A Christmas blessing -
low, slanting, winter sunlight
moves across the room. 

First day of winter,
a mid- afternoon's amble
in the bright sunshine.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

~ Lao Tzu

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok 
you would never see him doing such a thing, 
tossing the dry snow over a mountain 
of his bare, round shoulder, 
his hair tied in a knot, 
a model of concentration. 

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word 
for what he does, or does not do. 

Even the season is wrong for him. 
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? 
Is this not implied by his serene expression, 
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? 

But here we are, working our way down the driveway, 
one shovelful at a time. 
We toss the light powder into the clear air. 
We feel the cold mist on our faces. 
And with every heave we disappear 
and become lost to each other 
in these sudden clouds of our own making, 
these fountain-bursts of snow. 

This is so much better than a sermon in church, 
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling. 
This is the true religion, the religion of snow, 
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, 
I say, but he is too busy to hear me. 

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow 
as if it were the purpose of existence, 
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway 
you could back the car down easily 
and drive off into the vanities of the world 
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio. 

All morning long we work side by side, 
me with my commentary 
and he inside his generous pocket of silence, 
until the hour is nearly noon 
and the snow is piled high all around us; 
then, I hear him speak. 

After this, he asks, 
can we go inside and play cards? 

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk 
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table 
while you shuffle the deck. 
and our boots stand dripping by the door. 

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes 
and leaning for a moment on his shovel 
before he drives the thin blade again 
deep into the glittering white snow.

by Billy Collins

We stand together at a gateway

of collective initiation, and to cross its

threshold the directions are simple:

empty, empty, empty.

Empty out your mind of all its wandering

thoughts and concerns and become a vessel

of the divine.

Become able to listen and heed the deeper wisdom that lies within you, access that still

quiet center, where you are able to envision

beyond the current small story of your life and

enter instead into the bigger story of your own

life, of the life of our collective humanity, and of

this moment in our shared story.

                                                    – Elayne Kalila Doughty

All things already have their endings within them. If we become attuned to this, then we can appreciate the moment. We can appreciate the extraordinary fact of our unique and precious lives.

—Thanissara, “The Grit That Becomes a Pearl”

Mary Oliver: Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
   equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
    keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
    astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
    and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
    that we live forever.

 

— Mary Oliver

 

For this is who and what we are: constellations of matter, vulnerable, impermanent, and—for moments? for lifetimes?—illumined by the miracle of awareness. Whether fleeting or eternal, it’s a miracle that we must never take for granted.

—Noelle Oxenhandler, “Awake and Demented”

Practice isn’t about being intense; it’s about coming back to ease—letting the mind and body settle into an experience that holds the seeds of expansiveness.

—Justin von Bujdoss, “Tilopa’s Six Nails”

A DeafBlind Poet By John Lee Clark

A Deaf Blind poet doesn’t like to read sitting up. A Deaf Blind poet likes to read Braille magazines on the john. A Deaf Blind poet is in the habit of composing nineteenth-century letters and pressing Alt+S. A Deaf Blind poet is a terrible student. A Deaf Blind poet does a lot of groundbreaking research. A Deaf Blind poet is always in demand. A Deaf Blind poet has yet to be gainfully employed. A Deaf Blind poet shares all his trade secrets with his children. A Deaf Blind poet will not stop if police order him to. A Deaf Blind poet used to like dogs but now prefers cats. A Deaf Blind poet listens to his wife. A Deaf Blind poet knits soft things for his dear friends. A Deaf Blind poet doesn’t believe in “contributing to society.”

Falling Leaves and Early Snow

By Kenneth Rexroth

In the years to come they will say,

“They fell like the leaves

In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”

November has come to the forest,

To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.

The year fades with the white frost

On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,

Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.

Ice forms in the shadows;

Disheveled maples hang over the water;

Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.

Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.

The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,

The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,

The olive, velvety alder leaves,

The scarlet dogwood leaves,

Most poignant of all.

 

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud

Move over the mountains;

The storm clouds follow them;

Fine rain falls without wind.

The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.

When the rain pauses the clouds

Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.

In the evening the wind changes;

Snow falls in the sunset.

We stand in the snowy twilight

And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.

Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,

Glimmering with floating snow.

An owl cries in the sifting darkness.

The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Kenneth Rexroth, "Falling Leaves and Early Snow" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1940 by Kenneth Rexroth.

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.

Source: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994)

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee By N. Scott Momaday

I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plain I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water I am the shadow that follows a child I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows I am an eagle playing with the wind I am a cluster of bright beads I am the farthest star I am the cold of dawn I am the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow I am the long track of the moon in a lake I am a flame of four colors I am a deer standing away in the dusk I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche I am an angle of geese in the winter sky I am the hunger of a young wolf I am the whole dream of these things You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte You see, I am alive, I am alive

N. Scott Momaday, “The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee” from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991. Copyright ©1991 by N. Scott Momaday. Reprinted with the permission of the author and St. Martin’s Press, LLC. Source: In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems 1961-1991 ( St. Martin's Press LLC, 1992 )

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.
Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it, only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.
- Mundaka Upanishad

The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboo, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle.  Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
- Okakura Kakuzo

How Wonderful By Irving Feldman

How wonderful to be understood, to just sit here while some kind person relieves you of the awful burden of having to explain yourself, of having to find other words to say what you meant, or what you think you thought you meant, and of the worse burden of finding no words, of being struck dumb . . . because some bright person has found just the right words for you—and you have only to sit here and be grateful for words so quiet so discerning they seem not words but literate light, in which your merely lucid blossoming grows lustrous. How wonderful that is! And how altogether wonderful it is not to be understood, not at all, to, well, just sit here while someone not unkindly is saying those impossibly wrong things, or quite possibly they’re the right things if you are, which you’re not, that someone —a difference, finally, so indifferent it would be conceit not to let it pass, unkindness, really, to spoil someone’s fun. And so you don’t mind, you welcome the umbrage of those high murmurings over your head, having found, after all, you are grateful —and you understand this, how wonderful!— that you’ve been led to be quietly yourself, like a root growing wise in darkness under the light litter, the falling words.

time to be silly,
dress up in costumes, dance, sing
sixty-eight year's worth.

Bright green grass glows as
mid-day rain encloses house
in a gentle thrum.

8:08 AM
sunlight under a black sky -
a dampening day

Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.

—Gary Snyder, “Just One Breath”

Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction
- Rumi

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
- Henry David Thoreau

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. 
- e.e. cummings

Sacred river rocks

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

—Wumen Huikai, “The Best Season”

“To experience the landscape as a theophany is to take seriously the way the divine can be revealed through nature and through created things. It means we can join in with all of the elements and creatures in singing God’s praise.” --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD  The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred

“Esther de Waal writes that Benedictine life ‘simply consists in doing the ordinary things of daily life carefully and lovingly, with the attention and reverence that can make of them a way of prayers, a way of God.’"

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,  The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom

There is more to feel in your beautiful life than to feel unworthy of your beautiful life.  There is more to do with your beautiful life than to believe the lies they told you to keep you feeling unworthy. -
S.C. Lourie

"For the Celtic monks, thresholds were sacred places. The space or the moment between—whether physical places or experiences—is a place of possibility. Rather than waiting being a nuisance or arriving with a sense that you are wasting time, the pause at a threshold is an invitation to breathe into the now and receive its gifts."

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,  The Wisdom of the Body: A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women

Bannerstones

As soon as we realize/remember that it’s love, well-being, contentment, enjoyment, happiness that ego is promising at the end of all its manipulation/gyrations, and that ego can never deliver any of those, we start giving attention to what the heart desires here and now. No more falling for false promises of what we’ll get “as soon as;” we’re going to choose and have what we truly want right here, right now.
- Cheri Huber

Everything is unhindered, clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, the moonlight glitteringly flowing down mountain streams.
― John Daido Loori

“Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world.”

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. Besides, those voices are merely guardians and demons protecting the real treasure, the first thoughts of the mind.” 

~ Natalie Goldberg

"The unfolding of the Hours each day reminds us of the divine dwelling in every moment. This is the call of the monk, but of the poet as well. Both focus on paying attention to life and lifting it up, naming moments, and in the process illuminating their holiness." --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD  Dreaming of Stones: Poems

"Contemplative presence to nature transforms our daily choices so we become conscious of how to live within the matrix of creation in life-giving ways." --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD  The Self-Study Online Retreat ~ Water, Wind, Earth and Fire: Praying with the Elements

ICH LEBE MEIN LEBEN IN WACHSENDEN RINGEN

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

— R.M. RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS - 1,2

Sunset's liquid gold,
twining tree of heaven's trunks
spatters ivy leaves.

new mark-making

chorus of crickets
beautiful orange-golden light
shadows lie aslant

The Messenger
…Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
- Mary Oliver

the blizzard of heat
encloses the house
creating cabin fever

How grand it would be if we could put the largeness of life itself, not our egos, at the center of our attention, care, and active concern.
- Parker Palmer

People like you and me, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
- Albert Einstein

the sunset rivals
the mimosa's pinks
as fireflies speckle the yard.

Lightning bugs rise up
as living sparks off the grass
on midsummer's eve. 

Sunshine and shadow
against a charcoaled cloud bank-
late June's stark contrast.

Solstice approaching
as raspberries ripening
in lingering dusk.

Tree of heaven holds
10,000, thousand blossoms
readying to fall.

On the June breezes-
tree-of- heaven blossoming,
wren's trilling, child's call.

Blackbirds' raucous calls -
mulberries are ripening -
the parties begin.

Lavender twilight,
the last of the bird's calling
on the gentle breeze.

Trees fully leafed out -
starting to feel like summer -
birdsong all day long.

Gentle breezes blow
through the newly leafed branches
filled with singing birds.

Finch pair on the porch,
Mourning doves, calling, calling,
Crocus's first bloom.

Getting There

You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.

What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.

What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.

You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.

David Wagoner

The birds' wings glinting
in late January light
like shards of mirrors.

And more

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

~ Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. (Beacon Press September 30, 2003)

in memoriam

When Death Comes

--by Mary Oliver (Oct 03, 2006)

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver