Category: Main blog

In this article Maria Popova looks at Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.”

As we all work through our difficult times, these treasures are a wonderful reminder. Some quotes to whet your appetite:

“Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

“If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.”

“To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path.”

“Hopelessness is the basic ground. Otherwise, we’re going to make the journey with the hope of getting security… Begin the journey without hope of getting ground under your feet. Begin with hopelessness.”

Check out the full article:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/07/17/when-things-fall-apart-pema-chodron/?mc_cid=ba0cc5f88d&mc_eid=aba969cd81

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

 Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Today I want to share poetry from two of my favorites: the recently transitioned and missed, Mary Oliver, and the inimitable David Whyte as important reminders of the precious beauty of our world and our lives:

The Deer

You never know.
The body of night opens
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two dear are walking along
just as though this wasn’t

the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind’s eye –
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work.  Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it –
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don’t do this

I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn’t just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)

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
enscribed across
the heavens

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

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, 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
you are arriving.

~ David Whyte ~

(House of Belonging)

Dear friends,

As I’ve mentioned before – our choir, the Seattle Peace Chorus is heading to the Southwest tomorrow to share the beauty of music with our friends who are working with immigrants and with the immigrants themselves.

We will also be assisting with some of the work while we are down there – and we are donating money that we have raised through the following gofundme page to two of the non-profits that are doing such important work on the border.

Please hold us in your prayers and thoughts.

Again, with the travel and work we’ll be doing, these blog postings may come less often – but I hold you all in my heart and meditations.

If you’d like to help out financially, your donation would be deeply appreciated:

https://www.gofundme.com/spc-music-crosses-borders-tour

When Death Comes 

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse 

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox; 

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? 

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility, 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular, 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence, 

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth. 

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~ 

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

Sunrise 

You can
die for it —
an idea,
or the world. People 

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound 

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But 

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought 

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun 

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises 

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name? 

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it 

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire. 

~ Mary Oliver ~ 

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

Sometimes the most difficult thing to recognize is ourselves in the mirror of those around us, especially in those we find most challenging. This wonderful practice from Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog helps us consider these challenges and find ways to recognize ourselves in the mirrors that surround us.

Practice: Mirroring

Over the past year we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve looked for God’s image and likeness in many forms and places, perhaps some that surprised you: the natural world, human bodies and sexuality, poetry (from the Psalms to rap), justice, economics, politics (yes, spirituality includes politics), other faith traditions, even suffering and death.

Where do you find it hardest to recognize the divine image? Will you trust that this person or being is indwelled by God—who is Love? Because of wounding or ego’s resistance, they may not be actively saying “yes” to and growing in Love’s likeness. Yet they still have inherent dignity and are infinitely lovable. It takes practice to see what we’re not accustomed to seeing. I find it helpful to connect with the loving Source within myself and then expand that awareness to others. This is a contemplative practice.

Take some time to rest in God’s presence. Allow God’s loving, compassionate gaze to soften your heart. Notice any sensations in your body, if you feel tension or resistance, warmth or release. Send loving attention to each of those places. If you feel pain or sorrow, know that God is intimately present with suffering. You are not broken or damaged. As James Finley often says, “You are not what has happened to you. Only Love has the final word in who you are.”

Draw upon this Love in yourself. Be filled to overflowing with Love. Gradually turn your gaze outward, picturing people you know and strangers you’ve never met, faces around the world. Imagine Love gazing back at you from their eyes. Return their gazes with Love. God—who is Love—is with and in each of you.

“The only appropriate response is gratefulness.” I love this man’s beautiful and resilient emphasis on remembering gratitude, especially for those of us with privilege. And his emphasis on our responsibility to bless others by “[letting] the gratefulness overflow with blessings to those around [us].”

This seems like such a lovely way to start the new year – with a manifesto to “expect the end of the world” and “laugh”!

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front 

(second half) 

Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. 
Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years. 

Listen to carrion — put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth? 

Go with your love to the fields. 
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn’t go.
Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction. 
Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry ~ (Collected Poems)