Category: Main blog

NOTE: I will be traveling for the next 10 days so there may be a gap in these postings. Much love – Wakil

From our newest and our first Indigenous poet laureate:

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circles in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

~ Joy Harjo ~

(How We Become Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001)

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look 
under the sun’s brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

anything, I can’t see anything — 
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker — 
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing — 
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet — 
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(West Wind)

Courtesy of Panhala (To subscribe to Panhala, send a blank email to Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com)

 Perhaps… 

Perhaps these thoughts of ours 
will never find an audience 
Perhaps the mistaken road 
will end in a mistake 
Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time 
will be blown out, one at a time 
Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out 
without lighting a fire to warm us. 

Perhaps when all the tears have been shed 
the earth will be more fertile 
Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun 
the sun will praise us in return 
Perhaps these heavy burdens 
will strengthen our philosophy 
Perhaps when we weep for those in misery 
we must be silent about miseries of our own 

Perhaps 
Because of our irresistible sense of mission 
We have no choice 

~ Shu Ting ~

 (Translated by K. Kizer in Cool, Calm & Collected)

FATHER EARTH

By Clarissa Pinkola-Estes
 

There is a two-million year old man

No one knows.

They cut into his rivers

Peeled wide pieces of hide

From his legs

Left scorch marks

On his buttocks.

He did not cry out.

No matter what they did, he held firm.

Now he raises his stabbed hands

and whispers that we can heal him yet.

We begin the bandages,

The rolls of gauze,

The unguents, the gut,

The needle, the grafts.

We slowly, carefully turn his body

Face up,

And under him,

His lifelong lover, the old woman,

Is perfect and unmarked

He has laid upon

His two-million year old woman

All this time, protecting her

With his old back, his old scarred back.

And the soil beneath her

Is black with her tears.

 Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX 

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell.  As you ring, 

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. 

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there. 

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
  

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~ 

(In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

https://g.co/kgs/Nk1M69

Resisting or postponing the collapse will only make it worse. Finding new ways to grow the economy will only consume what is left of our wealth. Let us stop resisting the revolution in human beingness. If we want to outlast the multiple crises unfolding today, let us not seek to survive them. That is the mind-set of separation; that is resistance, a clinging to a dying past. Instead, let us shift our perspective toward reunion and think in terms of what we can give. What can we each contribute to a more beautiful world? That is our only responsibility and our only security. 

~Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics~

How refreshing it is for me when I encounter people who are open to and preparing for collapse! How draining it is when I encounter those who attempt to convince me that I’m delusional and that collapse can be prevented, avoided, or at worst, that it will never happen.

Echoing Eisenstein’s words above, for any of us to resist collapse is to resist “the revolution in human being-ness.” This demise, unraveling, Great Turning—this dissolution of life as we have known it is endeavoring to pull us downward together into a planetary, collective descent for the purpose of transforming human consciousness and restoring our relationship with the earth community. At the same time that each of us is manifesting personal collapse in our individual lives (the microcosm), the macrocosm is drawing us conjointly inward and more deeply toward the earth. If we are willing to move with the descent, we have the capacity to experience the revolution in our human being-ness. If we resist, we re-commit to our separation and abdicate our transformation.

Re-union, both on the microcosmic level of the individual psyche, as well as in the macrocosm, is waiting to happen to us. The collapse of industrial civilization is humanity’s golden opportunity for re-union on every level. It beckons us to discover what can happen to us as individuals and as communities when we begin thinking in terms of what we can give to each other and what beauty we can create. Indeed, it is our only responsibility and our only security.

Father Sky and the Cosmic Christ
Meditation #24, June 4, 2019     Balancing Gender, Reinventing Culture

Talking about Father Sky means talking about the cosmos.  Thanks to scientific discoveries of the past 100 years launched by the seminal breakthroughs of Albert Einstein and Ernest Hubble, we now know that we belong to a universe that is vast and expanding, full of creativity (a star is being born every 15 seconds!) and deeply mysterious (96 percent of matter is either dark energy or dark matter and thus very difficult to see and full of mystery). 

The universe we dwell in, our home and matrix, is 13.8 billion years old and all its “stuff” is related, since it began smaller than a pinpoint and has developed and expanded ever since.

Read More

In the crowded hall of Bellingham’s Village books, I listened with growing enthusiasm and emotions as my friend Mirabai Starr introduced us to her latest book, ‘Wild Mercy.’ (https://g.co/kgs/Ew4FCi) I knew at that moment that a deep yearning I had felt for a long time was being addressed. And as a white cis-gendered male perched uncomfortably on the pinnacle of privilege, I also knew this was another important call to action. 

My friend Aziz Gary Guest and I were working on the facilitation of a men’s group for our spiritual community’s gathering over Memorial Day and this was obviously the subject that we needed to address. As men in this patriarchal society, it is often hard to recognize the ocean of privilege we swim in and the consequent woundedness that we have suffered along with our marginalized siblings. With the Shekina prayer as our compass (we read it over many times during our time together) – the men found the beginnings of guidance toward a different way to envision the culture, the planet, our siblings, and the world we walk through each day. We were inspired to find new ways to be in that world and to pray Hineni (Hebrew: “Here I am”) each morning for the Divine One to guide us toward the “purpose Thy Wisdom (Shekina!) chooseth.”  (from a prayer by Hazrat Inayat Khan a Sufi master who brought Sufism to the West in the early 20th Century). 

This is work that not only begins to heal our own wounds but has the potential to lift us all into the birth of the new humans we can and must become if there is to be a future at all. Aziz and I, Wakil, hold deep gratitude to our dear sister Mirabai and to the many feminine icons and teachers to whom she has pointed us for guidance in ‘Wild Mercy.’ May we walk this path together, hand in hand, heart to heart, in love, harmony, beauty, compassion, empathy, and remembrance.

Amen.

This is a subject I have been working with for some time. I very much treasure the work of folks like Carolyn Baker, Andrew Harvey, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Joanna Macy, Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry, and many others who have been so deeply engaged in this work.

This is another excellent article from an author new to me but with some inspiring ideas about how we navigate this challenging reality and what it means to embody mystical activism.

Some excerpts:

“To call these “end times” is hardly hyperbolic. We are in trouble and the signs are everywhere: extreme political divisions; xenophobic violence; enormous wealth inequity; poverty and homelessness; sexism and ageism; arms buildups and unending wars; and, most frightening of all, escalating climate disruption.”

“Driven by left-brain beliefs, illusions, addictions, and obsessions, we race headlong toward the collapse of civilization. Fortunately, the solution to these mounting crises also lies in the human psyche, arising from a most surprising source: the right-brain’s natural mystical consciousness. But our survival depends on whether we understand and resolve this paradox in time.”

“Humanity’s renewal is less a matter of faith than of transformed vision. Just as the divine world is never finished, neither is mystical revelation—we will be divinely guided through the death and rebirth of civilization if we pay attention. As the mind clears, so too does the path.”

Here’s the link to the full article:

Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis

In the Sufi world, we would call this Wali – that entity that walks with us and has always been there. What Fr. Richard Rohr might call the Christ Energy.

“Guardian Angel”

By Rolf Jacobsen

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,
and your closest friend, whom you can never know,
blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,
and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.
The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day
and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.
I walk beside you all day and look intently at you
and put my mouth against your heart
though you’re not aware of it.

I am your third arm, your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you cannot accept,
and who can never forget you.