Why Regret?

Why Regret?

 

Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?

 

~ Galway Kinnell ~

 

(Strong Is Your Hold)

 

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Why_Regret_.html

The Miracle of a Single Flower

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, 

our whole life would change.

—Buddha

Hafiz: Love is the Soul's Life

We are people who need to love because Love is the soul’s life.
 

~ Hafiz 

♥

Pema Chödrön: The Only Thing that Makes Sense is for Us to Reach Out to One Another

 

From Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change 

One of the astronauts who went to the moon later described his experience looking back at Earth from that perspective. Earth looked so small, he said. Just a single sphere hanging in space. It made him very sad to realize that we have divided the world arbitrarily into countries that we're fiercely attached to, with borders we keep waging wars to protect. What we do just doesn't make sense, he realized. We have just this one Earth with one people to take care of it, and the way we're going about it is crazy.

Chief Seattle had the same insight more than a hundred years ago: "We are all children of the Great Spirit. We all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble, and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die."

The way we label things is the way they will appear to us. When we label a piece of earth China or Brazil or the United States, it becomes an entity that carries strong emotional luggage. When we label something good, we see it as good. When we label something bad, we see it as bad. We get so hung up on like and dislike, on who's right and who's wrong, as if these labels were ultimately real. Yet the human experience is an experience of nothing to hand on to, nothing that's set once and for all. Reality is always falling apart. In this fleeting situation, the only thing that makes sense is for us to reach out to one another.

As we move the direction of seeing more space around our fixed ideas, around our limited sense of self, around our notions of right and wrong, around the labels we're so invested in, the crack of our conventional way of experiencing life will get wider and wider. At that point it may start to dawn on us that if we want to change the movie of our life, we will have to change our mind...

If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn't inherent in the place but in your state of mind. The warrior longs to communicate that all of us have access to our basic goodness and that genuine freedom comes from going beyond labels and projections, beyond bias and prejudice, and taking care of each other. 

- Pema Chödrön

Hafiz: Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

 

~ Hafiz ~ 
(I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Cast_All.html

Mary Oliver: Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

Glacier National Park

Where Does the Temple Begin,
Where Does It End?

There are things you can’t reach.  But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away.  The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree – 
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Why I Wake Early)

 

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Where_Does_the_Temple_Begin.html

Forgiveness

 

Courageous people do not fear forgiving 

for the sake of peace.

— Nelson Mandela

Forgiveness does not change the past. 

It does not make what happened a non-event. 

It doesn't erase something that has been done. 

Forgiveness is an offer to reestablish a broken relationship. 

It says that loving is more important than nursing a wrong. 

It doesn't correct the past, but it does give back the future. 

It permits restoration of relationship.

 —Anonymous

Joy comes not through possession or ownership 

but through a wise and loving heart... 

Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness 

and resentment to the heart. 

Then choose. 

 —Jack Kornfield

John Muir: The Thread Connecting Us All

Banff National Park - Canada

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it 

attached to the rest of the world.

― John Muir

Now I Become Myself

Art © Valeri Tsenov

Now I become myself. It's taken

Tim, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

worn other people's faces,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

"Hurry, you will be dead before—"  

(What? before you reach morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?) 

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence, 

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

~ Mary Sarton 

from Rivers in the Ocean

The Sacred Permeates All Life

Mt. Hood & Oregon Lavender Farm in Oregon City

 

 

The Sacred permeates all life. My prayer, always, is that I/you/we awaken to the beauty of our true nature. That said, this awakening to the beauty of my true nature has certainly come through the doorway of my tears. Which then led me, paradoxically, to great joy, love, laughter, and more. 

 

The challenge and the invitation, I believe, is to use our life experiences to open more and more deeply as we age. The choices we make around life's wounds, consciously or otherwise, manifest in how we live our lives - year by year we are either growing more rigid, defended, judgmental, bitter, resentful, isolated, walled up, up in our heads, shut down, shutting out, shutting up, split off from ourselves and Life and Love, etc. OR we are opening, deepening, expanding, remembering, and becoming more wholly who we truly are. 

 

Each time we allow our hearts to break open, more space is cleared for love. And, as Stephen Levine says - "The more we love, the more real we become." 

 

It takes courage to become who we truly are, to gradually and mindfully commit to peeling back the veils of our distorted perceptions and belief systems, to embrace and heal and transform the pain we carry in our hearts, and to let go and open to joy, beauty, love, connectedness, and the Sacred within ourselves and all of life.

 

May we awaken. May we work together toward creating a world which increasingly cares for all. May we each do our parts to be part of this revolution in caring. It always begins with each of us looking in the mirror and doing our part. We are all needed. We are all Sacred.

 

Namaste ~ Molly

 

******

 

"In our time, when high technology guided by values such as conquest, exploitation, and domination threaten our very survival, we need economics driven by an ethos of caring. We need a caring revolution." ~ Riane Eisler

 

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." ~ Arundhati Roy