Shorelines

ego tells me to draw conclusions…shore up my indignation or my melodrama, the one where I’m left out, ignored or otherwise tricked into a situation not best for me…the one where I’m enticed onto the dance floor, courage of a wallflower conjuring possibility…the one where I get there and it’s empty…the one where the latest story plays out ancient history…here, another loss…there, another loss…

see, there now. I can legitimize the pout, the hardening heart; the saga continues.

heart tells me to stay in the game…shore up my courage, stand naked, hold out for better days…perpetuate the script of constancy and hope…keeping afloat fantasies made from valid yearnings…distorting reality…one more swig from the bottle, just one…

see, there it is. I can accept and continue heralding heartfulness in the face of hard, harsh brick wall non-response; the saga continues.

mind tells me to get real…how much more obvious does it have to be before you see, it’s the same dumb sham…you’ve been played…you played yourself too…wake the hell up, chick…run fast and far…fuck ’em…be done and gone…besides, no proof of your perspective as valid, no proof of possibilities good, bad or otherwise, no proof, no nothing but silence… and silence speaks. see how much it meant? nada…nowhere…next?

and now, finally. I can dignify my stupidity by showing I see it, by throwing myself into a race in the opposite direction. there, the saga stops (nah, it continues).

but the shores shape and carve out the landmass… the mist makes feasts and evaporates… myriad possibilities, likelihoods, comfortings and abandonments form character, painting stories on soul’s terrain…somewhere between the melodramatic maybes, foolhardy courage and pessimistic realism is the song of a universe whisking us all onto dance floors we’ve not begun to fathom … and while I can’t stop the tides or discourage another etching on my backside, frontside or otherwise, can’t force justice, or awareness or love or … happy endings… I can let go and let it be as I move on, away from conclusions…embracing the way of nature … ‘though it seems fairly obvious sometimes…

all I know is this: I don’t know. I see all the possibilities in situations left languishing, cut short violently or otherwise aborted by unfortunate events. but. I don’t know.

move me, life, beyond judging what is not mine to judge… move me, great waters, into the floating real of what I can do for me right here, right now in this warm and gentle sea…

photo by ryan mcguire - bells design
photo by ryan mcguire – bells design

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Earth Awaits

brilliant-coloured birds tend their silence here, perching on stillness and heart’s ache, a hushed fear catching in their throats, poised against a hope we’ve lost sight of in life’s cruel twists…

whose song will they next sing for us, breaking out upon the night a memorial of life precious, fleeting? surely their melodies weave eternal tapestries from the light of each heart that has ached and joyed before us and will flow onward, grasping our own and those yet to come…

let us hear their silence and know all the earth aches for each one of us.

and when their songs fall again on our ears, may we be gently enclosed in the comfort of their epochs, our stories alighting on trees, interwoven with the spirits of all nature, whispering into valleys, bursting along rivers we may never see, yet filling hearts with melodies uniquely given by each of our lives…

let us hear the love and know all the earth awaits our answering songs.

but for now the womb of silence weeps. the songbirds listen,
holding sorrow’s breath…

j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2014
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2014

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Hammock’s Sway

Healing hammock ride the sky, in my lingering repose.
Silence washing, flooding,

Crash this deafening noise, all the clamoring
impossibilities’ haunt of rhythm’s worst explosion, enigma’s crueler clarity
suggesting daunting end of days sooner as I

long for, work for, breathe for later, much later.

Wipe away my necessary practice,
the trauma of doling out tomorrows’ chances
via feverish weighing today of…
how much too much, just enough
or not enough now will facilitate more of a future, not less…
why must all these labors somehow suggest
no now and no when or where in which to be or go to or later for which to aim
when their aim is to seize assurance?

So, in my fevered necessities,
somehow slip me past the grasp that deadens days
and back into flow…

Take me to obliteration lovely, blanking out the doling minutes, seconds…
Bind me to places where eternity emerges, maybe there shimmering
on the edge of twilight…or here unveiling the timeless rule of leaves,
and trees holding hammock’s sway.

20141018_163212

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For John P. K.

 

j ruth kelly, 2013, all rights reserved
j ruth kelly, 2013, all rights reserved

pondering existence and all we grasp to assure us of the meaningfulness of a life, my phone rang. it’s true. i was exhausted. had finished my morning round of work, resting before the next wave, feeling the frustration of loss the past month had become and realizing how many times i’ve had to remind myself that measuring my worth solely by some evidence of obvious success is a nowhere game. so, i was pondering, sensing, feeling the pull of the very fact of existence itself and all the possibility held in one life. in mine. in my children. sighing. hoping.

my phone rang.

the father of my children in the middle of the day. this can’t be good. “hey, what’s up?” i answer. “my dad died this morning.”

his dad. 80+++ years. i’d known him from the age of 3. of all there is to know of him, the thing that remained was his capacity to accept and love people in the moment, to so seldom speak harshly to anyone that i cannot recall ever witnessing such. a rare individual who often bubbled up a little dance i took to calling the barney dance back when i was sure he couldn’t cut loose, convinced it was a major dysfunction, picking over all that i thought contributed to all that is wrong in a religion. so little i knew for all my knowing…

now i just want to see that dance again.

this is what life does to us, if we open our hearts. it cuts away all that we judge to be flawed, all the measuring sticks we cling to for proof of value. it teaches us that some blossoms come and go fast, never to return again ’til the next season of blooming. others bloom at the most unlikely times and then turn around and bloom again. and again.

this was true of a man i think of as my other dad. (not just because i married into the family. but because he exuded nurturing concern. and he radiated a nourishing color of love unique to his own expression of life. he called me ruthie. and he said it with such love and pleasure. he oftentimes prayed over me throughout my childhood, here and there when life had ripped at my confidence. he was so sure of my value. so full of confidence.) he kept blooming. one more expression. and another. and a new one there. and he encouraged the same in whomever bothered to open up to him.

i got off the phone after spilling involuntary anguish and concern, then the dam broke. and broke.

and broke. and i went to the school to pick up my sons with my daughter by my side, urging me to not reveal anything until we were outside the school, knowing i was barely holding it in.

we made it out into the sunlight before they had had enough of being deflected. then we all just stood there in a huddle, hugging, a tribute to a man who made it possible for me to know love by way of knowing his son and bringing three amazing children into this world. divorce doesn’t change that gratitude or diminish the meaning, the purpose of our knowing each other. it reminds us that there are limitations. we are not super-human, able to fix all problems. but we can do the best with what we have to care for, to cherish.

we drove up to my house and found him waiting in his car. wanting to see his children. and another huddle in sunlight. all of us.

there’s no preparation for death, not truly. we are so busy with our blooming. in all my awareness of existence and the fleetingness of life, i wasn’t even slightly prepared to hear this cherished father had gone on to the next expression, beyond our sight or ability to witness his adventure.

up to the last, he held out in love. only until his wife of many decades spoke the words “I release him…” did he actually let go and fade. within minutes, he was beyond our grasp. but our lives unfold and blossom in ways uniquely influenced by his presence. he lives on. and we gather our stories, grateful to include his best in our words, in our actions.

here’s to meaning we cannot fathom, achievement we can never measure and the love that holds us all together when those we cherish move on…

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In Memorial

“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.”

– from Jack Gilbert’s book “Refusing Heaven“
The news of the slaughter of children yesterday left me with such heavy heart, the only thing I could do was weep and wail. I held it in and made the mistake of bending over to get something and the involuntary spill commenced. Later that evening I was laughing with my own children, enjoying the movie, The Hobbit. And I went to bed with heavy heart. The week has been one of tremendous loss in general for me but we do find the laughter, regardless. The one thing I cannot abide though, the one thing I won’t stomach is the pandering of “God in the schools” as the solution for violence. God is everywhere always within us. God doesn’t stop the violence. We must face it in our own hearts and minds. We must dirty the hands of our hearts and wield our own strength to face why it is we’re still content with preventable tragedy.
Peace y’all…

(Quote found via the perpetually brilliant Rob Brezsny and his Facebook page.)

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Back To Trees…

Take me back to trees
back to times in sun’s embrace
suspended, waiting…

j ruth kelly, 2012 all rights reserved
j ruth kelly, 2012 all rights reserved

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On Loss…

Life’s less gentle tides, all these flowing, sometimes crushing rides send us whirlwind spinning and yet, love. Love secures, sustains when all thought of explanation is a whimper in dark refrain. And somehow, in the roughest slam against some hard, craggy shelter, we are held together. By love.

The picture below is one taken of my children a handful of years ago. We were visiting Sunset Beach, NC for a memorial service at low tide. The metamorphosis of my children’s sweet lives in such a short stretch of time, their growth and resulting loss is palpable at times. It can seem strange to see it as such but growth is a loss, on many levels. It is an exchanging of one way of being in the world for a new way or a revised way of being. The need to hold to something constant while going through these changes is, at times, all-consuming. I see it in my youngest’s struggle with divorce, watching his siblings go from fun playful pals to serious, teenage individuals who want their own space. It’s plenty to deal with and all while growing a new phase of his own, unfolding into the pre-teen years.

And he does it with awareness, the double-edged sword of clarity and recognition of what he’s losing in order to gain something he doesn’t even know yet or trust. Without my interference or prompting, he sees. And I find myself reflecting on adulthood and on how so many never really get to that level of maturity beyond the inevitably obvious chronological advancement. The fear of life itself seizes us at some point, fear of the loss created by growth, by awareness, by commitment to choices, by accepting our greatness and our frailties and all the resulting responsibilities. And accountability. And possible accidents. And maybe even death. We, for all our adult constructs, can quickly find ourselves whispering… “Wait, take me back to the time under the pier when it was all so simple and ashes washed away in the tide, the idea of a life gone somehow muted in the sound of hypnotic waves. All is well…”

The first 4 “sentences” of this blog post were originally written for my dear friend, Kate. These words are my heart response to an onslaught of hurtful reminders of why it’s all so precious. She has faced death after death this past year and kept her heart open. We’re growing together in our friendship and in business, learning what we have to lose in order to make dreams come to life. And what we aren’t willing to lose. And what we can’t control, when others’ lives fade away. Growth requires awareness, objectivity, rational acceptance and commitment. And this is true at any age. But more so as we age and feel the urgency of life’s demands.

What strikes me through it all, through birth and death, in the midst of growth from being cute cuddly kids to sometimes awkward teens to “adults” to mature individuals is how deeply we need truth and courage in order to grow in a love that is real. Not some sentimental fluff hoping to hide. How do we get there? To that place of courage? We get there by believing in our best, by trusting life to toss us around a bit and teach us what we’re made of and why we cry when we lose what is so deeply precious to us. We get there by embracing our greatness and all the responsibility that goes with it. We get there by not pretending we’ve arrived at some height of enlightenment exempt from frailty or flaws. There’s no arrival. Just this clinging as we go and letting go as we must, affirming love as we allow life to shape us…

Sunsets and beginnings…

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A Musical Thing…

Alan Watts weaves together many layers of the human experience in a liberating expression of truth. It’s one of those essential truths I wrestle with more often than I care to admit to myself. But. The more I admit it, the more it’s about the music and less about what I’ve accomplished, where it is I think I’m “going.” The way we’re set up, at such young ages, to look for the grand trophy, the major accomplishment, the big prize…it’s a defeating march. Chronic illness, or any recurring struggle, will either highlight the defeat or push us against that wall, the one we can stand and look at until it melts away and the music is the thing, once again. On with it…

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Own Your Life

This reaches me on several levels because, for one, it shows a man giving his body, his will, his time to the military. On some levels, this fact alone is upsetting to me. I’m not anti-military or unappreciative of the hearts of those who mean well when they join the military but I do struggle with the choice. These folks are giving their will and good health to agendas so corrupted and obscured by greed and lust for power and control, it’s difficult to see even the potential for positive karmic purpose in the choice so many make to serve. But, I support the human, the person.

I love what is expressed here about “The Secret” and about owning your life. And as one who longs to sprint again and who has some major challenges – not with an almost 300lb weight issue or injury from parachuting out of airplanes, but with the considerably daunting reality of CFS – this rendered me weepy and appreciative. So, Happy Memorial Day to those who find it meaningful. Let this be a memorial to the human spirit, the tenacity both in and out of corrupt agendas and into the ownership of our lives and our power.

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While All Else Clamors

What was that I just felt,
smelled fleeting,
heard
whispering?

What was that wash of
release from
tension
tension life never asked me
to know?

What was that pleasure seeping in? What if…?

What if life is perfect
right now?
What if the dust bunnies
in the corner
two days after cleansweep
are a reminder of the inevitable tide of
life washes, rolling all over us,
inviting the pound of
full blast loving,
kicking up dirt, crumbs and mirth
even while we scramble to do more than
survive?

What if life is beautiful today?
You? Me? Today? Now?

What if the lines under your eyes,
lil splotches on those thighs,
etch a beauty only soul can define
and only
the soul-centered can recognize
and what if nothing else
about your appearance matters?

What if there’s nothing you need to do
for this beauty to emerge
nothing to do but live,
love,
flow in authentic,
grace-centered beingness?

What if everything is alright, right now,
even while most things are upside down,
bleeding out, on the edge,
protesting on the street corner,
what if the sum of it all is…
precious perfect,
in the middle of turmoil, loss,
advocacy, pain, anxiety?
What if there’s a place deep within,
eternal boundless space pulsing,
resonating with peace, fullness, rest
perfection…
while all else clamors?

What if with a simple shift inward, past the noise,
‘round the self-hatred corner,
beyond the decrees against you,
down below fathoms immeasurable,
sounding past everything else…
a silent feast of unsullied, incorruptible grace
awaits to be found, carried within every footfall
of protest and dance, rest and tryst?

Go there.

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