Untitled (aka: Seeds of Change)  

This piece is an example of a “zentangle.” The Zentangle® method in practice can be explored as a form of drawing meditation, similar, metaphorically, to kinhin (walking meditation). Taking the drawn line for a walk. While drawing, shading, and coloring a series of repetitive patterns, awareness is intentionally placed (again, and again) on the breath and posture. Cultivating an embodied connection with the materials at hand (pencil, pen, brush, and marker to paper), noticing and letting go of self-conscious judgment as it arises, simply drawing (walking), one line, then another, and another, one step following another, noticing when thoughts arise and flow, breathing another line, then another ... ... ...

—Joshin Shaevel

imperative

A man on the street in arctic cold
shouts have a blessed day
at every passerby

until I come to believe it imperative.

He has no alms bowl, but his hat
is on the sidewalk in front of him
and I wonder how his ears are
holding up against the cold.

No one is willing
to take the gloves off
long enough to fish a dollar out.

The upturned hat holds nothing
but he is going nowhere
in spite of the cold,

and I think he is shouting
past passersby, wrapping himself
in the sound of his voice

the way Jacob wrapped himself in fur
to fool old blind Isaac into bestowing
a blessing, though in this cold

that could be the stew
he traded Esau for a shot at
pulling the wool over the old man's eyes,
hoping this day to be blessed.

—Steven Schroeder

++++++++++

Having a nice day,

having your keys inside

the locked car.

—participant

++++++++++

“but he is going nowhere”
  and has now arrived there.
Nothing needs to be done
  in this bless-ed space.
For “no one is willing
  to take the gloves off”
and so he is free of distractions,
  blessing the passing folk,
nudging them away
  from their routine
towards the blessings
  of the day.


The Almsgiver

He stands at the corner
  giving alms to the passersby
who, unlike him,
  have no upturned hat
or alms bowl to receive.

“Have a blessed day” he bestows
  on each and because
their hat covers their ears,
  unlike his,
they cannot receive
  his alms giving.

Is there merit
  in alms giving
with no receiver?
  or is the charity
to self & God?

—Jeffery Taylor

++++++++++

So his practice,
shouting blessed day,
was not so
anyone would hear.

It was bitter cold.

his mouth
was frozen shut—
he could only mean
the words.

His hat, begging
for coins,
remained cold
and empty.

What was blessed
about this day?

Was it
his practice?
His intention?
His trying to share?

Did it matter
he was frozen,
yet blessed?

—Kim Mosley

turn

Sick and tired of being
sick and tired, I told
my wife I was looking in
to joining the Franciscans.
Knowing I am temperamentally
Trappist or anything discalced,
she said what do they make you do
and I said nothing then thought again
and said preach good news to birds
and she said you do that already
and (discounting the possibility
that she meant nothing) I said
nah, they preach to me.
I just say amen and
all this came to mind today
when a friend reminded
me this is Saint Bonaventure's
day and in his honor she is
trying to ignore little annoyances
but I suppose those would be
the ones a Franciscan scholar would embrace
(suffer the little, you know) and that got me to thinking
about the mind's journey, the mind's journey in,
as I recall, not up, to God, present wherever
it was, said a preacher of another order
but a like mind, you left the divine,
which could be anywhere.

Turn, turn. Take off your shoes.
Every step you step you step on holy ground.

—Steven Schroeder

++++++++++

Barefoot

                   every step you step you step on holy ground
                                                         —Steven Schroeder

Refusing shoes, the poet
makes his way without protection,
letting the ground tell him yes, I am here,
letting the toe scrape, the twig snap sharp

as water tells you dark under its stars
dark and shifting when you swim without a suit
swirls of warm or cool against unaccustomed skin
and you are alive, alive in the summer night

as the ground beneath your foot is alive, is holy
the cracks that wander the cement, holy
the nubs of drying cedar needles, holy
feel us, know us, they sing, awareness is all

and the night water, holy, gleaming
slaps the underside of the dock
cool touch of the water all around
saying this, this.

—Sarah Webb