I‘m balancing on poetry these days like little steps.
To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?
– Naomi Shihab Nye
On Saturday Gloria Lerin led Sensory Awareness on a Zoom call. You can find information about Sensory Awareness here: https://sensoryawareness.org.
Gloria shared the lyrics to this song written by Fito Paez of Argentina. She said “he wrote this song after the guerrillas killed his auntie, grandmother and the person who took care of them in their house”. Here are his words. I note there are different translations, so choose what speaks to you.
Who said everything is lost?
I come to offer my heart
So much blood that flows in a river,
I come to offer my heart
It won’t be easy, I know what will happen,
It won’t be as simple as I thought,
Like opening the chest and taking out the soul,
A cut of love
The Moon of the poor is always shining,
I come to offer my heart
Fixed in stone
I come to offer my heart
And I will unite the ends of the same bow,
And I will go quietly, I will go slowly,
And I will give you everything, and you will give me something,
Something to ease me a little more
When no one is near or far,
I come to offer my heart
Where the satellites don’t reach,
I come to offer my heart
And I’m talking about countries and hopes,
I speak for life, I speak for nothing,
I’m talking about changing this, our home,
To change it, just to change it.
Who said everything is lost?
I come to offer my heart
Roger Reeves has written a poem “For Black Children at the End of the World – and the Beginning”.
I receive it today from Poem a Day with this explanation from Roger Reeves.
“‘I don’t want the police to shoot me,’ said L—, a friend’s five-year-old child, a little boy who was waiting in his parents’ car, waiting to participate in a socially-distant, car-caravan-protest that would snake its way through the South Austin streets, a protest aimed at the City Manager and the City Council’s recent deliberation over the police budget. Another friend’s child, a boy of eight, said the same thing while participating in a protest shortly after the murder of George Floyd, waving at snipers on the roof of the capitol building in hopes that if he waved, then snipers might not shoot him. Some of the snipers waved back. I realized that these black children must be accounted for, loved, considered in the middle of this moment of protesting, in the middle of this fight against white supremacy. I wrote this poem as a turn to them, to the black children that live in America and have lived in America. I wrote it for all of us.”
—Roger Reeves
You can read the poem here: https://poets.org/poem-a-day
I’m with the poem and these words of Mary Oliver.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
– Mary Oliver
I started to say the sun is shining and then I realized that, of course, it’s shining; it’s always shining and then there’s what’s happening to us as the weather changes: fog, clouds, rain, snow, sleet.
This morning I’m at peace. I’m thrilled with the Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ rights. I swirl within, a pelvic cauldron that swells up into heart and throat with gratitude.
There’s so much to do on the planet, and honoring each of us is where we start.
Ah, the sun just struck a branch of the tree, and that touch reverberates in me.
Sun spreads its beams through each of us us like honey and jam and I stay sheltered-in-place.
Where I live, I can stand on a bridge or sit by the shore, and watch the changes as the tide turns in Richardson Bay. It’s not a simple, polite exchange. Oh, yes, now let’s go this way and not that. You go first. I’ll wait.
Instead, there’s a swirl and circling I might view as confusion and uncertainty. What, oh, the moon is pulling us this way and not that. Okay, don’t shove; let’s turn, but not rigidly, not marching left, right; let’s pause, then, circle a bit to navigate the change.
I sit here this morning trying to expand around all that’s going on. I’m circling, trying to navigate change and grief, anger, sorrow, fear, knowing that ultimately all is love.
Where I live there are two ways to drive to the ocean. One is a series of curves that makes some people sick, and the other is a rather straight route through a variety of towns that become smaller and smaller as the road heads west.
That road, a major east-west connector in the county, is called Sir Francis Drake.
There’s now an outcry to change the name of the street. Until recently, I didn’t know that Sir Francis Drake began his career as a slave trader. I knew he was a pirate but hadn’t considered that he traded in human lives.
In addition to the name of the road, in 1990, a huge 30-foot tall, steel sculpture of Sir Francis Drake was placed next to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. Now, people want it gone.
At first in the overwhelm I often feel these days, I thought it was hardly the biggest issue of the time but now I see that yes, we must do everything we can to show we’re paying attention to the changes that show that Black Lives Matter.
I just finished reading the book Troop 6000 by Nikita Stewart. It, too, is an eye opener as it deals with the problem of homelessness in NYC.
Reading this book, I have great respect for Mayor de Blasio and what he is doing to deal with what seems like an insurmountable problem.
I’m also in awe of the woman who with courage, determination, and the help and support of others set up Girl Scout troops in shelters in NYC. Her work changes lives.
One person can make a difference. We know that but this book is an honest accounting of the work in change.
And now for me, there is the more immediate question of social distancing. My family and close friends are still choosing to honor it, so I wait to hug my children and grandchild.
I’ve been through physical pain, and I want to wait a little longer before I expose myself, or those I love, or those I come in contact with, with something that still seems scientifically illusive. I also understand this is a mental health issue. When does the economy, social interaction and touch become more important than anything else?
For now, my family is in agreement, and perhaps my wider family too as my little bird friend still sits on her nest. She brings me trust and peace.
Yesterday a friend shared with me three questions Norman Fischer asked her Sangha to discuss in small groups on Zoom.
I’m with these questions. Considering them, I become porous, and there is no difference between in and out. I think of the Pixar movie Inside Out. How much of what we see and interpret comes from inside, not out?
This morning lying in bed I listened to birds as they chirped the morning to light. I felt my skin touching in and reaching out, receiving and negotiating like an airport controller leading planes to land and take off.
I visualized myself as an airport, wondering if planes have attachment to their hub, if they prefer gathering with other planes painted like them, or enjoy the diversity of different colors and patterns on planes. Of course, planes aren’t “human”, and yet, what is this world in which we immerse? What is our response to different colors and shapes?
Today I learn that on the International Space Station, experiments are being conducted with a fifth state of matter. We know about gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas, but in a lab, 25 years ago, scientists created a fifth state of matter, Bose-Einstein Condensates.
According to LiveScience, “when a group of atoms is cooled to near absolute zero, the atoms begin to clump together, behaving as if they were one big “super-atom.”” This way to explore the quantum world is more easily explored in the microgravity environment aboard the ISS.
What an exciting addition to all that’s happening here on earth.
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Clearly, we in the U.S. have a long way to go, and yet, I’m inspired by Wendell Berry.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
– Wendell Berry
We’re in this together my friends as we welcome new ways of understanding and coming together as this fifth state of matter is explored.
Windows are open and I wake to a symphony of singing birds. The moon is a light in the softness of the morning blue sky, a beacon demonstrating change.
I’m with the sharing of a friend who went to a rally in Amherst, Massachusetts. He writes:
Towards the end, we were asked to take a knee and stay in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in memory of George Floyd. This is how long the policeman pressed his knee onto his neck until George died. About 1,500 people or so were completely silent for that time. Ann and I have been sitting for 8 minutes and 46 seconds twice daily since and we plan to do so in the coming days and weeks.
I can’t stop thinking about those 8 minutes and 46 seconds. That’s a long time.
I see how important it is for each of us to honor that amount of time each day, as we imagine what it was for George Floyd and as we give thanks for this flow of breath in and out, this beautiful exchange.
Here’s a beautiful essay to answer the question What Is Love?
Click below:
In this moment my favorite response to the question is this:
“Being met with a dustpan when you’re holding a broom.”
I came to Sensory Awareness in 1993 and for me, it’s been a lifeline, a lifeline of fluidity and connection.
Here’s a beautiful offering and taste.
Find a comfortable place to watch and participate as Stefan leads us From Isolation to Connection.
I love how the moon is shining in the sky when I rise these days. She is such a peaceful presence drawing my eyes up and outward.
I just finished reading James Nestor’s book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. I recommend it. He shows how essential it is to breathe through our nose, not our mouth, to fully exhale, and to chew. How we breathe matters.
This is excellent, and I recommend it as a way to immerse in, and understand what is going on.
Two weeks ago, Monday, May 25th, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. Two others restrained him, and a fourth kept help away.
This incident, unlike so many, has ignited protests and forced those of us who are White to look at our privilege.
Here in the U.S. I may have taken my privilege for granted but when I was in Nepal in 1993, it was moment by moment clear. The color of my skin set me apart, elevated me, protected me. When I was in the mountains in the Everest region, I was allowed into places the local Native people were not. I was “special”. I hope that’s changed.
When my children were young, I was a Terwilliger Nature Guide, trained to spot snakes and plants, and shout out just like her, “Something Special”, and yet, of course, everything is special. A weed is a plant growing where someone chooses not to want it. We now know the nutritional value of dandelions. Many always did.
Yesterday I was guided into my body to feel what’s going on for me. At first, I felt my jaw drop down into a pouch like a pelican pouch. Putting my thoughts there, monkey mind, I could feel the draining out of excess like water, but also how thoughts could be digested, used as needed, and eliminated as purely waste which most are.
Now, the murder of a man on the street is asking us, requiring us, to pay attention. We’re noticing our responses, habits, thoughts. Difficult as this time has been, I am awake. I wake in the morning, alert, feeling myself 360 degrees around like a tree. There is no front and back, no separation. I’m immersed in a world that asks me to be awake to it, to shine a light on my shadow and examine how I am in this world, my relationship to where I live and how I connect, listen, and receive, so I can be clear in how I give.
What I felt yesterday when I paused to feel is that I’m bruised inside. This is trauma for all of us as we come together to heal wounds visible and invisible. This is no attempt to compare wounds, or how each of us bleeds, but simply to say my current mantra is Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names”. It carries the compassion needed to heal our times.
