Seeing Clearly: trains, planes, and automobiles (oh, and shuttles, footpaths and a little levitating)

Friday, July 18, 2008

trains, planes, and automobiles (oh, and shuttles, footpaths and a little levitating)

Hello, All,

As I write this, Bella is trying to convince me to play with her by waving her toy Skunkie in my face. This toy was a gift from her Aunt Barb, who spoiled her way past imagining when I was gone, right down to getting her icecream from Capt Sundae's on her last night at the Malis's. Bella no doubt experienced a level of nurturing, care and joy equal to mine on our vacations. Thanks, Barb and Joe and Ollie and Leo, for taking my little knucklehead into your home and hearts and treating her like one of your own. When I die, I want to come back as one of Barb's pets.

Shambhala didn't disappoint. It was as challenging an endeavor as I have ever taken on-physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually--came out of it feeling stronger, lifted up, I hope a little wiser. I met some incredible women, like Tory, a free-lance correspondent who has traveled a great deal, and continued this habit at Shambhala by walking the perimeter's 6 mile path before any of us got to the breakfast tent one morning. Full of humor, heart and wisdom, her stories of her adventures kept us captivated.

Also Joan, a woman who took me for a walk one morning when my tears were blinding me and showed me a broken tree that had such life and new growth that it inspired her each time she looked at it. This tree, she said, was a metaphor for her life. Joan's smile was serene and radiant and I knew she meant it when she said her life is beautiful now.

I could go on and on--there were 15 of us all together, and as always happens in these kinds of situations, my ignorance and fear at the beginning told me how different (unique?) I was, and five days later, we were all the same, all the same.

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The Journey

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.

a poem from TRAVELING MERCIES by Annie Lamott

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--w.s. merwin

from Kabir, Indian mystic poet

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!...

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten--

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Night Letter to theReader by Billy Collins

Night Letter to the Reader

I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,

a bird leaving the nest,

a snail taking a holiday from its shell,

but only to stand on the lawn,

an ordinary insomniac

amid the growth systems of garden and woods.

If I were younger, I might be thinking

about something I heard at a party,

about an unusual car,

or the press of Saturday night,

but as it is, I am simply conscious,

an animal in pajamas,

sensing only the pale humidity

of the night and the slight zephyrs

that stir the tops of the trees.

The dog has followed me out

and stands a little ahead,

her nose lifted as if she were inhaling

the tall white flowers,

visible tonight in the darkened garden,

and there was something else I wanted to tell you,

something about the warm orange light

in the windows of the house,

but now I am wondering if you were even listening

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

but this is what I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare's

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

This poem does what all good art does-it makes my heart fill as I recognize myself in it, and I say, "yes! that is exactly it!" and I realize once again that I need to tell you so many things. I feel inspired. Alive.

There are not enough hours.

a note from Kevin Griffin, author and spritual leader from Shambhala