the runaway

The Place where you are right now

God circled on a map for you.

~ Hafiz

The poet tells you

god has put a circle around you on a map

to locate you in sacred space.

Then why do you keep tunneling

underground,

carving labyrinths for your escape?

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

art by Picasso

the ancient radiance of others

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light
 that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape
 in any other individual.  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said,
 "Man is a shepherd of being,"  we could say,  "Man is a shepherd of clay." 
 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  

Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography 
but to the clay out of which you are formed.  At other times, 
you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.
  This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere 
with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize
 that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  
It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;  it is on its way elsewhere.  
We so easily forget that our clay has a memory that preceded our minds, 
a life of its own before it took its present form.   

Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, 
sister and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery
 becomes luminous.  To truly be and become yourself, 
you need the ancient radiance of others.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

the immense expanse beyond

The search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond
 it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route
 to that which is remote from experience and understanding.
 Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, 
and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, 
where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known
 in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason
 to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell,
 and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur
 from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, 
we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, 
we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system
 of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close
 to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody,
 as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
photo by Ansel Adams

ventilating the world with tenderness

~ Greg Boyle

hidden

Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler than the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest.  They go beyond

All sorrow who extinguish their self-will

And behold the glory of the Self

Through the grace of the Lord of Love.

Though one sits in meditation in a 

Particular place, the Self within

Can exercise his influence far away.

Though still, he moves everything everywhere.

When the wise realize the Self,

Formless in the midst of forms, changeless

In the midst of change, omnipresent

And supreme, they go beyond sorrow.

The Self cannot be known through study

Of the scriptures, nor through the intellect,

Nor through hearing discourses about it.

The Self can be attained only by those

Whom the Self chooses.  Verily unto them

Does the Self reveal himself.

~ The Katha Upanishad

translated by Eknath Easwaran

blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
 a place where everything comes together, 
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
 into vision, where damage will be made whole, 
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
 where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. 
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now. 

~ Jan Richardson

art by klimt

be helpless

Be helpless, 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 that beauty.

If we say we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather 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 shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

haunted

We are looking for your laugh.

Trying to find the path back to it

between drooping trees.

Listening for your rustle

under bamboo,

brush of fig leaves,

feeling your step

on the porch,

natty lantana blossom

poked into your buttonhole.

We see your raised face

at both sides of a day.

How was it, you lived around

the edge of everything we did,

seasons of ailing; growing,

mountains of laundry; mail?

I am looking for you first; last

in the dark places,

when I turn my face away

from headlines at dawn,

dropping the rolled news to the floor.

Your rumble of calm

poured into me.

There was the saving grace

of care, from day one, the watching

and being watched

from every corner of the yard.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from Transfer

the movement of love

Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one

or of the many.  It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar...

it is inexhaustible. 

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life,

 the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order,

 and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order,

 then that very order will bring about its own limitation, 

and the mind will be its prisoner.

 

 In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, 

from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore

 or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water,

 not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation

 is that you never know where you are, 

where you are going, what the end is.

~  J. Krishnamurti

from The Meditative Mind

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

stories of the Buddha's last days

~ Jack Kornfield

I cobbled their boots

How could I love my fellow men who tortured me?

One night I was dragged into a room 

and beaten near death with

their shoes

striking me hundreds of times

in the face, scarring me 

forever.

I cried out for God to help, until I fainted.

That night in a dream, in a dream more real than this world.

a strap from the Christ's sandal

fell from my bleeding

mouth,

and I looked at Him and He 

was weeping, and

spoke,

"I cobbled their boots;

how sorry 

I am.

What moves all things

is God."

~ St John of the Cross

from Love poems of God,

Twelve sacred voices from the East and West

in my wallet I carry a card

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I have the power to marry.

In my wallet I carry a card

which declares I may drive.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

 
In my wallet I carry a card

that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

 
In my hand I carry a card

Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,

stateless, and have no money.

It is buoyant and edgeless.

It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

  

forgiveness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

mosquito

I say I

and

a small mosquito drinks from my tongue

but many say we and hear I

say you or he and 

hear I

what can we do with this problem

a bowl held in both hands

cannot be filled by the holder

x, says the blue whale

x, say the krill

solve for y, says the ocean, then multiply by existence

the feet of an ant make their own sound on the earth

ice is astonished by water

a person misreads

delirium as delphinium

and falls into

a blueness sleepy as beauty when sneezing

the pronoun dozes

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty

my species

even

a small purple artichoke

boiled

in its own bittered

and darkening

waters

grows tender,

grows tender and sweet

patience, I think,

my species

keep testing the spiny leaves

the spiny heart

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Beauty