Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

This is an important reminder that when we celebrate our freedom with weapons and reenactments of war and death we ignore and deny the suffering and trauma of so many of our marginalized humans and more than humans.

From dear brother Theo:

I don’t hear freedom tonight.

I hear gunshots punctuating the dark like sightless stars,
ravening thunder of war machines,
each crack the impact of whips on black flesh like twisted spines,
each flash slicing open the skin of the sky.

I see immigrant women drinking water from toilet bowls
in 2019, sewage swirled like galaxies you could drown a nation in,
if it were still breathing.

I see the dream of Democracy fallen to the earth,
ashen as a stillborn child, I see handprints of blood staining

America the Beautiful from sea to burning sea.

There is no freedom here,

only the screech of stolen innocence from infants throats, tiny
hands reaching through barbed wire. “Help me”
is the same in every language

and it smells like smoke and it sounds like cataclysm,
for America does not die quietly.
She is too proud for that. She’ll set the whole sky on fire

before admitting she was wrong.

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.