behind the screen

Love plays its lute behind the screen - 

where is a lover to listen to its tune?

With every breath a new song,

each split second a new string plucked,

The world has spilled Love's secret -

when could music ever hold its tongue?

Every atom babbles the mystery -

Listen yourself, for I'm no tattletale!

~ Fakhruddin Iraqi

from Divine Flashes

photo by Christine de Grancy

wander the pure and simple

HeavenRoot was wandering at BrightAbundance Mountain... 

he met Human NoName and said: 

"Might I ask about bringing order to all beneath heaven?" 

"Get lost!" shouted NoName. "What a slob. 

 How could you ask such trashy questions? 

 I wander the Maker-of-Things and just now stumbled into this human form. 

 When I get tired of this, I'll mount the SubtleConfusion Bird and soar out beyond the six horizons. 

 I'll wander in a village where there's nothing at all, 

dwell in a land where emptiness stretches away forever. 

 So why are you cluttering my mind with your talk about governing all beneath heaven?" 

HeavenRoot asked again. 

"Let your mind wander the pure and simple," replied NoName. 

 "Blend your ch'i into the boundless, follow occurrence appearing of itself in things, 

and don't let selfhood get in the way. 

 Then all beneath heaven will be governed as well."

~ Chuang Tzu 

from Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters

translation by David Hinton

with thanks to http://fivebranchtree.blogspot.com/

between

Between going and staying

the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause.

~ Octavio Paz

bridge

Between now and now,

between I am and you are,

the word bridge.

Entering it

you enter yourself:

the world connects

and closes like a ring.

From one bank to another,

there is always

a body stretched:

a rainbow.

I'll sleep beneath its arches.

~ Octavio Paz

brotherhood

I am a man: little do I last

and the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

and at this very moment

someone spells me out.

~ Octavio Paz

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
from Thirst

willing to be

Nobody told us that what we are is a point of awareness, or pure spirit. 

This isn't something we're taught. Rather,

what we were taught was to identify with our name. 

We were taught to identify with our birth date. 

We were taught to identify with the next thought that we have. 

We were taught to identify with all the memories 

our mind collects about the past.

But all that was just teaching: all that was just more thinking. 

When you stand in your own authority,

based in your own direct experience, 

you meet that ultimate mystery that you are. 

Even though it may be at first unsettling

to look into your own no-thingness, you do it anyway. Why? 

Because you no longer want to suffer. 

Because you're willing to be disturbed. 

You're willing to be amazed. 

You're willing to be surprised. 

You're willing to realize that maybe everything 

you've ever thought about yourself really isn't true.

 ~ Adyashanti

with thanks to whiskey river

the beauty of music

~ John O'Donohue

finding understanding with the other

~ Elizabeth Lesser

freeing expression

~ Cristina Domenech

to Mary

A child unborn, the coming year

Grows big within us, dangerous,

And yet we hunger as we fear

For its increase: the blunted bud

To free the leaf to have its day,

The unborn to be born.  The ones

Who are to come are on their way,

And though we stand in mortal good

Among our dead, we turn in doom

In joy to welcome them, stirred by 

That Ghost who stirs in seed and tomb,

Who brings the stones to parenthood.

~ Wendell Berry

from This Day - Collected and New Sabbath Poems

for those with eyes to see

The Angel Standing in the Sun

~ J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)

from The Tate Gallery, London

their prefabricated picture

English and German troops together, Christmas 1914

It was on this day in 1914 that the last known Christmas truce occurred along the Western Front during World War I. In the week leading up to Christmas, soldiers all over the battlefields had been decorating their trenches with candles and makeshift trimmings when groups of German and British soldiers began shouting seasonal greetings and singing songs to each other. On occasion, a soldier or two would even cross the battlefield to take gifts to the enemy. Then, on Christmas Eve, the men of the Western Front put the war on hold and many soldiers from both sides left their trenches to meet in No Man's Land, where they mingled and exchanged tobacco, chocolate, and sometimes even the buttons from their own uniforms as souvenirs. They played games of football, sang carols, and buried fallen comrades together as the unofficial truce lasted through the night.

The most remarkable group is the group of soldiers who, after having met the enemy between the trenches, started thinking about all they had read and heard about them.

For many, the former hatred was vanished. They now recognized the soldiers from the other side of the trenches as human as themselves. They were not mercenaries, no inhuman monsters eager for war, just humans. The stereotypes they knew from the time before the war and before they met their enemies did not fit after meeting their enemies. Not all Germans acted like it was described in the newspaper and were not as arrogant as the German Kaiser. On the other hand not all the English soldiers were mercenaries fighting for material well-being.

These soldiers started to reflect their own experiences and started to compare their experiences with what they knew before about their enemies. The conclusion they made was that their prefabricated picture and the experiences they gained did not fit together. It was hard for the soldiers, faced with the reality of the war, to keep the black and white picture. The reality they saw was a grey picture with blurry boundaries.

with thanks to the heritage of the great war

Hallelujah

there is a brokenness

There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, 

a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. 

There is a sorrow beyond grief which leads to joy 

and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. 

There is a hollow space too vast for words 

through which we pass with each loss, 

out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being. 

There is a cry deeper than all sound 

whose serrated edges cut the heart as we break open 

to the place inside which is unbreakable and whole, 

while learning to sing. 

~ Rashani