to drift

He wanted to drift on the river not so much to see where it went 

as to be one with it, to go with it as virtually a part of it.  

He wished perhaps to live out a kind of parable.  

One cannot drift by intention - 

or at least, in intending to drift and in drifting, 

one must accept a severe limitation upon one's intentions.  

But in giving oneself to the currents, 

in thus subordination one's intentions, 

one becomes eligible for unintended goods, 

unwished -for gifts - 

and often these goods and gifts surpass 

those that one has intended or wished for.

 And so a drifter subscribes necessarily to a kind of faith 

that is identical both to the absolute trust of migrating birds 

and to the scripture that bids us to lose our lives in order to find them.  

Harlan stated it in 1932 with characteristic simplicity: 

"I believe that whatever we need is at hand."

~ Wendell Berry

from "Harlan Hubbard - Life and Work"

photo by Ansel Adams

when doing slows

When doing slows down, 

the thinking that is at its origin is exposed; 

when thinking dissolves, 

the feeling that is behind it is uncovered;

 when feeling subsides,

 the Being that is at its heart is revealed.

~ Rujpert Spira

a gracious lady came to us

A gracious lady came to us

and favored us by receiving

kindly our care of her

at the end of all her days.

She was a lady made graceful

beyond what we had known

by the welcome she gave to death,

her guest, whom she made unfearful

by her fearlessness, having no further

use for herself as we had known her.

~ Wendell Berry

kindness

Briefly

We walk this earth.

We have

But a short time.

We resemble grasses;

Green in the spring,

Brown in the summer heat,

Withering in the winter wind.

Those who understand this

Put aside their useless quarrels.

The cosmos is unfathomably vast.

The human mind is very small.

An act of kindness is never wasted;

It is the gateway to the deathless and unborn,

It is the exultation of the heart.

~  Jim Wilson

.

sowing

In the stilled place that once was a road going down

from the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew

a house, cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders,

and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle

and then the fire overgrew it all, I walk heavy

with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings

of green, clover and grass to be pasture,  Between

history's death upon the place and the trees that would have come

I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

perishable, it said

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,

and below, in different ink,

the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.

I found myself looking:

now at the back of each hand,

now inside the knees,

now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants,

then at the arguing jays.

Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking.

Coffee cups, olives, cheeses,

hunger, sorrow, fears—

these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when.

How suddenly then

the strange happiness took me,

like a man with strong hands and strong mouth,

inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

~ Jane Hirshfield

silent in the moonlight

Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.

Alone, and not alone.  A man and a woman lie

On open ground, under an antelope robe.

They sleep under animal skin, looking up

At the old, clear stars.  How many years?

The robe thrown over them, rough

Where they sleep.  Outside, the moon, the plains

Silent in the moonlight, no beginning or end.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

melted into the landscape

Last might when I cycled home from S., I poured out all my tenderness,
all the tenderness one cannot express for a man even when one loves him very,
very much, I poured it all out into the great, all-embracing spring night. I stood
on the little bridge and looked across the water; I melted into the landscape and
offered all my tenderness up to the sky and the stars and the water and to the
little bridge.  And that was the best moment of the day.

... And I felt this was the only way of transforming all the many deep and
tender feelings one carries for another into deeds: to entrust them to nature, to let
them stream out under the open spring sky, and to realize that there is no other
way of letting them go.




~ Etty Hillesum
from An Interrupted Life
story and art from Love and Gratitude
by Roderick Maclver



   

when one gave oneself to them

Near the end of the war, he was injured in an explosion which 

seriously impaired his vision. Told that his loss of sight would eventually

be total, he decided to return to more familiar surroundings in France to

continue his study of music and to prepare himself to leave the world of 

the sighted. "The sight of a pin," he wrote, "a hair, a leaf, a glass of

water - these filled me with tremendous excitement. The plants

 in the courtyards, the cobblestones, the lamp posts, the faces of strangers. I no

longer took them in and bound them up in me, they retained their values,

their identities. I went out to them, immersed myself in them and found

them more beautiful than I ever dreamed they could be. They tought,

they nourished when one gave oneself to them."

~ Robert Ellsberg

from a profile of John Howard Griffin

in The Catholic Worker

 found here in The Heron Dance Book of

Love and Gratitude

by Roderick Maclver

art by Mr. Maclver

walls

When they were building the walls,

How could I not have noticed?

But I never heard the builders,

Not a sound,

Imperceptibly they closed me off

From the outside world.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy

Cavafy articulates something that happens to all of us.  
Your complicity with other people’s images and expectations of you
 allows them to box you in completely.  It takes a long time to recognize
 how some key people on your life’s journey exercise so much control
 over your mind, behaviour, and actions.  Through the image they project
 onto you or through the expectations they have of you, they claim you. 

 Most of this is subtle and works in the domain of the implicit and unstated
 subtext; it is, of course, all the more powerful for not being direct and obvious.
  When you become conscious of these powerful builders and their work
 of housing you in, something within you refuses to comply; 
you begin to send back the building materials.
  
There is no planning permission here, thanks for the kindness! 
 Such projection and expectation is based on their fear and the need to control. 
 Expectation is resentment waiting to happen. 
 In contrast, friendship liberates you.

~ John O’Donohue
 from Eternal Echoes

rediscover yourself

.

.

The wildness of the invisible world is nameless.  It has no name. 
 A first step towards reawakening respect for your inner life may be to become aware 
of the private collage of dead names you have for your inner life.  

Often, the experiences of wilderness can return us to the nameless wildness within.  
Sometime, go away to a wild place on your own. 

 Leave your name 
and the grid of intentions and projects and images which mark you out as citizen Z.  
Leave it all, and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms of your intimate wildness. 
 You will be surprised at the lost terrains, wells, and mountains that you will rediscover,
 territories which have been buried under well-meant but dead names. 

 To go beyond confinement is to rediscover yourself.

.

John O’Donohue
from ‘Eternal Echoes’

.

identity with the suffering

The left hand is caught and the right hand pulls it out. 

The left hand turns to the right and says ‘thank you.’ 

It doesn’t work because they are both parts of the same body.

 Who are you thanking?

 You’re thanking yourself.

 So on that plane you realize it’s not her suffering,

 his suffering, or their suffering.

You go up one level, it’s our suffering. 

You go up another level, it’s my suffering. 

Then as it gets de-personalized, it’s the suffering. 

Out of the identity with the suffering comes compassion.

 It arises in relation to the suffering. 

It’s part and parcel of the whole package. 

There is nothing personal in this at all.

In that sense, you have become compassion

 instead of doing compassionate acts. 

Instead of being compassionate, 

you are compassion.

~ Ram Dass

the grace

The time of judging
Who is drunk or sober,
Who is right and who is wrong,
Who is closer to god, and who is farther away,
All that is over.

This caravan is led instead by a great delight,
The simple joy that sits with us now.

That is the grace.


~ Hafiz

a mighty kindness

Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we'll be lying.

If we say "No, we don't see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.

So let us not be sure of anything,
beside ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."

When we've totally surrendered to that beauty,
we'll become a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks 
 art by Picasso

your hermitage is deep

If your hermitage is deep in the mountains

surely the moon, flowers, and maple trees

will become your friends.

Men of the world passing this way are few,

Dense grass conceals the door

All night in silence, a few wood-chips burn slowly,

As I read the poems of the ancients.

~ Ryokan