surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair

 

 

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,

let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.

Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart

fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,

or a broken string. 

 Let my joyfully streaming face

make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise

and blossom.  

How dear you will be to me then, you nights 

of anguish. 

 Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,

inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself

in your loosened hair. 

 How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end.

  Though they are really

our winter-enduring foliage,

 our dark evergreen,

one season in our inner year -,

 not only a season

in time -,

 but are place and settlement, 

foundation and soil and home.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Duino Elegies, The Tenth Elegy

translation by stephen mitchell

art by van gogh

in the heart of every creature

.

.

.

Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler that the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest…

.

The Self cannot be known through study,

…nor through the intellect,

nor through discourses about it.

.

~  Katha Upanishad

.

the lost trapper

 

Each time the soprano and the tenor

Kneel and sing to each other,

Somewhere else on stage the baritone

Is about to die.

The Alaskan trapper finds

Blood on his arm, his radio

Dead, and new snow

Falling on the branches.

I don't know why the grasshopper

Doesn't try to wiggle

Out from the bird's claw,

But he doesn't move.

Just forget the idea that

Someone will come and save

You whenever cedars begin

Making that low sound.

~ Robert Bly 

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

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

beyond myself

When my heart came to rule

in the world of love,

it was freed

from both belief

and from disbelief.

On this journey,

I found the problem

to be myself.

When I went beyond myself,

the pathway finally opened.

~ Mahsati Ganjavi

translation by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Mahsati Ganjavi lived during the 12th century, born in Ganje, Azerbaijan.

 Her poetry was a strong voice against prejudice and hypocrisy and patriarchy, 

while upholding love -- both human and divine.

She was celebrated at the court of Sultan Sanjar for her rubaiyat (quatrains), 

but later persecuted for her courageous stand against

 overly dogmatic religion and arbitrary male dominance.

gratitude

Learn by little the desire for all things
which perhaps is not desire at all
but undying love which perhaps
is not love at all but gratitude
for the being of all things which
perhaps is not gratitude at all
but the maker's joy in what is made,
the joy in which we come to rest.

 

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

belonging to each other

 

~ Father Greg Boyle

bright but hidden, before and behind, to the right and to the left, above and below

Bright but hidden, 

the Self dwells in the heart.

Everything that moves,

breathes, opens, and closes

Lives in the Self. 

 He is the source of love

And may be known through love

 but not through thought.

He is the goal of life. 

...

In his robe are woven heaven and earth,

Mind and body.  Realize him as the One

Behind the many and stop all vain talk.

He is the bridge from death to deathless life.

Where all the nerves meet like spokes in a wheel,

There he dwells, the One behind the many.

Meditate upon him in the mantram.

May he guide us from death to deathless life!

...

The Lord of Love is before and behind.

He extends to the right and to the left.

He extends above; he extends below.

There is no one here but the Lord of Love.

He alone is; in truth, he alone is.

~ excerpt from The Mundaka Upanishad

translated by Eknath Easwaran

art by Jeff Metal

I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail

 

Now Talking God

With your feet I walk.

I walk with your limbs

I carry forth your body

For me your mind thinks

Your voice speaks for me

Beauty is before me

And beauty is behind me

Above and below me hovers the beautiful

I am surrounded by it

I am immersed in it

In my youth I am aware of it

And in old age I shall walk quietly

The beautiful trail.

The mountains,

I become part of it . . .

The herbs, the fir tree,

I become part of it.

The morning mists, the clouds,

the gathering waters,

I become part of it.

The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen . . .

I become part of it.

May it be delightful my house;

From my head may it be delightful;

To my feet may it be delightful;

Where I lie may it be delightful;

All above me may it be delightful;

All around me may it be delightful.

'Sa'ah naaghéi, Bik'eh hózhó

excerpts from the

Navaho Night Chant

art by Ted DeGrazia

The nine-night ceremony known as the Night Chant

 or Nightway is believed to date from around 1000 B. C. E.,

 when it was first performed by those who lived in Canyon de Chelly.

  It is considered to be the most sacred of all Navajo ceremonies

 and one of the most difficult and demanding to learn, 

involving the memorization of hundreds of songs,

 dozens of prayers, and several very complicated sand paintings.

At its core, the Night Chant is a healing ritual, 

aimed at curing the sick

 and restoring balance

 and harmony within the universe.

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

 

no form - not a thing

 

True intelligence operates silently.

Stillness is where creativity and

solutions to problems

are found.

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still.

Just look and just listen.

No more is needed.

Being still, looking, and listening

activates the non-conceptual

intelligence within you.

Let stillness direct your

words and actions.

When you look and listen in this way,

you may become aware of a subtle and at

first perhaps hardly noticeable sense of calm.

Some people feel it as a

stillness in the background.

Others call it peace.

When consciousness is no longer

totally absorbed by thinking,

some of it remains in its formless,

unconditioned, original state.

This is inner space.

Stillness is the only thing in

this world that has no form.

But then, it is not really a thing,

and it is not of this world.

Become at ease with the

state of 'not knowing.

~ Eckhart Tolle 

from A New Earth

art by Odilon Redon

with thanks to Tao of Photography

like the small hole by the path-side something lives in

Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,

in me lives I do not know the names of,

nor the fates of,

nor the hungers of or what they eat.

They eat of me.

Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me

whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.

And in my streets - the narrow ones,

unlabeled on the self-map -

they follow stairs down music ears can't follow,

and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,

in hours uncounted by the self-clock,

they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves.

There too have been the hard extinctions,

missing birds once feasted on and feasting.

There too must be machines

like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day,

A few escape, A mercy,

They leave behind

small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.

~ Jane Hirshfield 

from The Beauty

Fremont rock painting from San Raphael Swell

2000-1000 BC Caves Painting

free, through all is has given up

.

Dove that ventured outside,     flying far from the dovecote:

housed and protected again,     one with the day, the night,

knows what serenity is,     for she has felt her wings

pass through all distance and fear     in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,     never exposed to loss,

innocent and secure,     cannot know tenderness;

only the won-back heart      can ever be satisfied: free,

through all is has given up,     to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself     over the vast abyss.

Ah the ball that we dared,     that we hurled into infinite space,

doesn't it fill our hands     differently with its return:

heavier by the weight     of where it has been.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Stephen Mitchell

from: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

one loss

One loss

folds itself inside another.

It is like the origami

held inside a plain sheet of paper

Not creased yet.

Not yet more heavy.

The hand stays steady.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come Thief

within the circles of our lives

Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years,

the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,

the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing.  Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy.  The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.

In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining 

joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,

out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

~ Wendell Berry

art by Sammy Hill, Swinomish Nation

rejoice

 

~ Kathleen Battle

2500 Montréalers sing L. Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

 

~ Leonard Cohen

and 2500 Montrealers

now is the time

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

 A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand 

That all your ideas of right and wrong 

Were just a child's training wheels 

To be laid aside 

When you finally live

 With veracity And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy 

Whom the Beloved 

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me, 

Why do you still 

Throw sticks at your heart 

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside 

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know 

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

 For you to compute the impossibility

 That there is anything

 But Grace.

Now is the season to know 

That everything you do Is sacred.

~ Hafiz

from Poetry of Presence 

through the sacred womb of your soul

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence externally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never
far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light, and
sing . . .





~ St. John of the Cross
Daniel Ladinsky translation
Love Poems from God

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

hopi

 

~ Ramson Lomatewama

water song

 

www.singthewatersong.com

Grandmother NANCY ANDRY

Grandmother MARGARET BEHAN

Grandmother  CLARA SOARING HAWK

Navajo early morning blessing

 

~ "Hooghan" from the album Sacred Mountains by Louie Gonnie

all these prayers

 

So a little spring prays to the ocean, 

so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, 

so the little word prays to the great Logos,

 so a dust speck prays to the earth, 

so the earth prays to the cosmos, 

so the one prays to the billion, 

so human love prays to God’s love, 

so always prays to never, 

so the moment prays to eternity, 

so the snowflake prays to winter, 

so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence, 

so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.

~ Anna Kamieńska

from In the Great River: A Notebook

with thanks to love is a place

with gratitude

 

in the wordless beginning

iguana & myrrh

magma & reef ghost moth

& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

& cedar & archipelago & anemone

dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red

ocean salt & crude oil now black

muck now most naïve fumbling plankton

every egg clutched in the copycat soft

of me unwomaned unraced

unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote

that would rage my uncle’s blood

or the bacterium that will widow

your eldest daughter’s eldest son

my uncle, her son our mammoth sun

& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat

apatosaurus & nile river

& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &

yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you

spleen & femur seven-year refreshed

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born

in the olympus of the smallest

possible once before once

~ Marissa Davis

Singularity

art by Joan Sokolowska

with thanks to The Marginalian

you are the fullness of perfection here and now

 

I can see with the utmost clarity that you have never been, 

nor are, nor will be estranged from reality, 

that you are the fullness of perfection here and now,

 and that nothing can deprive you of your heritage, 

of what you are. 

You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.

 Be fully aware of your own being, 

and you will be in bliss consciously.

 Because you take your mind off yourself 

and make it dwell on what you are not,

 you lose your sense of well-being, 

of being well.

You people do not know how much you miss

 by not knowing your own true self.

The moment you know your real being, 

you are afraid of nothing. 

Death gives freedom and power. 

To be free in the world, 

you must die to the world. 

Then the universe is your own,

 it becomes your body,

 an expression and a tool. 

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

His state tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. 

He is happy and fully aware that happiness

 is his very nature and that he need not do anything,

 nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him,

 more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. 

To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.

 Pleasure and pain have causes, 

while my state is my own,

 totally uncaused, 

independent,

 unassailable.

As he gets older, 

he grows more and more happy and peaceful.

 After all, he is going home.

 Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage,

 he leaves the train without regret. 

The reel of destiny is coming to its end

—the mind is happy. 

The mist of bodily existence is lifting—

the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

 from I AM THAT...

art by Oskar Hokeah

a mustard seed

Become as a child,

become deaf, become blind!

Your own substance

must become nothingness;

drive all substance, all nothingness far from you!

Leave space, leave time,

eschew also all physical representation.

Go without a way

the narrow footpath,

then you will succeed in finding the desert.

 ~ Anonymous

(excerpt from Granum Sinapis)

  found here in for lovers of god everywhere 

by roger housden

toward emptiness

In the desert,

Turn toward emptiness,

Fleeing the self.

Stand alone

Ask no one's help,

And your being will quiet,

Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,

endeavor to free them;

Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,

But live alone,

Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,

To kindle Love's fire

With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

translation by Jane Hirshfield

the last cloud drains away

 

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

~  Li Po,

  from Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

 translated by Sam Hamill

 from Crossing the Yellow River: 

Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

home

Whether drifting through life on a boat or 

climbing toward old age leading a horse, 

each day is a journey and the journey itself is home. 

~ Basho