Sometimes life feels like a bunch of pick-up sticks. Clasped together in our palm, we let go, either willingly or with a push from outside, and the sticks fall, so we’re given the opportunity to put them back together again in a whole new form.
I read about humans needing to adapt to increasing heating patterns on the planet. Impermanence. Change, and how do we meet what comes?
The following poem comes from Stefan Laeng who read it at his meditation class on Tuesday. It is by the late great German comedian Hanns Dieter Hüsch (who was born not far from the birthplace of Charlotte Selver, our teacher of Sensory Awareness,). It’s his translation with the German original below.
When the soldiers come
Lure them onto the roof of the dove
Lure them into the nest of the swallow
Lure them into the cave of the lioness
Lure them into the forest of the deer.
Approach them with open hands
Full of bread, and salt, and fruit, and wine
So that they loose their way in the brushwood of your virtues;
So that they get lost in the maze of your friendliness.
Let them be amazed.
Let their generals and presidents be ashamed.
Let their henchmen run aground.
Be a lowland of courtesy
Intelligence be your weapon
Patience be your strength
Love be your narrative
Your silence be your victory
So that the governors marvel greatly.*
* Some of you may recognize this as a biblical reference. Matthew 27:14
In German:
Wenn die Krieger kommen
Look sie auf’s Dach der Taube
Lock sie in’s Nest der Schwalbe
Lock sie in die Höhle der Löwin
Lock sie in den Wald der Rehe.
Geh ihnen entgegen mit offenen Händen
Voll Brot und Salz und Obst und Wein.
Dass sie sich verlaufen im Knüppelholz deiner Tugenden
Dass sie sich verirren im Labyrinth deiner Freundlichkeit.
Mach sie staunen.
Beschäme ihre Generäle und Präsidenten
Lass ihre Handlanger in’s Leere laufen
Sei eine Tiefebene voll Höflichkeit.
Dein Gewehr sei die Klugheit
Deine Kraft sei die Geduld
Deine Geschichte sei die Liebe
Dein Sieg sei dein Schweigen
So dass sich die Landpfleger sehr verwundern.
Stunned by the political news I turn to Tricycle Magazine and an article by Lewis Richmond, titled The Power of a Quiet Life.
He describes a time in June 1982 when the nuclear freeze march took place in New York City to protest the “then-burgeoning specter of nuclear war between the US and Russia”. It was a major event with the route cleared so the crowd of more than a million people could walk from the UN Plaza north to Central Park, a walk of nearly two miles.
Fourteen were chosen to walk in the front. One was Thich Nhat Hanh who gestured to the other thirteen to link arms. He led the pace with his slow walk, the way he always walked. This pace wasn’t part of the plan and at this pace, the city of New York would come to a halt. Thich, who during the Vietnam War, survived all sides and factions wanting to kill him, was resolute. He stayed with his pace as the monitors directed people to stream on both sides of the line of fourteen people. The fourteen who began the march, kept their mindful pace and were the last to arrive at the finish line.
Richmond writes: “We walked, arms still linked, the way Thich Nhat Hanh wanted us to walk, the way Buddha surely walked when he was in the world. Thich Nhat Hanh made the Buddha come to life that day.”
Thich Nhat Hanh: ‘Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet’.
The rain continues and my dreams these days are about children, saving the children. I’ve been spending time with my four year old grandson, so perhaps that’s part of it, seeing his innocence and division into “good guys” and “bad guys” and wondering how we might navigate balance and come to peace.
He was into swords for a time, but now he has become Robin Hood so the swords have become a bow and arrow and he wears them on his back tucked into his Robin Hood mask and shirt.
The two of us were at Coyote Point this week, and I was intrigued with this sign. I had no idea how close we came to imitating the East coast with our own Coney Island and Atlantic City. The pungent odor of sewage dumped into the bay saved us from that.
It’s a day to pause as the light begins to shift and we prepare to enter a new year.
May this be the year we move into the heart of longing for peace and release the tools and words of war.
I watched a video of the poet Jane Hirshfield last night. She spoke of how Kinship will save us, the acknowledgment of our interconnection. Perhaps we could say to every tree we pass: sister, sister, sister. We can ask our natural friends, our relatives, the mountains and plants, what they can teach us. This is a time to listen.
I’ve always loved the work of Alexander Calder, his mobiles and circuses. Jane was asked if darkness is required in great art. She used his work as an example of such lightness, beauty, and happiness that reflection is required to find the mortality. It’s in the delicacy of his creations. They move and sway, fragile in their time here, as are we.
The psychologist Carl Jung wrote: The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war.
May this be the year we acknowledge our kinship and grow the heart of our desire for peace and the wind and breath chimed grace of love.
Here is the link to the talk if you’re interested:
Our family gathered on a ranch 1000 feet above Half Moon Bay to celebrate Steve’s 75th birthday.
I wake and think I can’t see until I put my contacts in or put glasses on but I actually can see. The cataract and lens replacement surgery worked, and I’m slowly coming to believe it. It’s clear when I drive. I see road signs and lines that were blurs before. The world is edged with invitations I missed.
Sitting on the couch at home, I realized there is a gap in one tree and I can see through to the ridge, and yet I’m still in a somewhat state of disbelief as it’s become so clear how we create our world and focus.
I’m reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream. It’s a fascinating look at all he accomplished and how influenced he was by his environment, parents and grandparents. We all are, of course, whether it’s to absorb, or push against, but he did what he did because of it, and then came to an inability to adapt. This issue of response is often with me. How do I respond to what comes now and now and now?
My iris plant isn’t yet blooming but I resonate to this poem and how when the flowers emerge I’ll see little vases holding flowers perhaps infinitum like fractals. I’m opening to see life the same way as patterns of curiosity open, close, and merge, like night and day.
This poem is from Billy Collin’s poetry book “Musical Tables”.
Six petals on each iris,
every other one
with a small yellow streak,
which resembles a tiny vase,
holding a few flowers of its own.
I remove Poetry of Presence, An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems from the shelf and the book opens to this poem by Fudy Joudah.
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles.
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord.
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking.
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
This 2017 essay is excerpted from Words for War; New Poems from Ukraine.
Ilya Kaminsky is an amazing poet and here he writes about what language means, what poetry means to us all.
Not only is it Groundhog’s Day, but it’s February 2, 2022, so 2-2-22.
And if we pause at 2:22 today, we’ll be in a lineup with twos as though entering an Ark.
And with that, I bring forth Pema Chodron’s words from This Sacred Journey:
My children met the Sixteenth Karmapa when they were teenagers, and I asked him if he’d say something to them. I said to him, “The children are not Buddhists, so is there something you could say to them with that in mind?” He just looked right at these young teenagers and said, “You are going to die. And you’re not going to take anything with you except your state of mind.” You die, but your state of mind continues. So how we work with our thoughts right now really matters.
And right now I’m thinking of the number 2 as a place of balance and harmony.
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