“Our task is to take this earth so deeply
and wholly into ourselves
that it will resurrect within our being.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Resurrect
Our Mother
Our mother who art underfoot,
hallowed be thy names,
thy seasons come, thy will be done,
within us as around us
thank you for our daily bread, our water, our air,
and our lives and so much beauty;
lead us not into selfish cravings and the destructions
that are the hungers of the glutted,
but deliver us from wanton consumption
of thy vast but finite bounty,
for thine is the only sphere of life we know,
and the power and the glory, forever and ever,
amen
(adapted by Rebecca Solnit)
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A Tree Tribute
my betters stand century, regarding every inch of me below them and i sigh…
the relief of their preeminence, their everything better than me,
always being faithful, seeing without accusation, knowing without words,
rendering without movement except for the sway sighs occasional,
a hymn of ages linking cords of light and dirt,
the above and below granting us all the grace to keep going…
i stand in awe of such company, and the sweetest one, boldly human,
lingering long enough to look up, partake and share.
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Freedom
“Freedom consists of how you confront your limits, how you engage your destiny in day-to-day living.
[…]
Human dignity is based upon freedom and freedom upon human dignity. The one presupposes the other.” Rollo May
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Words Mean
“We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we’d rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.
What do we mean, for example, by the word ‘peace’? Do we mean an absence of strife? Do we mean a forgetting? Do we mean a forgiveness? Or do we mean a great weariness, an exhaustion, an emptying out of rancor? It seems to me that what most people mean by ‘peace’ is victory. The victory of their side. That’s what ‘peace’ means to them, while to the others peace means defeat… Peace becomes a space people no longer know how to inhabit.” Susan Sontag
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With the Makers
I’m all done with notional condemnation,
nonsense posing “salvation”
suggesting pre-birth agendas and all the control
a robot might covet.
Take me to the truth, down to the bone of it.
Marry me to the wonder found in the midst of
all this chaos and randomness daring us all
to make meaning.
I see their meaning made in fear.
The meaning they make
spews the poison in their hearts,
the snare in their aid.
Take me far away from the righteous.
I want to live with the undone and undoing.
I want to dance with the makers and shake
every foundation lost to the mold of stagnation.
Deliver me to love, love in spite of it all,
love because of it all,
love morphing, rolling up sleeves
and shaping this mound of flesh into new and ancient songs.
*Pre-birth agendas and salvation are real forces and works ancient and new…but this poem isn’t focused on the mystical and mysterious, powerful and valid work hidden therein. It’s about freeing yourself from false faith.
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The Peonies Reaching
Make me like the peonies reaching,
ripening and revealing shimmers of light,
born of darkness, from disintegration in a long story’s night
whose tale suggests only seclusion unending and a crushing fate…
until,
until the bursting out upon the day,
until the unfolding from haunts of burial entombing,
until all my songs release fragrance
sweetened by a holy undoing,
whose whispers in moonlight of a sun behind the night
birth soul beyond the doom,
holding sacred sway over a mysterious teaching.
–
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Magnetic Resonance Imparting
Tenzin Choegyal’s singing, particularly with the Metta String Ensemble and particularly the Crane Nomad song reached into those places humming with a bit of futility, of loss collecting in dark corners of the soul. The timing was perfect, right before an MRI to see if I have MS, ALS, or some other crippling illness. I suspected it is the same battle I’ve fought for over 20 years but the concern shook me up. Choegyal’s voice pulls soul parts back from the edge of the abyss… beautiful healing… insta-weep and weep of the best kind of cleansing.
My only complaint is that he laughs at the symbolism of the crane, or, more specifically, the spiritual medicine. But I suspect he’s laughing at the thought of how strange he must sound to the western mind. The crane has been speaking to me already…nothing strange. Longevity. Good health…wings…moving on from dark times…
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The Speaking of the Tree
“There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.” Maya Angelou
Here’s to a beautiful life and guardian of all things soul…
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What Do You Love?
Most of us can compile a long list of what/who we love, going on and on including how much we love the feeling of scratching an itch…
but the one love most needful, is also most elusive…
I LOVE this expression and the wisdom rolling from this beautiful person.
J. Ruth Kelly 