in the mirror

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on. 




~ W.H. Auden 

gentleness and great pain

Terri Roberts - Charlie's mother

a gunman barricaded himself inside a one-room Amish schoolhouse 

near Lancaster, Pa. Then he opened fire.

Charles "Charlie" Roberts killed five children and 

injured five others before killing himself.

The Amish community responded in a way that many found surprising:

 They forgave the shooter. And, in the years since, they have grown close to his family.

That week, the Robertses had a private funeral for their son, 

but as they went to the gravesite, they saw as many as 40 Amish start coming 

out from around the side of the graveyard, surrounding them like a crescent.

"Love just emanated from them," Terri says.

Terri finds it especially hard to accept that forgiveness 

when she thinks of one of the survivors, Rosanna.

"Rosanna's the most injured of the survivors," she explains.

 "Her injuries were to her head. She is now 15, still tube-fed and in a wheelchair. 

And she does have seizures, and when it gets to be this time of year,

 as we get closer to the anniversary date, she seizes more. 

And it's certainly not the life that this little girl should have lived."

Terri asked if it would be possible for her to help with Rosanna once a week.
"I read to her, I bathe her, dry her hair," says Terri, who herself is battling cancer.

"I will never forget the devastation caused by my son," says the 65-year-old Terri.

 "But one of the fathers the other night, he said, 'None of us would have ever chosen this.

 But the relationships that we have built through it, you can't put a price on that.' "

 from StoryCorps.org.

it was like this

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent - what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness -

between you, there is nothing to forgive -

but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn't matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

~ Jane Hirshfield

it takes so long

My hand remembers stroking a sleek bird years ago, 

one which was crouching under my fingers, 

longing for the sky roof on top of the cabin roof, 

the forgiveness high in the air.  

As for me, I have given so many hours to the ecstasy of detail, 

the shadow of the closing door, 

the final syllable of that poem which is already gone, 

looking back over its shoulder.  

Well, well... sometimes in our slow hours a child climbs down into this world.

~ Robert Bly

from Reaching Out to the World -
 New & Selected Prose Poems

the one who knows

~ Jack Kornfield

on the death of his child

Dew Evaporates
And all our world

 is dew...so dear,
So fresh....so fleeting



~  Issa

  from Japanese Haiku
 translation by Peter Beilenson

 

 

 

 

back into the reedbed

Time to ignore sensible advice,

to untie the knots our culture ties us with.

Cut to the quick.

Put cotton in both sentimental ears.

Go back into the reedbed.

Let cane sugar rise again in you.

No rules or daily duties.

Those do not bring the peace of silence.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi - The Big Red Book

heart mind

~ Ram Dass

joy

~ Ram Dass

the madman

.

You ask me how I became a madman.  It happened thus:  
One day, long before many gods were born,  I woke from a deep sleep
 and found all my masks were stolen, - the seven masks I have fashioned
 and worn in seven lives, - I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,
 "Thieves, thieves, and cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried,
 "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.  For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness;  
the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood,
 for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. 
 Even a Thief in jail is safe from another thief.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Madman his Parables and Poems

art Ludwig Kirchner

who am I

~ Jack Kornfield

 

still

.

I said I will find what is lowly

and put the roots of my identity

down there:

each day I'll wake up

and find the lowly nearby,

a handy focus and reminder,

a ready measure of my significance,

the voice by which I would be heard,

the wills, the kinds of selfishness

I could

freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,

I can find nothing

to give myself to:

everything is

magnificent with existence, is in

surfeit of glory:

nothing is diminished,

nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:

ah, underneath,

a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:

I looked at it closely

and said this can be my habitat: but

nestling in I

found

below the brown exterior

green mechanisms beyond the intellect

awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:

I found a beggar:

he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying

him any attention: everybody went on by:

I nestled in and found his life:

there, love shook his body like a devastation:

I said

though I have looked everywhere

I can find nothing lowly

in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,

transfigurations of size and shape and place:

.

at one sudden point came still,

stood in wonder:

moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent

with being!

~ A. R. Ammons

.

emptiness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

a hundred roots silently drinking

I have many brothers in the South

who move, handsome in their vestments,

through cloister gardens.

The Madonnas they make are so human,

and I dream often of their Titians,

where God becomes an ardent flame.

But when I lean over the chasm of myself -

it seems

my God is dark

and like a web: a hundred roots

silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.

More I don't know, because my branches

rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life, I,3

.

patience

~ Jack Kornfield