I lost my little brother this week
And the circumstances of his life
And his death
Have so cracked wide open my heart
I could never face his pain while he was here
Now I am unimaginably grieved and unimaginably grateful
For what he has shown me
About the pain of judgment
Things do not go as I wish they would
And yet things move and shift
And winds blow us all away
I see what I never saw
I know, really know in my heart
What I never could have thought true
I can't lose what I am
We are never lost to each other, brother.
—Georgia
Contraction, Abundance
Winter is a time
of contraction,
eating less
of a dwindling larder.
Lent's a virtue
of doing without.
Will we survive
the letting go and
find the joy of abundance
whether Ho Tai with his
bag of treats and a full belly,
or an abundance of sky
and roads unwalked.
Almost more joy
at a day we've never seen,
than we can handle
without shaking.
The juniper so green,
so scented
it crowds out thought.
—Jeffrey Taylor
of contraction,
eating less
of a dwindling larder.
Lent's a virtue
of doing without.
Will we survive
the letting go and
find the joy of abundance
whether Ho Tai with his
bag of treats and a full belly,
or an abundance of sky
and roads unwalked.
Almost more joy
at a day we've never seen,
than we can handle
without shaking.
The juniper so green,
so scented
it crowds out thought.
—Jeffrey Taylor
When all is said and done....
When all is said and done, we truly only have ourselves. We can spend time with people we like, people we don’t like, people that like us, or people that don't like us. In the end, it is up to us to take each situation as it is, which is sometimes hard to do.
We can find things around us to help us feel better—animals, plants, art, and sometimes even people. We can also find space and quiet so we can visit with ourselves without interruption.
Driving on an empty highway with no radio in the car has been one of my meditation retreats. It is you, the hum of the car, the scenery if it’s day, the blackness if it’s not and memories and dreams. I have relived scenes, pondered countless questions, peered into the future, and anguished over lost loves, all at seventy one miles an hour. The car is a temple hurtling down the highway, sometimes the only light for miles.
The layers peel away and I study my childhood, my children's childhoods and my father’s childhood, what I know of it.
I learn and re-learn things about myself as I climb a long steep grade. As I crest the hill and see the diamond sparkles of a small town in the black distance, I say to myself, “When you step out of this rolling temple to buy gas and a sandwich, you will be closer to God and yourself and your destination.”
—Robert Porter
We can find things around us to help us feel better—animals, plants, art, and sometimes even people. We can also find space and quiet so we can visit with ourselves without interruption.
Driving on an empty highway with no radio in the car has been one of my meditation retreats. It is you, the hum of the car, the scenery if it’s day, the blackness if it’s not and memories and dreams. I have relived scenes, pondered countless questions, peered into the future, and anguished over lost loves, all at seventy one miles an hour. The car is a temple hurtling down the highway, sometimes the only light for miles.
The layers peel away and I study my childhood, my children's childhoods and my father’s childhood, what I know of it.
I learn and re-learn things about myself as I climb a long steep grade. As I crest the hill and see the diamond sparkles of a small town in the black distance, I say to myself, “When you step out of this rolling temple to buy gas and a sandwich, you will be closer to God and yourself and your destination.”
—Robert Porter
Samurai Song Prompt
There is always so much going on, even when it is quiet and my body is still. Even when my eyes are closed.
We like to think we know what all of this is. We're pretty pathetic like that.
I know the light that hits the retina on the back of my eyeball presents an upside down image—the lens at the front of my eye does that. My brain makes it right-side-up again. There are glasses you can put on that flip this image over—make it look upside down, which is, of course, really right-side-up. It doesn't take long for the mind to readjust it. I know what I expect to see. I know how to be sure I see exactly that.
This is how we build the world we live in.
Eyes closed, I know clearly the sound of a creaking door. What is hard is to notice that moment before we know a thing, name it, file it, judge it. The sound I name “creaking door” is really just vibrations rippling through the air, setting the little hairs of my inner ear vibrating. Somehow my brain turns this into a sound and finds a match for it among all the sounds I have heard before, the familiar sounds, the ones I have names for.
Similar things happen with light, with smell, with tastes, with touch and texture.
I wish I could get back to that moment, that instant when a sound is just vibration, when a thing is just light and formless substance. When there is no roof, no supper, no father, no mother, no temple, no priest, no fortune, no tactic, no strategy, no thought. No wish.
This does happen occasionally and it scares the crap out of me and I'm right back in my solid right-side-up world in which everything has a name and in which I know what I like and don't like. Or at least I think I do.
—Donna Dechen Birdwell
Prompt: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/samurai-song
We like to think we know what all of this is. We're pretty pathetic like that.
I know the light that hits the retina on the back of my eyeball presents an upside down image—the lens at the front of my eye does that. My brain makes it right-side-up again. There are glasses you can put on that flip this image over—make it look upside down, which is, of course, really right-side-up. It doesn't take long for the mind to readjust it. I know what I expect to see. I know how to be sure I see exactly that.
This is how we build the world we live in.
Eyes closed, I know clearly the sound of a creaking door. What is hard is to notice that moment before we know a thing, name it, file it, judge it. The sound I name “creaking door” is really just vibrations rippling through the air, setting the little hairs of my inner ear vibrating. Somehow my brain turns this into a sound and finds a match for it among all the sounds I have heard before, the familiar sounds, the ones I have names for.
Similar things happen with light, with smell, with tastes, with touch and texture.
I wish I could get back to that moment, that instant when a sound is just vibration, when a thing is just light and formless substance. When there is no roof, no supper, no father, no mother, no temple, no priest, no fortune, no tactic, no strategy, no thought. No wish.
This does happen occasionally and it scares the crap out of me and I'm right back in my solid right-side-up world in which everything has a name and in which I know what I like and don't like. Or at least I think I do.
—Donna Dechen Birdwell
Prompt: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/samurai-song
August
Each breath counts time for the Gulf clouds
of August
Cruising silently
through all the shades
of blue
—Lloyd Bridges (Houston)
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