connected in compassion

 

 

 

 

No one escapes suffering in this life. 

None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness, and death.

 How is it that we have so little understanding of these essential experiences? 

How is it that we have attempted to keep grief separated from our lives

 and only begrudgingly acknowledge its presence at the most obvious of times,

 such as a funeral?

 

 “If sequestered pain made a sound,” Stephen Levine says,

 “the atmosphere would be humming all the time.”

It is the accumulated losses of a lifetime that slowly weigh us down—

the times of rejection, the moments of isolation when we felt cut off

 from the sustaining touch of comfort and love. It is an ache that resides

 in the heart, the faint echo calling us back to the times of loss. 

We are called back, not so much to make things right, but to acknowledge

 what happened to us. 

 

Grief asks that we honor the loss and, in doing so, deepen our capacity for compassion.

 When grief remains unexpressed, however, it hardens, becomes as solid as a stone.

 We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. . . . 

When our grief stagnates, we become fixed in place, unable to move and dance

 with the flow of life. Grief is part of the dance.

As we begin to pay attention, we notice that grief is never far from our awareness. 

We become aware of the many ways it arrives in our daily lives. It is the blue mood

 that greets us upon waking. It is the melancholy that shades the day in muted tones.

 It is the recognition of time’s passing, the slow emptying of our days.

 It is the searing pain that erupts when someone close to us dies—

a parent, a partner, a child, a beloved pet. It is the confounding grief 

when our life circumstances are shattered by the unexpected—

the phone rings with news of a biopsy; we find ourselves suddenly without work,

 uncertain as to how we will support our family; our partner decides one day

 that the marriage is over. We tumble and fall as the ground beneath us opens, 

shaken by violent rumblings. Grief enfolds our lives, drops us close to the earth,

 reminding us of our inevitable return to the dark soil. . . .

It is essential for us to welcome our grief, whatever form it takes.

 When we do, we open ourselves to our shared experiences in life.

 Grief is our common bond. Opening to our sorrow connects us with everyone, everywhere.

 There is no gesture of kindness that is wasted, no offering of compassion that is useless.

 We can be generous to every sorrow we see. It is sacred work. 

 

 

 

 

~  Francis Weller

from  The Wild Edge of Sorrow:

 Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief; 

The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation

 with thanks to Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

 

 

watching my friend pretend her heart isn't breaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star

would weigh six billion tons, Six billion tons

is equivalent to the weight of every animal

on earth, including insects. Times three.

 

Six billion tons sounds impossible

until I consider how it is to swallow grief -

just a teaspoon and one may as well have consumed

a neutron star. How dense it is,

how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.

How difficult it is to move then.

How impossible to believe that anything

could lift that weight.

 

There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see

what anyone else has swallowed.

 

 

 

 

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

from Poetry of Presence II -

More Mindfulness poems

photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

 

 

 

 

 

  

what we need is here

 

 

 

 

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end. In time's maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.



~ Wendell Berry


 

how surely gravity's law (II, 16)

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the strongest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -

each stone, blossom, child -

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

.

stages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As every flower fades and as all youth

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without remorse

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force

For guarding us and helping us to live.

 

Serenely let us move to distant places

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence,

We must prepare for parting and leave-taking

Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

 

Even the hour of our death may send

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

translation by Richard and Clara Winston

 

 

 

 

 

consciousness and matter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Rupert Spira

happiness

Happiness is a butterfly

which when pursued is always just beyond your grasp

but which if you will sit down quietly

 may light upon you.

...

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

the soft overcomes the hard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Nothing in the world is weaker than water

 but against the hard and the strong

  nothing outdoes it for nothing can change it

 the soft overcomes the hard

 the weak overcomes the strong

 this is something everyone knows

 but no one is able to practice.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Lao Tzu 

TaoTeChing

 translated by Red Pine

become clear with stillness

 

 

 

 

 

 

If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. 

If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly. 

But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements,

 if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, 

and if we allow ourselves to become absorbed in self-centered views,

 the surface of our waters becomes turbulent. 

Then we cannot be receptive to Tao.

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. 

True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude 

where we allow our minds to settle. 

 

Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. 

Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, 

and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.

 

 

 

 ~  Deng Ming-Dao

from 365 Tao, Daily Meditations

 with thanks to Heron Dance Art Journal

photo from

 (From http://www.rgbstock.com/bigphoto

/nHepDs6/Moon+Reflected+in+Water+3)

 

 

into unity and belonging

... there is a mirror within the human mind. 
 This mirror collects every reflection. Human solitude is so unsolitary.
 Deep human solitude is a place of great affinity and of tension. 
When you come into your solitude, you come into companionship 
with everything and everyone. When you extend yourself frenetically outward, 
seeking refuge in your external image or role, you are going into exile.
 When you come patiently and silently home to yourself, 
you come into  unity and into belonging.

~ John O'Donohue

art by Shanna Strauss

a common bond

Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone

 into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, 

a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown,

 and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. 
 

You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, 

but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of  our essential loneliness, 

nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone ...

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, 

no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, 

a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, 

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, 

and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry

 from The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

 

what did we see today?

Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.

On other days, we are like a light that sweeps

Out over the husky soybean fields all night.

What did we see today?  Horses at the end 

Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,

Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.

Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno

Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent

And lose ourselves in the curved energy.

We know how many men live alone in their twenties,

And how many women are married to the wrong person,

And how many fathers and sons are strangers to each other.

It's all right if we keep forgetting the way home.

It's all right if we don't remember when we were born.

It's all right if we write the same poem over and over.

Robert, I don't know why you talk so confidently

About yourself in this way.  There are a lot of shady

Characters in this town, and you are one of them.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

a broken open place

inside, still no moon.

but there is a broken

open place.

I am learning

to sing from there.

.

~  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

grateful to the last

 

 

 

 

 

Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved-for all we know,

it is halved-by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present.

Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting 

them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be

remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving,

though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny,

or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell,

only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us

and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.

 

We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life.

As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome. 

I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. 

Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always

 coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, 

which is always present. Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming

of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded

and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn

welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying, I think,

is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful 

enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude

 is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.

 

 

 

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Andy Catlett

 

 

  

individual shoots were younger

The individual shoots were younger, but these new growths from the past few centuries

 were not considered to be stand-alone trees but part of a larger whole..

 The root is certainly a more decisive factor than what is growing above ground.

  After all, it is the root that looks after the survival of an organism. 

It is the root that has withstood severe changes in climatic conditions. 

And it is the root that has regrown trunks time and time again.

 It is in the roots that centuries of experience are stored, 

and it is this experience that has allowed the tree's survival

 to the present day.

~ Peter Wohllenben

from The Hidden Life of Trees

... down deep, at the molecular heart of life,
we’re essentially identical to trees.

~ Carl Sagan