example of the centering prayer practice]

It reminds me of a talk by Allen Watts on Zen Buddhism and its teachings about learning to let go of our clinging and resistance to change which is the cause of all suffering.

Learning to Let Go

Centering Prayer is a devotional practice, placing ourselves in God’s presence and quieting our minds and hearts, but as Cynthia Bourgeault explains, it doesn’t only work on that level. What the desert abbas and ammas, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and even Thomas Keating could not have known when he formally started teaching the practice five decades ago, was that it works on a physiological level as well, strengthening neural pathways, and making “letting go” that much easier. When it comes to releasing our strong preferences, especially our desire for power and control, it seems safe to say that some practice of kenosis is necessary for any movement forward.

The theological basis for Centering Prayer lies in the principle of kenosis, Jesus’s self-emptying love that forms the core of his own self-understanding and life practice. . . .

The gospels themselves make clear that [Jesus] is specifically inviting us to this journey and modeling how to do it. Once you see this, it’s the touchstone throughout all his teaching: Let go! Don’t cling! Don’t hoard! Don’t assert your importance! Don’t fret. “Do not be afraid, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” (Luke 12:32). And it’s this same core gesture we practice in Centering Prayer: thought by thought by thought. You could really summarize Centering Prayer as kenosis in meditation form. . . .

Fascinating confirmation that kenosis is indeed an evolutionary human pathway is emerging from—of all places—recent discoveries in neuroscience. From fMRI data collected primarily by the California-based HeartMath Institute, you can now verify chapter and verse that how you respond to a stimulus in the outer world determines which neural pathways will be activated in your brain, and between your brain and your heart. If you respond with any form of initial negativity (which translates physiologically as constriction)—freezing, bracing, clinging, clenching, and so on—the pathway illumined leads to your amygdala (or “reptilian brain,” as it’s familiarly known) . . . which controls a repertory of highly energized fight-or-flight responses. If you can relax into a stimulus—opening, softening, yielding, releasing—the neural pathway leads through the more evolutionarily advanced parts of your forebrain and, surprisingly, brings brain and heart rhythms into entrainment. . . .

Every time we manage to let go of a thought in Centering Prayer, “consenting to the presence and action of God within,” the gesture is actually physically embodied. It’s not just an attitude; something actually “drops and releases” in the solar plexus region of your body, a subtle but distinct form of interior relaxation. . . . And in time, this gentle and persistent “inner aerobics,” undertaken under the specific banner of Centering Prayer and in solidarity with Jesus’s own kenotic path, will gradually establish that “mind of Christ” within you as your own authentic self.

We invite you to spend some time today practicing “letting go” through Centering Prayer or another practice of kenosis.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Shambhala: 2016), 33, 34, 35–36.

Prayer to Future Beings
by Joanna Macy:

“You live inside us, beings of the future.
In the spiral ribbons of our cells, you are here.
In our rage for the burning forests, the poisoned fields, the oil-drowned seals, you are here.
You beat in our hearts through late-night meetings.
You accompany us to clear-cuts and toxic dumps and the halls of the lawmakers. It is you who drive our dogged labors to save what is left. O you who will walk this Earth when we are gone, stir us awake. Behold through our eyes the beauty of this world. Let us feel your breath in our lungs, your cry in our throat. Let us see you in the poor, the homeless, the sick. Haunt us with your hunger, hound us with your claims, that we may honour the life that links us. You have as yet no faces we can see, no names we can say. But we need only hold you in our mind, and you teach us patience. You attune us to measures of time where healing can happen, where soil and souls can mend. You reveal courage within us we had not suspected, love we had not owned.
O you who come after, help us remember:
we are your ancestors.
Fill us with gladness for the work that must be done.”

A friend posted this on FB.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~ e.e.cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)