life cultivating life

seeds of the future

2011-06-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

December 30, 2009: I've moved over to Posterous (and duplicated this whole blog over there, though unfortunately without the comments) - come visit me over there!

(1 17 2011 - changed my mind AGAIN and I think I'm going to come back and play with this format some more...)

(6 9 2011 - Okay. Never mind. I really have moved: http://lifecultivatinglife.posterous.com - come see!)

Happy New Year!

inescapable interrelation

2011-01-17T00:24:00.000-08:00

"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
This is the interrelated structure of reality."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

fish clouds

2009-12-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

Bastyr University courtyard fish (and frog and turtle) pond

taken with my iPhone last summer

I think I'm back...

moon-lit desert yuletide

2008-12-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

My friend Will Engelhardt is a medicine man whose healing ways include body work, exploration and transformation of mental and neural patterns, and the creation and sharing of beauty. Here is a Christmas offering from him:

strategic alchemy

2008-12-20T23:18:00.000-08:00

A dedicated team representing staff, faculty, students, administration and Trustees of Bastyr University has been meeting and working for almost two years to shape input from the whole university community, including neighbors and patients and colleagues, into a strategic plan that will powerfully pull us forward into realizing our mission of "transforming the health of the human community."

I have gotten to work primarily on the first of the 6 strategic initiatives, all six of which were officially approved by the Board earlier this month. Now our bigger work begins, and we'll be looking for support and participation.

The first initiative, beginning with its preamble, is:
A university is defined by the power and beauty and reach of the ideas and perspectives that it gathers together in the spirit of open-minded inquiry. Bastyr University is committed to the work of transforming the health of the human community, and the daunting complexity of that work calls for us to think and talk and work together with many other people from many disciplines who share our commitment.

Because of our capacity for honoring the whole and all of its parts, and our unshakable trust that the parts are already threaded together even when the connections are as yet invisible, we are uniquely suited for hosting a confluence of rich and diverse explorations that lead to wise practice and action.

In the best academic tradition, Bastyr will welcome the meeting, meshing, and even the clashing of ideas that expand our understanding, seed our own programs and initiatives, connect us to effective work all over the world, and help us to accomplish our mission to transform the health of the human family.

Strategic Initiative #1:
Convene essential generative conversations that inform the cultivation of practitioners and influence policy decisions that contribute to restoring the world's intrinsic health.

There are objectives and goals and things to be measured, too, which I can tell about another time if you'd like, and another five initiatives which all have to do with creating or adopting, and living up to, standards of excellence in all our own particulars of who we are and what we do.

Many thanks to Bill Toliver and his team at The Matale Line for their deep careful listening and skillful alchemy, cooking us down to the real essence of what is ours to contribute to a healthier future.

drop your ballot

2008-11-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

If you're from around here and haven't mailed in your ballot yet, King County has introduced ten ballot drop boxes throughout the county to provide absentee voters with another way to securely return their ballots without the cost of postage. Ballot drop boxes will close at 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 4.

The address links below open up cute little photos of each site! When we dropped ours off today in the University district, we saw a lot of other citizens approaching down the sidewalk with their ballot envelopes in hand, and watched as one of the staff inside opened the box and gathered up a big pile. Yay!

Locations

Bellevue
Library Connection @ Crossroads, 15600 NE 8th St., outside of Suite K-11, 98008
Black Diamond
Black Diamond Library, 24707 Roberts Dr., 98010
Des Moines
Des Moines Library, 21620 11th Avenue S., 98198
Fall City
Fall City Library, 33415 SE 42 Pl., 98024
Lake Forest Park
Lake Forest Park Library, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 98155 near the lower level mall entrance
Algona Pacific
Algona Pacific Library, 255 Ellingson Road, 98047
Renton
King County Elections, 919 SW Grady Way, 98057
Seattle
King County Administration Building, 500 Fourth Ave., 98104
Delridge Neighborhood Service Center, 5405 Delridge Way SW, 98106
University Neighborhood Service Center, 4534 University Way NE, 98105

microblogging (and my secret superpower)

2008-10-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Working at home, my head in the sunshine and my screen in the shade, I have an hour before my next phone meeting, and think, "maybe that's enough time to finally write that little blog post that's been percolating in my mind for a while, in the more-than-two-months since I've posted anything..."

And then, instead of writing, I glance through the new issue of Wired magazine that came in the mail yesterday and discover that they wrote my blog post for me. Click through to read it - it's really not very long! - it starts off, "Kill Your Blog. Still posting like it's 2004? Well, knock it off. There are chirpier ways to get your word out," and goes on to talk about how even (especially) early famous bloggers are putting more of their time and thoughts and photos and videos onto Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. They're talking about me! Well, except for the early and famous parts. I started blogging in 2004! I've been neglecting my blog in favor of tweeting and facebooking and flickring!

(So, this is my secret superpower: I am almost unerringly right in the belly of the Zeitgeist - or, you might say, right in the middle of the road, right in the middle of bell curve, with the crowd on the cresting wave. Or maybe just the tiniest bit behind it. Not that I usually realize it, until after someone more insightful has pointed out where the herd is. My brother-in-law has pointed out to me that it is theoretically a valuable talent to be able to pick out the song on any album that should be released as a single, because everyone else is bound to like it the best, too. But in order for it to be valuable, someone would have to care...)

(Actually, I have many other genius superpowers, but I managed to forget what they were, some months ago, and haven't recalled them yet.)

So, what I was going to write, even before I read that little article in Wired, was that I haven't been spending any time thinking about my own blog (and not a lot of time reading other people's blogs, not even my favorite ones) because the scant amount of time I have for online connecting is all being used up by what I'm thinking of as microblogging, which only takes a couple of minutes at a time. Twitter's 140-character limit per post is an opportunity to compress the infinite moment into one intensified droplet - or to simply pull a single thread from the fabric of experience as it passes through us, unremarkable except for having been caught in words.

At this moment, it feels just right, and enough, to do that. I like that my tiny haiku blogettes (Thomas and I were talking on Saturday about Twitter as fertile haiku practice) criss-cross with those of the people whose tweets I follow or who are fb friends. I originally started blogging in order to have one place where I could store all the inspiring words and thoughts and images I encounter, and I think I will still use it for that - though I use del.icio.us for some of the same purpose, and have that linked to my Facebook page! (and if you are on Facebook, would you "validate," or maybe it is "confirm," my blog there? I'm not sure what that does, but I am curious)

And: now that I'm at the end of this post - well, I didn't finish it before my phone meeting, the sun set before I had a chance to get back to it, and it took more than a few minutes to write it all down and set all the links. I'm going over to the other playgrounds now, for 5 minutes max, and hope to see you there sometime soon.

tenderness only breaks open the earth

2008-08-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful offering from Panhala's daily listserv.

Poet and translator Jane Hirshfield will be in Seattle on March 12 as part of the Seattle Arts and Lectures 2008-2009 Poetry Series (which will also feature W.S. Merwin and Gary Snyder)

Standing Deer

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

~ Jane Hirschfield ~

(The Lives of the Heart)

party favors

2008-08-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

Last year when my brother-in-law Eric turned 40, he took some friends out to dinner and also gave them each a bag containing his Top 5 Favorite things (special cashmere socks, his favorite wine, a CD of his favorite drum solos, Sugar hand lotion, and I forget the 5th thing but maybe it had to do with donuts or bagels).

That inspired me to think, if I were turning 50 today, what favorite things would I give to the friends I'm having dinner with tonight?

For a party favor bag, a sturdy, snazzy and re-usable one like the ones they give customers at Lululemon (and which they might give you without charge when you go in and ask how much they cost to buy without having made a purchase). Then I'd put inside a magazine or a book. Some flowers, and some color. And some oolong tea from the Teahouse Kuan Yin in the Wallingford neighborhood (my favorites are the flowery ones like the High Mountain Jin Xuan and the Wen Shan Bao Zhong) (and now the Shan Lin Xi Green, too, thank you to teahouse owner Marcus!)

I also thought about adding some of my favorite Maple Pecan cereal, but without the soy milk and spoonful of peanut butter it is an incomplete experience so I left it out this time.

wosonos 2008 day three

2008-07-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm full! And haven't had sufficient time to digest yet. Luckily, Chris Corrigan has been his reliably and deeply thoughtful self and has posted a lot of fresh insights already.

Usually when I participate in any Open Space, there always seem to be some time slots when there isn't anything being offered that I prefer to the pleasure of just hanging out for a while, but this one has had too many that I didn't want to miss. Yesterday I went to sessions in all four time slots (oh, and see - yesterday already seems so long ago that I can't remember what those sessions were, without looking at my notes): Our feelings (not thinking) about the future and open space (convened by Brian Bainbridge); The possibilities for advancing the open space technosphere (Kaliya Hamlin); An open space arts building, what would it be like (Phelim McDermott); Living in open space as a family (Chris, Caitlin, Aine and Finn). Today though, I didn't go to any, but flapped around a bit and then had a lovely standing-up chat with Chris talking about the characteristics of what space is like when it's deep, his ongoing exploration of the twin dynamics of love & power, and playing with the beginnings of "a pattern language of faith."

More than working on things and getting things done (though that happened, too), open space is for me primarily about being with the people who've showed up and sometimes it doesn't really matter to me what we talk about. Participating in convened sessions, sitting on the lawn at lunch, talking while doing very little aikido/tai qi movements, going for dinner with Jeff and Raffi and new friends Heidi, Michael, Brendan, Susan and James: all the same, all about little-by-little (but very quickly, actually) finding our common place in the group heart.

OK, I think that's all I can put into words right now - more after I've had some sleep!

wosonos2008 day one

2008-07-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

3:30 pm: Raffi has been blogging the conference at Open Space World, and Chris Corrigan has already posted a characteristically thoughtful entry about a session he and his 7-year old son Finn co-convened today. I thought I would have written more by now but have been listening a lot and talking a bit the whole time (and a little picnicking too). The sessions I've participated in today were: Coffeehouses that Matter (that's not what the topic invitation was but that's what I ended up with in my notes); Combining World Cafe and Open Space; Open Space as Ancestral Space. I jotted down notes here and there and will transcribe them later (when it doesn't feel quite so much like nap time as it does now!)

9 am: Day one of the international Open Space on Open Space in San Francisco, taking place in a big and gorgeous room in the Presidio, with huge windows overlooking the ocean and tall evergreen trees and a sky of sun and fog, and a sailboat in the distance. Opening circle about to begin. (I left at home the cable I need to upload photos onto my computer so I'll add some later).

(hey, what's up with Twitter? I am not receiving twits from the people I am following...)

mr toad's wild ride!

2008-07-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Or, in other words, my past 6 months.

Co-teaching two new courses, synagogue interim board member, starting a part-time job as Bastyr's "university catalyst," intense relational processes and spiritual practices, training in the Art of Hosting and Medicine Without Form, transitioning clinic practice partners and taking on a new associate, our older son's high school graduation and younger son's bar mitzvah (which also meant parties and walks and long conversations with two dozen family members who lovingly came from all over the country) ...oh, and my mate was in Vietnam right in the middle of it all with his eight-graders, for 3-1/2 weeks.

At one point, driving to work, I glanced over to look in the mirror and was startled to see that my son was still in the car (snoring peacefully) because I had totally forgotten to drop him off at school first (and he wasn't in the back, he was right next to me in the passenger seat). I am very happy that I only came close, and did not actually, misplace anyone or burn the house down.

So, while I have been online a lot, it's mostly been for email and Google Doc-ing and researching, and I've done almost no blog reading, commenting, or writing. (I am afraid to look at my Bloglines page, and am tempted to just delete it all and start over.) But now that it is summer and so many of the plates I was spinning are happy back on their shelves (or else broken on the ground and swept up) I'm exploring online life again and am playing with Twitter and Facebook.

And am reading Peter Block's book, Community: The Structure of Belonging. And getting ready to go to San Francisco for the Worldwide Open Space on Open Space, and to visit my mom and friends in Marin, next week. And thinking about how to spend my 50th birthday in a couple of weeks.

"`I wonder,' he said to himself presently, `I wonder if this sort of car starts easily?'

"Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the old passion seized on Toad and completely mastered him, body and soul. As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver's seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the terror, the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night. He chanted as he flew, and the car responded with sonorous drone; the miles were eaten up under him as he sped he knew not whither, fulfilling his instincts, living his hour, reckless of what might come to him."

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

chris jordan: picturing excess

2008-06-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

In this video from the 2008 TED conference, Seattle artist Chris Jordan shows and describes some of his photographic works, which aim to translate mind-numbing statistics about our massively wasteful cultural choices, to visuals that evoke emotion and visceral response, that in turn wake up us to the question "how do we change?" and especially, "how do I change?'

faith

2008-06-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

"Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees."
~E.F. Schumacher

everything is surprising

2008-05-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

Oh, my, it is dusty around here. Darn! I have just enough time and attention available to turn the lights on for a second and toss this on the table where I'll be able to find it later:

"'To recognize that everything is surprising is the first step toward recognizing that everything is a gift,' says Steindl-Rast",

quoted by Margaret Wheatley,
in an excerpt sent by Nipun Mehta in the current Thought for the Week.

"stroke of insight"

2008-03-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a stunning and intensely inspired TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talk by neuroanatomist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who

"...had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another."

The annual invitational TED conference gathers together 1300 "leading thinkers and doers" for four days of revolutionary and illuminating talks, presentations, performances and connection. Though registration application for 2009 is already closed for now (though if they don't decide to fill up with the current applicants for registration then maybe there will be room for you!) (note though that memberships start at $6000 per year), a lot of the talks and performances are posted on the TED site -- and every presenter (whether someone world-famous like Bill Clinton or Jane Goodall, or someone equally amazing but not quite as well-known like 3-D visualization technology architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas) gets 18 minutes.

Here is where you can download a massive pdf graphic record of TED 2008.

And here is where you can go to keep track of what's new, like the current excitement about Pangea Day, May 10, which intends to "tap the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future."

light pouring into a promise

2008-03-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

Another reminder of an ongoing exploration into what the process of ripening might be (from Panhala) ~

Ceres Looks at the Morning
(excerpt)

I wake slowly. Already
my body is a twilight: Solid. Gold.
At the edge of a larger darkness. But outside
my window
a summer day is beginning. Apple trees
appear, one by one. Light is pouring
into the promise of fruit.

Beautiful morning
look at me as a daughter would
look: with that love and that curiosity:
as to what she came from.
And what she will become.

~ Eavan Boland ~

(The Lost Land)

crowded inner space

2008-02-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

Chris invited me along with a bunch of other blogger friends to post "eight things about myself that you probably didn't know". Which sounds fun except that I'm thinking about so many things right now that it has turned out to be harder than I expected. Anyway, I've thought of one thing so far (and maybe you do already know this about me, and in any case it will be just another demonstration of how crowded it is in my inner space these days) which is that I am a big slob and kind of, sort of, a pack-rat. One way that this is obvious is that I have around 4000 emails floating around in my gmail account (I'm using 19% of my available space!) -- and that it doesn't bother me.

The other way that it's obvious is that I just tidied up the space around my side of the bed about a month ago when we had company -- but this is what it looks like today.

And this whole pile is of stuff I consider that I am actively reading (or re-reading). Most of the books have pens or pencils in them as bookmarks, since the way I like to read best is by marking and drawing and cross-referencing in the margins. Then, sometimes I like to give books I've marked up to friends as gifts -- sort of like a letter from me as well as a whole book to read. But maybe that's a different post.

Time now to take one or two of these, a pencil and a glass of wine, and go sit in the hot tub.

I think next time maybe I'll write about something I would like to know about me, and don't.

****
My friend Sheri came over to sit in the hot water with me, so instead of taking books we took two glasses of wine, and some chocolate, and talked about books we love -- including Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, and Emerson: the Mind on Fire, and Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World -- and listened to the robins sing.

the house of belonging

2008-02-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

The other night I had the pleasure of going to what I think of as worship services with my friend Will. His sacred place of choice is the ecstatic dance community gatherings, which occur twice a week in a comfortable and warmly-lit dance studio on Capitol Hill. This week, being the night before Valentine's Day, the space was anchored by an altar draped in deep red cloth and devoted to images of a gorgeous and fiercely erotic Dakini of Compassionate Bliss in many guises.

After an hour and a half of dancing to world-beat music, moving as you like from dancing with other participants to being with just yourself to being with the group heart as a whole, there's time for people to share some of their experience. In that ending circle, one woman passionately recited this poem by David Whyte (he is very popular around here!) -- I love the way that so many of his poems concern themselves with faith:

THE TRUELOVE

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,

who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant,
yet familiar figure,
far across the water
calling to them,

and how we are all
waiting for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except, it will
not come so grandly,
so Biblically,
but more subtly
and intimately, in the face
of the one you know
you have to love.

So that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don't,

because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years,
you don't want to any more,
you've simply had enough
of drowning,
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness,
however fluid and however
dangerous, to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

~The House of Belonging

neighborhood caucus report

2008-02-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

In our precinct, Obama got 4 delegates and Clinton got 1, and the precinct on the other side of the school gym we met in gave Obama 3 and Clinton 1. Reports from three other friends (all in different precincts in north Seattle) were similar, so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the rest of the city and state!

there has never been anything false about hope

2008-02-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

I've received dozens of email reminders in the past couple of days about the upcoming presidential caucus meetings beginning promptly at 1 and ending by 2:30 or 3 pm this Saturday all over the state; passion is running very high here. In Washington state, 100% of the Democratic party delegates will be assigned according to the caucus results (even though there is an expensive and useless primary happening later in the month). The Republican party delegates will be assigned 51% according to the primary results and 49% according to caucus results.

Here is a caucus-finder link, though I am not sure whether or not it will work if you're not registered to vote yet (and you can register in person at the caucus). I am glad to have learned that young people who are not yet 18 years old, but who will be 18 by the time of the election in November, are eligible to participate in their neighborhood caucus meeting.

The title of this post comes from a speech that Barack Obama gave in New Hampshire a few weeks ago. This video sets that speech to music:

art of hosting, after dinner

2008-01-28T08:20:00.000-08:00

On the last evening of the Art of Hosting practice retreat, Ashley and I went up the little hill after dinner to snuggle heart to heart in the Whidbey Institute's cedar-scented sanctuary. I mentioned to her that if there weren't enough candles in there, I had two packs of 100 tealights each (Ikea! $2.99 per pack!) in the trunk of my car. There were plenty of big candles in the sanctuary, but when we went back down to the Thomas Berry hall, Ashley had an inspired idea to make a candle sculpture with the tealights.

Dumping 200 candles out on the floor and shuffling them like mah jong tiles turned out to be an irresistable attractor, and very quickly a little circle of playmates formed, making up all kinds of games before settling on an intricate configuration of tiny flames. Chris played some lovely aires and Andy recorded a little video on his amazing small camera (Thank you, Andy!)

In it you can see Teresa glowing, and hear and see Chris fluting.

art of hosting, storytime

2008-01-27T22:48:00.000-08:00

Just back from 4 days in the embrace of the deep woods surrounding the Whidbey Institute, with Ashley and Chris and Jeff (and when are you going to go public with your blog, dear Sheri?) and more long-time and newly-discovered friends, for the Art of Hosting retreat.

I've got lots of stuff to share about it and will start with this, a reflection that came out of a storytime exercise, when we allowed ourselves to open into imagining our own lives with a mythic view. Here's my story of our time together:

Once upon a time, there was a heart wrapped in light and dark and colors, walking and sleeping in the wide world.

One day, she was invited into a circle of other hearts wrapped in light and dark and colors. She decided to say no thank you to the invitation because she thought that the cost to enter was too great.

Then she learned that some of the other hearts who would be present were hearts who’d already shared with her the memory of being all One Heart. And that reminded her that she already and always had more than enough to afford the cost of joining the circle.

And she changed her “no” to “yes”.

The circle was very bright, and light and dark. With the rhythms of poem and story, laughter and silence, breathing in and breathing out, the hearts began to remember everything, and to move in patterns of curiosity and courage and love.

Lucky hearts! To be held wide by soft-eyed heart defenders, tall deep trees, bird songs, moon and rock. All the languages of the world came in, feeling the welcome to be heard.

The circle of hearts grew such deep roots and such sky-tipped branches that the space in the middle opened its arms in every direction. In such a space the hearts grew ripe – full of seed and sweetness, tender and soft and succulent. Then some of the hearts broke open and the seeds spilled out. The patterns of curiosity and courage and love were very strong, and they caught the seeds and knitted the broken hearts.

Because hearts are like fruit, but they are not fruit.

Hearts can mend, to grow full and ripe and to break open again, and again. Some hearts stay hard all their lives, and some are soft, but they all break some time.

This heart learns in the end, and in the beginning and in the middle, that no cost is too great, to live in space shot through with the jeweled net patterns of curiosity, courage and love.

with you always, in here

2008-01-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

I have posted parts of this Rumi poem other times before, but the moon is very bright tonight, and it's both the birthday of my friend & rabbi, Ted Falcon, and the first anniversary of the passing of my friend & teacher, Bill Mitchell, and these verses are whispering again in my mind.

Be Melting Snow
~Rumi~

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The Moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street.
I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening.
We're looking up at the sky.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you
There's no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

new moon and mercury

2008-01-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

a few dream seeds
shine in the upturned palm of my hand.

they tremble and hum
and start to sing,
and I can glimpse the dream
of the worlds they want to be.

first, long and delicate roots unfurl,
thirsty for the dark and the cold.
then tender leaf and vast clouds form,
deserts shimmer and pray,
mountains rise and oceans pour,
from each seed
that you've dreamed alive,

and breathless, countless, stars.

the seeds go back to sleep for now.
you dream them stronger
and sweeter,
you roll them to a finer polish
with your elegant fingers
and make them ready for the light.

I tuck their memory
into a soft and very quiet place
and wait
for the old spells to break
and the new magic
to spill in.

moon and mercury photo credit

beannacht, embraced by beauty

2008-01-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

I learned from the Panhala poetry listserv of the recent and sudden passing of Irish theologian - poet - philosopher John O'Donohue, the author of many books including Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, and Beauty: The Invisible Embrace -- Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope. And of the following favorite blessing, sent out by Joe of Panhala yesterday:

[Last Friday, Barbara Knight Katz, a member of Panhala, wrote to inform me that John O'Donohue had died unexpectedly. In Barbara's words, "John's life was a blessing to all of us who knew and loved him, and to all who love his poetry and wisdom." His life was a blessing; the world needs all the divinely mad Irishmen it can get....]

"I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."
-- John O'Donohue

Beannacht

("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(Echoes of Memory)

John O'Donohue's dear friend, fellow poet and lover of Ireland David Whyte, wrote a warm and sad and loving tribute to his friend, which finishes as, it should, with a poem:

...John was a love-letter to humanity from some address in the firmament we have yet to find and locate, though we may wander many a year looking or listening for it. He has gone home to that original address and cannot be spoken with except in the quiet cradle of the imagination that he dared to visit so often himself. As a way of sending a love letter in return, I wrote this poem for him a good few years ago. I hope it can still reach him now, wherever he is to be found and that he finds it as good a representation as he did when he lived and breathed. I remember the bright, surprised and amused intelligence in his eyes when I first read it to him, sitting by his fire in Connemara. It brings him back to me even as I read it now, as I hope it does for you.

Looking Out From Clare
For John O'Donohue

There’s a great spring in you
all bud and blossom
and March laughter
I’ve always loved.

Your face framed
against the bay
and the whisper
of some arriving joke
playing at the mouth,
your lightning raid
on the eternal
melting the serious line
to absurdity.

I look around and see
the last days of winter
broken away
for all those
listening or watching,
all come to life now
with the first pale sun on their face
for many a month,
remembering how to laugh.

But most of all I love
the heft and weight
and swing of that sea
behind it all, some other tide
racing toward the shore,
or receding to the calmness
where no light or laughter
lives for long.

The way you surface
from those atmospheres
again and again,
your emergence seems to make
you a lover of horizons
but your visitation
of darkness shows.

Then away from you
I can see you only alone
on the strand
walking to the sea
on the north coast of Clare
toward the end
of an unendurable winter
taking your first swim
of the year.

The March scald
of cold ocean
even in May about to tighten
and bud you into spring.

You look across
to the mountains in Connemara
framing, only for now,
your horizon.

You look and look, and look,
beyond all looking.

David Whyte

everything reminds me of everything else

2008-01-01T01:46:00.000-08:00

Actually, the title of this post ought to be: "everything reminds me of everything else, and then I forget what I came in here for." Or, "everything reminds me of everything else, and that's why I haven't been able to finish a blog post for such a long time."

It's like when you clean off one shelf or counter and then all of a sudden everything else looks so much worse and you end up cleaning everything, and not actually finishing the thing you were doing (writing) before.

This morning I had a middle-eastern/mediterranean kind of breakfast, with salad and olives and feta and oregano. I thought a ripe pear with some yogurt and honey would go nicely with the rest of my meal, except that we're out of both yogurt and honey. Which made me think of A Taste of Honey by Lizz Wright so I went to put that in the CD player, but I don't have it on CD, so I put a disc in my computer to burn and then (after I checked my email and tidied up my messy desk) went back in the kitchen to slice my pear. The juiciness of the pear reminded me of my lack of honey, which in turn reminded me of a post I read just recently (because I am also very behind on reading) by the chocolate lady that mentions "dark, winey, bamboo honey", which made me think of of agave syrup, because it's dark, and which I do have, so I put some in my tea (after putting the new CD in the CD player, and sweeping the floor), and it (the combination of "dark" and "honey") also reminded me of seeing a friend put honey in his coffee, which I haven't ever done. Thinking of him reminded me that we were joking the other day about a competition to see who could waste time most efficiently, and I suddenly noticed that my train of thought kept circling and looping me backwards, because going forwards feels a little bit like being perched on the the foggy brink of what might be a meandering slope but it might be a steep cliff and I am just on the verge of finding out which.

The train image reminded me of a book I want to read, called Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel, by Pascal Mercier, so I went on-line and put it in my shopping cart for later.

Ah! But what about that foggy brink? Just in the past few weeks (after months of tilling-the-ground work), the six months between January and June '08 have lit up with great potential, and probable intense challenge.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Church, the president of the university where I teach part-time, invited me to take on a role there as a "catalyst," to shine a light on the gap between "our walk" and "our talk" and to help bring together the people in the community who care about invoking and embodying the university's highest purpose (well, that's how I'm describing the role today -- I imagine the description will change as I begin to actually live in to it). Lucky for me I am going to be able to participate in an Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations that Matter training at the Whidbey Institute at the end of January. (I am so looking forward to asking Chris Corrigan the many questions that I've already started accumulating like little shiny suitcases ;-)) The training is great timing for me and so well-related to the theme of "radical hospitality" that Dr. Church shared with the university community when he first joined us two years ago. My initial agreement with the university is to do this work for six months and then in June we'll decide whether it's been good or not.

On the same day two weeks ago, the executive committee of Bet Alef's board of directors resigned in frustration and anger. Later in the week, I was invited, along with half a dozen other members, to join the remaining directors on an interim board (again, January through June). There is a great opportunity to become very clear about the essence and purpose of the organization, as well as a great challenge to understand honestly what has gone awry.

I have also been extending invitations, myself. For one, I've asked my young colleague Joshua Leahy (who is a naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist, like I am) to join my clinic, with the idea in the back of my mind (OK, maybe it's not exactly in the back) of cultivating him as a practitioner to take on some or a lot of my practice (by June, of course) should I end up working more for the university. We went to a day on "Mentoring: Tending the Interdependence Between Generations," another rich offering at the Whidbey Institute, and I'll post some of my notes from that one of these days -- depending on where my train of thought and I end up going in the next few months. Do wish me luck!

Well, I thought maybe this would be my last post of 2007 but I didn't actually finish it till tonight, and so it's my first post of 2008 instead. May this year bring us all joy and health, inspiring challenges, and deep blessing.

Which reminds me! I meant to post this video that was shared on KarmaTube some time ago, but the beginning of a new year is a perfect time to watch and hear it again.

whooshclang online

2007-11-08T20:42:00.000-08:00

Thomas!

chk chk!

snowball dancing

2007-10-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

And singing!

Snowball the cockatoo has been featured in national newspapers and on network news. He lives at Bird Lovers Only Rescue sanctuary in Indiana.

monastery nights

2007-10-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

I love this long poem...but as I read it on the Poetry Foundation website (one of a list of "ten religious poems worth knowing") and reached the bottom where it said that it was printed with permission of the publisher, I realized that I never get the permission of any publishers. Oops.

In lieu of having permission, here is the publisher's website, along with my opinion that it is well-worth visiting.

Monastery Nights ~ Chase Twichell
(from Dog Language)

I like to think about the monastery
as I’m falling asleep, so that it comes
and goes in my mind like a screen saver.
I conjure the lake of the zendo,
rows of dark boats still unless
someone coughs or otherwise
ripples the calm.
I can hear the four AM slipperiness
of sleeping bags as people turn over
in their bunks. The ancient bells.

When I was first falling in love with Zen,
I burned incense called Kyonishiki,
“Kyoto Autumn Leaves,”
made by the Shoyeido Incense Company,
Kyoto, Japan. To me it smelled like
earnestness and ether, and I tried to imagine
a consciousness ignorant of me.
I just now lit a stick of it. I had to run downstairs
for some rice to hold it upright in its bowl,
which had been empty for a while,
a raku bowl with two fingerprints
in the clay. It calls up the monastery gate,
the massive door demanding I recommit myself
in the moments of both its opening
and its closing, its weight now mine,
I wanted to know what I was,
and thought I could find the truth
where the floor hurts the knee.

I understand no one I consider to be religious.
I have no idea what’s meant when someone says
they’ve been intimate with a higher power.
I seem to have been born without a god receptor.
I have fervor but seem to lack
even the basic instincts of the many seekers,
mostly men, I knew in the monastery,
sitting zazen all night,
wearing their robes to near-rags
boy-stitched back together with unmatched thread,
smoothed over their laps and tucked under,
unmoving in the long silence,
the field of grain ripening, heavy tasseled,
field of sentient beings turned toward candles,
flowers, the Buddha gleaming
like a vivid little sports car from his niche.

What is the mind that precedes
any sense we could possibly have
of ourselves, the mind of self-ignorance?
I thought that the divestiture of self
could be likened to the divestiture
of words, but I was wrong.
It’s not the same work.
One’s a transparency
and one’s an emptiness.

Kyonishiki.... Today I’m painting what Mom
calls no-colors, grays and browns,
evergreens: what’s left of the woods
when autumn’s come and gone.
And though he died, Dad’s here,
still forgetting he’s no longer
married to Annie,
that his own mother is dead,
that he no longer owns a car.
I told them not to make any trouble
or I’d send them both home.
Surprise half inch of snow.
What good are words?

And what about birches in moonlight,
Russell handing me the year’s
first chanterelle—
Shouldn’t God feel like that?

I aspire to “a self-forgetful,
perfectly useless concentration,”
as Elizabeth Bishop put it.
So who shall I say I am?
I’m a prism, an expressive temporary
sentience, a pinecone falling.
I can hear my teacher saying, No.
That misses it.
Buddha goes on sitting through the century,
leaving me alone in the front hall,
which has just been cleaned and smells of pine.

autumn garden

2007-10-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well! I wasn't "here" very much over the summer. A lot of my word energy over the past few months went into plain old talking, and all my writing energy has been going into taking notes in meetings and study groups and seminars, email letters and online conversations, curriculum creation and work projects, and the rare teeny tiny comment here or there or elsewhere.

But now it is autumn (here is a longer piece on autumn, which also includes some beautiful quotations I gathered from various places), and it's time to sort through what's been harvested from the seasons of overflowing abundance, culling and polishing that which is worth keeping, and letting go the rest. Autumn in the Taoist 5-Phases perspective is the season of beauty, and inspiration, of grief and letting go, and appreciation of what's precious.

Today I'm moved back into the blog realm to commemorate the passing a week ago of a sweet friend and colleague, Steve Habib Rose, who was a dear friend to hundreds of people around here, and all over the world.

Habib was also a devoted and masterful networker and neighbor. In January, some of his close friends convened a gathering to celebrate and honor Habib in a unique way -- by discussing in council our experiences of Habib's gifts and talents, as a way of helping him to discern next steps in finding his own right livelihood. Around 50 people came together for a potluck meal in the community center that evening, and then sat in a big circle to hear and share experiences of Habib's work in the world. So many people related stories of Habib helping them to find work or housing or community by listening to them with with exquisite kindness and attention over tea or lunch, and then introducing them to just the right person or organization, or giving them information or a place to sleep or some other valuable thing. In one story, Habib gave a friend a camera so that the friend could document his peace-mission trip to Iraq. Habib and his beloved wife Elaine got to sit and receive all the stories and appreciation. Then we broke into smaller groups to brainstorm and collate more connections and possibilities and suggestions for Habib's job search. I think that as a job search modality it was clarifying and affirming and somewhat helpful, but certainly the greater value of the evening was the opportunity to lovingly and fully celebrate a friend who has given so generously to so many people. Many of us saw friends that night whom we hadn't realized also knew Habib, he moved in so many circles.

There are many reflections being posted at WISERearth, in the discussion group called "Habib's Garden."

Habib grew up Jewish and then converted to being a Sufi Muslim as an adult (and his wife is Buddhist). He received the perfect Sufi name from his teacher: "Habib" means "friend" in Arabic.

micro this and micro that

2007-09-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

Lots of references lately to "micro" things (I was going to write this whole post in tiny font but it was TOO SMALL:

In reference to micro-credit (for which work Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize) and other small but powerful actions, Gabriel Shirley and participants in one of his sessions at the recent Storyfield conference talked about needing a "metaphor for how small changes that individuals make have a larger collective impact (beyond the one about a butterfly, since that metaphor doesn't appeal to masculine and/or other cultures)"

In the Seattle Times today there was a feature about doctors who are opting for what are called "micropractices" -- solo (or very small group) practices with really low overhead combined with high-tech scheduling, billing and record management tools, that allow practitioners to make a good living while still allowing 30 to 60 minutes per patient visit. One therapist says, "It's an updating of a successful old model of a doctor working out of a limited space, giving people the time they need, answering phone calls personally and offering quick appointments to those who call. The way a contemporary micropractice differs is that it uses 21st century technology to eliminate all or most staff, and to cut through the paperwork that caused most doctors to leave solo practice. As a result the overhead is low. This allows you to spend more time with people and less time on administration" and it is a trend that seems to be catching on.

Speaking of trends: a couple of days ago the newest issue of ChangeThis included the manifesto Just 1%: The Power of Microtrends which talks about how "we can no longer understand the world in terms of a few megaforces sweeping us all along. Rather, society is being pushed and pulled by "microtrends" -- small, under-the-radar forces that can involve as little as 1% of the population. In fact by the time a trend hits 1 percent, it is ready to spawn a hit movie, create a political movement, even start a war."

During the last part of August some lanes of the main freeway that goes through Seattle were closed for repair, and terrible traffic jams were predicted by most people, but not by mathematician Oliver Downs of Inrix. Using a process called quantum tunneling (whatever that is -- but it sounds likes something both tiny and vast), they blend huge amounts of traffic data with an analysis of drivers' behavior in the past. Because of the "fifty thousand little things," -- the many and various choices made by people all over the region -- the gridlock that was predicted didn't happen. (My experience, making my own somewhat contrary little choice to drive on that stretch of road, was that the traffic was indeed very light)

I am intrigued by the desire of Gabriel & his colleagues to find an evocative image to describe the obvious power of accumulated small actions and decisions to create powerful and sometimes unexpected effects. What do you think?

above: tiny snail on a tiny blueberry that I plucked from the not-so-tiny, but underwatered, blueberry bush in my front yard.

where do I love you from?

2007-08-03T23:26:00.000-07:00

Today is my 49th birthday! Or, as a friend puts it, the beginning of my 50th year. I like that.

I suppose that there are numerologically significant things about this, the completion of seven cycles of seven years...but instead of investigating that, I want to write down this story I heard from my friends Michelle and Joel Levey, a story that's been keeping me company all day today: Michelle and Joel described a sweet and poignant visit to their friend M., to wish her a happy birthday. M. is elderly, and has Alzheimer's disease, and is in a full-care facility. They talked with a number of the residents, many of whom told Joel and Michelle they'd like to 'go home' now.

Their friend doesn't remember who Michelle and Joel are, but she remembers that they love each other. Michelle says, "instead of 'where do I know you from?' it's like, 'where do I love you from?'" They gave M. a card with a picture of Green Tara, a Buddhist embodiment of compassion. She didn't remember who it was, but kissed the image over and over, saying 'beautiful lady!'

Michelle and Joel talked about the importance of sincerely practicing now, while we 'still have our marbles'.

I think of it like this: when our marbles have rolled away, we'll have laid down such a deep matrix of love and willing presence, we'll be able to fall back and rest on that, our home base -- we'll already and always be 'home'.

photo source

conscious communion community of practice

2007-07-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Anne is giving me the privilege and fun of co-hosting a potluck gathering at her home on Saturday afternoon, and you are invited! If you are in town, and you'd like to come, write to me at christy [at] oneskywellness [dot] com and I will send you directions.

Dear Fellow in the Journey of the Evolution of Consciousness:

We are initiating a community of practice focused on living in conscious communion. ..AKA radiant networking.

You are warmly invited to gather at Anne's house, Saturday July 14th from 4:00 PM to whenever...for a conversation/potluck meal...expressing all modalities of intelligence.

You are one of the many circlers that have been inquiring into the nature of consciousness, the practice of spirited living, communing with all forms of being and non-being, legacy practices, fluent communication, etc. AND we want to provide a time and place for face to face exploration of the questions and insights that you/we are receiving and are presencing (to use Otto Scharmer's new verb...which our Microsoft Word spell check doesn't accept as being accurate! :-)).

We will be living in conscious communion during these gatherings... in the practice of receiving and offering from guidance, allowing whatever wants to emerge and following the life force as it comes through each of us. It will be juicy.

This will be the first in a seasonal series of inquiries.

AND we are HOPING you will grace us with your presence!! Be sure to bring musical instruments, art supplies and/or whatever else you are inspired to bring. AND some optimal edible to share :-)

Please RSVP to one of us (see e-mail addresses below). AND feel free to invite fellow journeyers...just let one of us know.
If you can't make it this time, but want to come to another gathering, please let us know.

Love in action!

Anne, Mark, Candi, Christy

leaving the holding space

2007-06-25T21:01:00.000-07:00

This little passage from Otto Scharmer's new book, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges reminds me of a sensation I have often had when leaving a time/space of communion (a kind of space which I like to use the word "conversation" to describe):

"When operating from that deeper presence of a future that wants to emerge, you connect to yet a deeper resource of listening and of intelligence that is available...

...What happens is that you leave that conversation as a different being -- a different person from the one who entered the conversation...You are no longer the same. You are (a tiny bit) more who you really are. Sometimes that tiny bit can be quite profound. I remember that in one instance I had a physical sensation of a wound when I left a particularly profound conversation. Why? Because that conversation created a generative social field that connected me with a deeper aspect of my journey and Self.

Leaving that holding space -- the social field -- discontinued that deeper connection, which I then experienced as an open wound." pg 186

I've usually described my version of that experience as feeling like my roots and their tiny delicate root hairs are being pulled apart from a deep entanglement with those of the person or people I've been with -- like Scharmer's "open wound," it can feel raw, and tender. Or, I feel it like I'm a piece of bread dough that's been stretched and stretched and then pulled apart from the other pieces, with the soft side exposed to the air. Two of the times lately when I've been aware of that sensation have been when leaving synagogue after a particularly sweet and deep Bet Alef service (which is, now that I think of it, all of them!); and today, when I got to congratulate the new naturopathic doctors who graduated from Bastyr, many of whom I got to meet years ago when they first started medical school. Although some of them will stay in the area, and some will relocate but will keep in touch, all of them have stepped over the threshhold of this particular "holding space," into somewhere new and vast and maybe far away from here. It will take a little time for the roots to readjust and settle, to remember that hearts and minds and breaths once mingled can never again be entirely separate, that "the deeper connection" is actually impossible to "discontinue."

taking care of the name

2007-06-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

"We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."
~Macrina Wiederkehr

I have felt lately as if I'm walking on the bottom of the river, and all the words and images are on the surface, in the light, where I can see them but not quite reach them right now. As I begin to describe what I'm seeing, I imagine they will seem to be separate fragments, and numerous, floating there on the surface -- but from down here they I know that they all send down filaments that criss-cross every which way, in time and space and meaning, way below the surface, and that's why this is such a long blog post instead of several separate ones.

((.)) This morning I spent a brief time holding the hand of a colleague and friend who last week was diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Six weeks ago she was still her radiant self: seeing clients, and writing, and immersed in her wide circle of friends and spiritual community, with no trace or hint of disease. From the outside she looks like she is sleeping. On the inside, I know that her brain has filled with little holes, like a sponge. On the deeper inside, I know that in a day or few, perhaps by the Solstice, she will have completely dissolved back into her radiant Self.
A message just came from the website her family and friends have been keeping, to tell her many circles that our friend "...left us just as the Solstice came to be this mid-morning of June 21, 2007. She is free now to move to another plane, her abiding spirit able to move to even greater heights. She had a smile on her face as she departed."
The last time we had coffee together was a few months ago, and we talked a lot about our mutual friend Bill, who died abruptly in January.

((,)) Last month, I phoned a friend to see if I could join him for a "bird-sit" the next morning, a pre-dawn meditation in the woods that he and some other friends had been doing -- being present and listening as the birds wake up in the morning. It turned out that he was in New York, called back because his twin brother had had some trouble breathing, been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, and then had a stroke while in the hospital. My friend's brother died less than a week later. They had just turned 41 in February.

((*)) In March, a cheer-ful and energetic woman whom I got to know while we were in Israel in 2004, was diagnosed with cancer in the gallbladder and liver, after having had many months of stomach pain, and after having lived through breast cancer 9 years ago. After extensive surgery, she was set to undergo follow-up radiation treatment when a routine CT showed that the cancer had already come back and grown more tumors in her abdomen. She manages to be devastated, deeply accepting of whatever comes next, and entirely open to miracles, all at once. She was at services two Shabbats ago, and looked great; you couldn't tell what was going on inside (the surface of the inside) if you didn't already know.

The stories aren't connected, except that each one is so intense, and abrupt, so peculiar, and life-threatening, or life-ending.

((')) Jack Ricchiuto writes in his beautiful new book, Conscious Becoming (which he wrote after an abrupt near-death experience of his own) (and which you can give as a wonderful gift to yourself or someone else, just by requesting the pdf version from Jack) : "When we are conscious, we love all the stories."

((-)) Almost a month ago was the holiday of Shavuot: the commemoration of revelation, of the people receiving the ten commandments (it turns out that a better translation would be the "ten utterances" or the "ten principles") at Mt. Sinai.

My sense of revelation right now: a moment fished out from the stream of light, a stream that could be -- and sometimes is -- a continuous dialogue, which lasts only as long as I am really listening.

Our rabbinic intern, Olivier, offered a traditional Shavuot night study session (well, we didn't stay up till the birds started singing, so it was not entirely traditional!) We talked a lot about the reverberation, the dance, between Descent and Ascent, the Yin and the Yang of creation and awakening. In the story of Sinai, the people (who are the Eternal in manifest, multivarious form) go up the mountain to meet the Mystery; the unmanifest Eternal comes down the mountain to meet the seekers/finders. Olivier says, "The universe wants this to happen, and it steps forth: God comes down" and we (all of us aspects of God), we go up. "But there is only so high we can go, while we live in bodies -- God has to come down." In our tradition, we also come back down, we don't stay on the mountaintop. For as long as we live in human form, we come down and go up and come down.

((~)) (I used these quotes from Jack and from Olivier in the "d'var Torah" (which means "Torah talk" and/or "Torah thing") that I gave recently at a Shabbat service celebrating the energies of the Divine Feminine. I've posted it at Ashley's generous forum, On the Wings of Curiosity.

Much later in the study session, we each drew a number from 1 to 10, our "utterance" to contemplate till next Shavuot. I picked number 3, which is the one that's translated "you shall not take the name of God in vain."

Olivier shared Rabbi Ted's teaching on this:
(It would be so much more charming and surprising and potent if you could hear Ted or Olivier tell it. In the meantime, you will have to settle for this paraphrase which is mixed with my own responses:)

It is only on the surface level that we would perceive that this should mean something as small as, "don't say 'God' as a swear word or curse."

Under the surface, on the inside, we remember the Self-name of God, the name that rumbles from the blazing bush in response to Moses' wondering who was speaking to him: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh ~~ I AM as I AM

If the name of God is I AM,
then who am I?
How can I take good care of this name?
In what ways do I use the name I AM unconsciously and what consequences does that generate? How often do I channel it into narrow pathways by the thought-less identifications I choose? Can I imagine I AM without bounds, without separation, without any identification at all?

((,)) I am filled with wonder and tears to read Chris' post, and all the keen and tender comments, on "Going to War at the Art of Hosting on the Art of Hosting" -- about clarity and surrender and collective shadow, about "fierce commitment to defend the territory of the open heart" and "the responsibility of love...never to push our adversary or interlocutor into a place they cannot go unless we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back."

((')) In a workshop over Mother's Day weekend, 5-element practitioner and Sufi healer Thea Elijah guided a classroom full of people in a practice of opening the heart and mind and body to whatever-it-is we conceive of as source (I am): First, let yourself trust the world to hold you, trust whatever- it- is you're sitting or standing or lying on to hold you up. It can help to widen your base (what Thea called "pyramid butt"). At the same time open the throat to awe and wonder (around the throat are many of the acupuncture points called the Window of the Sky points) -- that place in the throat that gets tight when we are very moved -- and open your mind and the crown of the head up to the Mystery and the "I don't know." Connected all the way Down, and all the way Up. With so much space going down and up, the heart space, the center of the body, can expand more easily. First, at the level of personal heart, at the front of the chest, where emotions are felt. Then let yourself go back, into the deep chambers of the heart, to the back of the body, the spine, which is our pillar of eternity, our connection to the Infinite. Then allow yourself to open past that, falling past eternity, and with the back body ("we are prepared and awake enough to go with them to guard their back") open, let yourself fill up from that source, which we can call by so many names ~ allah ~ elohim ~ deep love ~ I am ~ until you overflow into the group heart, the collective being.

((!)) During a summery, flowery, lunch on her deck, Anne asked me to describe that practice to her again. When I'd finished, she said that it reminds her of a sensation she often thinks of: when you are rafting down a river, with your feet pressed firmly at the front of the raft, and your arms lifted, chest open, feeling the current of the river through your back, holding you up, and carrying you on.

(cup of Anne's blooming heart tea)

((*)) On Saturday we attended the bar mitzvah of a friend's son, who in her apt words is "growing up beautiful and strong," including having healed from a brain injury from being kicked in the head last year by a group of kids who thought he shouldn't be in their neighborhood. He was magnificent, charming, genuine, funny (as my friend also said about her shining son in her little speech, "stylistically, there isn't anything more Jewish than the combination of intensity and humor").

Included in his service booklet, for the period of silent meditation, was this Rumi verse:

...Lo, I am with you always, means when you look for God
God is in the look in your eyes
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self
or things that have happened to you,
There is no need to go outside.

Be melting snow
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

Eating a fig on a sunny morning, I look at its curious form, the flower growing inside the skin. I think of my friends, and the look in their eyes, behind their eyes. It is very clear to me that whatever is happening on the surface, all of them are flowers growing perfectly on the inside, and so am I.

if you knew

2007-06-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

The new catalogue from Copper Canyon Press has 50 pages of new poems, from new books, including this excerpt from The Human Line by Ellen Bass -- a good teaser that definitely makes me want to get this book, or check it out from the library, in order to read the rest:

from If You Knew

~Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving bock the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm
or press your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airpot, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die...

ancient paradise

2007-06-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

"Some scholars believe the original Garden of Eden was where Iraq stands today. Though remnants of that ancient paradise survived into modern times, many were obliterated during the American war on Iraq in 2003. A Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher who lives near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers kept us posted on the fate of the most famous remnant: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Until the invasion, it was a gnarled stump near Nasiriyah. But today it's gone; only a crater remains.

Let this serve as an evocative symbol for you as you demolish your old ideas about paradise, freeing you up to conjure a fresh vision of your ideal realm."

~Rob Brezsny, Televisionary Oracle and author of FreeWillAstrology and "PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"

Photo originally uploaded by Marirs

what about me

2007-06-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

A video from spoken-word artist, marathon runner, Shambhala Sun columnist, and realized Tibetan lama Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche from his album Mipham:

bee people

2007-05-25T09:19:00.001-07:00

This is from my friend and colleague, Karen Stocker:

Dear Human Cousins,

You worry we may be disappearing.

You wonder if we've died, become lost or run away.

We give thanks you wonder! We like it when you Human People wonder.

Please wonder!...about our lives, our days, our ways of flying out and all the way home on any available breeze; our yellow pollen fuzz leggings and blur of glascene wings; our ancient intimacy with blossoms; the precise hexagonal wax of our edible hives; the amazing, thick, sweet medicinal translucence of honey; our dance vibrations languages and questioning antennas, our irresistably magnetizing queen, and faithful tender attentions to each of our precious jewel-like sleeping unborn; our reason for being bees.

Please wonder!...what is flight like in a tangle of satellite signals, cell phone fequencies, exhaust and high voltage wires? What does Life feel like without Her, without Them? What meaning can be made from the taste of sugar water and 'pollen substitute'? Can we be shipped by the thousands, thousands of miles in the chaos and din of metal eighteen wheelers? How many times can we land on the open petals of ancestrally welcoming flowers to find the heart we enter sprayed or engineered hostile?

Wonder Human Cousins, could you live like this? Released, would you come back?

with Respect and Love to our Human Cousins,

Bee People

Bumblebee on bramble, originally uploaded by SouthbankSteve.

ripening self

2007-05-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

There are many names and quotes and terms I would normally make links for, in this post, but I want to publish it before sundown and the beginning of the holiday.

Today, for another few minutes, is the last day "in the wilderness" between freedom from enslavement (the story of Passover) and "revelation," stepping into the responsibility of freedom (tonight begins the holyday of Shavuot). It's the last day of "counting the omer," (didn't that seem like a long time?), counting the steps between two ways of being, making each day count.

Shavuot is the cyclical experience of standing at Sinai with all the children of Israel ("isra-el" meaning, "one who is wrestling with god") from all time, of hearing a voice which tradition says was/is outwardly silent, inwardly shattering. Rabbi Gerson Winkler of the Walkingstick Foundation writes about his experience, including this encounter with Miriam, the sister of Moses:

"...You want to explore the meaning of life? You want to achieve Nirvana? Go attend some self-discovery seminar, or read some bestselling paperback on how to attain enlightenment in six easy steps. You want to explore the will of God? Be ready for some seemingly mundane stuff about wholesome, conscientious relating with your ox or donkey, with your laborer, your housekeeper, your children, your partner. That's what God wanted to talk about directly, and chose to do it in a direct open major revelation so as to draw your attention to what is really important, not what you surmise is important; to get the point across loud and clear that the theme of this life is Relationship: relationship with self, other, earth, and with the mystery from which all emanates."

"Every Shavu'ot I recall my encounter, with God at the Mountain of Sinai; with Miriam at the Tent of Meeting. Every Shavu'ot I feel myself ripen, so much so that I trust enough to release my desperate grip on the Tree of Knowledge, and allow myself to fall onto the earth."

Following the energies of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life has brought us today to the Ground of the Ground, the day of the energy center called Malchut, in the week that also corresponds to Malchut. Rabbi Ted writes, "We are here, in this world of countless wonders. This is where we must realize the energies of the Tree. This is the space in which and for which we have responsibility."

Malchut is also called Shechinah, the in-dwelling, the filling up, the brimming over Presence.

Jay Michaelson writes,

"...There's a wise teaching that while the mind may know that all is one, the heart still experiences two. You and me; here and there; now and later — or before. And so the heart experiences a yearning which is sometimes sweet, oftentimes holy, and other times bitter and tinged with pain.
This yearning is also part of our reality. Our experience of separateness is part of our reality. And that which is present is not mere illusion: it is the Presence of the Divine, the shechinah, the tenth sefirah, also known as malchut, sovereignty...
...In Divine terms, malchut is the world that we experience, which is filled with the Shechinah, the Divine presence. Malchut is that aspect of the Divine which is totally immanent, absolutely here and now, closer to you even than your concept of "you."

Consequently, malchut is also that aspect of God which — as expressed poetically, and in ways that would horrify some rationalist philosophers — experiences what we experience. When we experience joy, malchut experiences joy; when we experience sadness, malchut experiences sadness. Most radically, when people are oppressed, enslaved, or even exterminated — this is malchut's experience as well."

A journey of only 50 days -- plenty long enough to be very challenging to my ability to sustain attention. Marking each step with a very brief ritual blessing was easy to remember almost every night; following along with the specific meditations was manageable for a few weeks out of the seven; making each day count, paying attention to how each moment is worth counting -- so much more challenging, so much more important.

George Por writes, "...a pattern that I sense as essential to our survival: for the new (temporary) states of collective consciousness to lead to the next stage of social evolution, they call for the sustained attention of groups in the tip of the wave to evolutionary dialogues, learning journeys into the future that wants to come into being through our loving attention to the 'magic in the middle,' as the late Finn Voldtofte used to talk about it."

I like to think that "the sustained attention of groups" can mean that the heart and mind and intention that I give to the groups that I care about, contributes to the habit and the practice of attention that calls forth "the future that wants to come into being" through us, and then that attention can remain steady and sustained and available to me and to all of us, even as some of the individuals in the group have their turn to lose focus (me, this week).

Rabbi Ted writes, on the threshold of awakening, "We are already the One we need to be."

more luminous edge: "everyone was like, whoa!"

2007-05-19T14:29:00.001-07:00

These spot-on reviews, from today's Seattle Times:

"When an internationally acclaimed performance-art festival is in Seattle, it only makes sense to ask Seattle-area children what they think of it.

"We sent out a troop of youngsters to catch some of the acts on stage during the first two days:

Emma Baron, 9, on "Luminous Edge," with juggler Thomas Arthur:

The most incredible thing I saw: The juggler. He was three characters and he was amazing. He made it look like the balls were coming out of nowhere. He made it look like he was twirling a piece of string. He was juggling and rolling balls through a tube and catching them while juggling. It was really amazing and it was really cool.

They asked us to be quiet but ... The one time it was really loud was when he was juggling glowing red balls. It was dark and the balls were glowing and showing in the dark. Everyone was like, "Whoa!"

Marni Lehman, 9, on "Luminous Edge," with juggler Thomas Arthur.

Where did all those balls come from? At the Children's Festival we saw Thomas the Juggler, and he was amazing! He made juggling look like the balls were coming out of nowhere. Thomas can juggle from under his legs to the top of his head. He can juggle very fast and makes it seem as if you see one ball but it is actually three.

Sound and visual effects: He tells a story as he goes on with the juggling. He makes a lot of noises that I can't make at all. He is three different people, characters such as a wizard. He has a screen that goes with what he is showing. The screen comes on right after or before a character. Thomas makes things on the screen look real. He will make his shadow go in the middle of the screen like walking through it. He makes special noises while he is juggling the balls. He also has a squiggly piece of metal that he moves hand-over-hand to make it look like it is coming up from the ground and never ends. He has a piece of wood that he can make look like a snake. He has rocks that he can make look like a snowman and has lots of stuff that he can make look real.

The show stopper: He can juggle in the dark with three glow-in-the-dark balls that are red. Thomas puts a ball in one way, and it comes out another. He makes one ball go all the way around in a circle. He makes three balls go around at the same time. He was juggling things behind his back and rolling them on his arm, and it was amazing!
photo of Saturn back lit by the sun, from the Cassini probe
photos above, Thomas and Ashley

luminous edge, inside out, upside down, and backwards

2007-05-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

Chris sat still for a while, as everyone moseyed out to chat in the lobby following Thomas' performance of Luminous Edge last night at Seattle Center. When he could speak again, he said with sparks of wonder lighting up each word, "Have you ever seen someone make art of what you do?" I thought (out loud), "it's like seeing yourself inside - out up there."

Chris writes more here about the intimate patterned dance of chaos and order, and the "process artist" practices of uncovering and understanding and supporting the natural patterns of human conversation and relationship and organization, and the way that Thomas (and Ashley, who was a matrix-deep collaborator in the creation of the show) illuminated it all in a deep and beautiful weave of sound and story and movement and image.

Two nights ago, I got to sit next to Ashley and her dad, Paul, and my friends Chris and Rick, for a talk by Paul Hawken who is on the lecture circuit with his latest book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, which I wrote a little about last month. You can read the beginning of the book in issue 43 of Ode magazine.

Paul Hawken speaks with warmth and a sweet sense of humor, and deep appreciation for all of the many ordinary (and the few celebrated and extraordinary) people who have been growing the roots and branches of this movement.

Since first hearing him speak at the bioneers conference in October, I have been thinking a lot about his conviction that

The environmental movement seems to have the upper leg because the house is burning down. Literally. So it is very easy for the environmental movement to turn to the social justice movement and say, yes I know how important your issues are, but the house is burning down. You should come and join us on the environmental bus. I think that it is upside down and backwards. Global warming is injustice. It is a type of colonialism. If we are going to be effective over the short time we have, we have to slow down, stop, and change the bus. I think the environmental movement has to get on the social justice bus.

Whatever we call that bus, I think the process artists have an important and useful role to play, perceiving and nourishing and connecting and integrating the deep patterns that are most restorative and regenerative and healthy for the human and more-than-human lifeworld.

Photos by Ashley and Thomas

work with the energy of joy and fire

2007-05-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

Even if you have a lot of work to do,
if you think of it as wonderful,
and if you feel it as wonderful,
it will transform into the energy of joy and fire,
instead of becoming a burden.

Tulku Thondup Rinpoche
The Practice of Dzogchen

from Word for the Day
gratefulness.org

halfway through the wilderness

2007-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight begins not the 26th day and not the 28th day of the counting of the Omer. The movement through the wilderness that began with Passover (the beginning of freedom from enslavement) and will culminate on Shavuot (the revelation of the responsibilities of freedom) is counted as 49 days/steps, so we are now a little more than half way. At this point, I am aware that I am often saying the blessing as a quick thought- between- thoughts, and sometimes forgetting to say the blessing at all (I would forget many more nights except that I am on a daily "count the omer" email reminder list!) and that at a deeper level, haven't been consciously "making each day count" as fully as I want to.

Being a glass-half-full kind of gal, though, I can choose to receive this momentary waking up, already halfway through the wilderness, as a blessing -- I still have a little more than three weeks to participate ever more fully in this ritual counting of the days, in this ritual focus on the lifetime practice of making each day count.

Rabbi Ted writes this about the Day that begins tonight, the day of Yesod (Foundation) in Netzach (Victory/Vitality):

...Yesod, [is] the seat of ego, the place of our lesser "i," the identity with which we interact with our world. This is the Foundation from which our energies will reach out to our world.
Yesod brings this Foundation for expression into Netzach. From our physical sensations and perceptions comes our experience of the world. Netzach encourages our appreciation of that which is behind all specific forms of sensation; Yesod provides the avenue through which those energies will be able to act in the world.
Daily Focus:
My energies flow more freely now than every before. I honor the work I do in the world, and breathe new life into my being. I know the blessing of my lesser self that carries my energies out into the world for good. I am a center of energy expressing Life this day.

Artwork above "Ain Ode" (c) Avraham Lowenthal, Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art

i've been waiting for this moment for all my life

2007-04-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Like "Pearls Before Breakfast", the Washington Post's article about an experiment to see what would happen when acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell performed anonymously as a busker in the Washington, DC Metro station during commute time (tiny video clip accompanies that article, and audio of the full performance is here), this video of art unfurling as a gift in a public space has been going around:

In an email conversation with some of the Beauty Dialoguers about the Washington Post article, Thomas wrote:

The curious relationship between time and beauty. . . How much nourishment of soul we lose when space and time are so deeply contracted around us.

The article brought up a memory of my own glorious street performing career. Mid-eighties in Seattle; I was without any money for a few weeks. Every day at lunch hour I'd go to an outdoor plaza at a downtown skyscraper. It was in front of a sweet little restaurant that had windows lining the courtyard where I would juggle for an hour. I remember it being really cold. I would wear fingerless gloves and just practice the hour away. I would make five or six bucks which I'd use for breakfast the next morning. After my fingers were frozen and my hour was up (and the lunchrush was over) someone from the restaurant would come out and invite me in where I would feast of the special of the day. The staff loved me. The folks on lunchbreak barely seemed to notice.

and Kara added:

As an artist, I am so grateful that our perception of when we allot time for beauty made its way into a mainstream newspaper.
There are people who seem to set a specific time for beauty, and assume that much money has to be spent for this appreciation to be valuable. I have had much luck selling humble prints in leisurely places where people are open to absorb as much beauty as they can, like on Hawaiian beaches (selling one print in the morning ensured my food for the day, so I could surf for the rest of it!;) or festivals.

I first saw this video of singing group Naturally7 (as well as the Joshua Bell article) at Patti Digh's 37Days, as part of her National Poetry Month Poemapalooza, and she got it from Sue Pelletier, (whose post includes another interesting video) and then a few days later I saw it again as the Video of the Week from KarmaTube. They accompanied it with these recommendations: "1) Experience your daily routine as if encountering it for the first time. What's new and different about today? 2) Send a note of gratitude to Naturally7, through the group's manager Birgit Kurth 3) Give way to joy."

I am grateful that I can benefit from other people's sensitive antennae, and being alerted to what they've noticed reminds me to practice stopping, and sinking in, and sensing this and every moment full of the exuberance of the world -- which we, as part of that outpouring of creation, are so perfectly attuned to recognize, our senses matching exquisitely what there is for us to sense.

"If you really want to hear with penetration and find its associated pleasures, you must imagine you are waking up over and over again -- waking on your feet, becoming aware 'in media res.' "(in the midst of things)
~ Stephen Kuusisto, Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening

Thomas, by the way, is performing someplace warmer now -- in a few weeks he is presenting the world premiere of Luminous Edge, a show commissioned by the Seattle International Childrens Festival, tickets here.

humanity's immune system

2007-04-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

A good chunk of Paul Hawken's stirring presentation to the Bioneers community annual conference has been transcribed on their site (and my own notes are here).

Paul's exploration of the phenomenon he discusses below has culminated in a new book called Blessed Unrest, coming out May 10, and to the construction of an internet platform called WiserEarth which "...serves the people who are transforming the world. It is an open source, community-editable international directory and networking forum that maps, links and empowers the largest movement in the world – the hundreds of thousands of organizations within civil society that address social justice, poverty, and the environment.

"WiserEarth provides the tools and a platform for non-profit organizations, funders, social entrepreneurs, students, organizers, academics, activists, scientists, and citizens to connect, collaborate, share resources and build alliances.

"WiserEarth is the first of three projects to be launched under WISER (World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility): WiserEarth will be followed by WiserBusiness and WiserGovernment respectively. Another WISER offshoot currently in development is the WiserCommons project."

WiserEarth is accessible to the public -- go, create a profile for yourself. Check out the "visualize network" function!

The largest social movement the world has ever known is upon us

by Paul Hawken

The social justice movement, environmental movement and indigenous movements are intertwining and morphing, and are becoming the largest social movement in the history of the world. They are, in essence, humanity’s immune response to political corruption, economic disease, and ecological degradation.

It is the first time a movement understands that honoring the web of life is integral to addressing poverty, violence, and oppression. There are still separate movements, though. There is an environmental movement and there is a social justice movement. They are definitely coming closer, but they are not yet one. If they could truly become one movement, the transformation possible would be unimaginable. When a black child in Oakland winces at the thought of an ancient tree being cut down in northern California, and when an ex-logger in northern California winces at the thought of a black teenager being cut down on the streets of Oakland, we’ll know that day has arrived.

The environmental movement seems to have the upper leg because the house is burning down. Literally. So it is very easy for the environmental movement to turn to the social justice and say, yes I know how important your issues are, but the house is burning down. You should come and join us on the environmental bus. I think that it is upside down and backwards. Global warming is injustice. It is a type of colonialism. If we are going to be effective over the short time we have, we have to slow down, stop, and change the bus. I think the environmental movement has to get on the social justice bus.

There are one million organizations in this world that are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war upon the people and places on this Earth. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. We means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there’s a black, brown, and copper colored movement.

This movement is about ideas, not ideologies. We have to make those ideas better known to the world. This movement claims no special powers. It grows up in small ways, but now we have to become more powerful. Rather than control, it seeks connection and now we must become much better connected to each other. Rather than seeking dominance it strives to disperse concentrations of power, but now we have to aggregate our voices.

We have to make it known that this movement is about addressing the suffering on this planet and those who bear the suffering. Knowing its weakness, it creates innovative tactics to leverage itself. It forms, gathers, and dissipates without central leadership command or control. No one knows its size, especially those inside it. There is such fierceness here. There is no explanation for the raw courage and the heart seen over and again in the people who march, speak, create, resist, and build. It is the fierceness of what it means to know that we are human and want to survive.

To witness the worldwide breakdown of civility into camps and ideologies and meaningless wars, to watch the accelerating breakdown of our environmental systems is harrowing and dispiriting. I said this movement is an immune system. Well, immune systems fail too. This movement most certainly can fail. What stands before us, I think, is a gift of self-perception, the gift of seeing who we really are. We will either come together as one globalized people or we will disappear as a civilization.

Our minds were made to defend us, born of an immune system that brought us to this stage in development and evolution. We are so surfeited with the metaphors of war that when we hear the word defense, we think attack. But the defense of the world can only be accomplished by cooperation and compassion.

Science now knows that every child while still in diapers exhibits altruistic behavior. It’s hardwired. It’s in our genes. Concern for the well being of others is something we are born with. We become human by helping and working with others, and buried in our genes literally is faith and love. What it takes to arrest our descent into chaos is one person after another remembering who they are, where they are and joining together to save and restore life on Earth.

Paul Hawken is the author of numerous books, including the forthcoming Blessed Unrest. Excerpted from “Biology, Resistance and Restoration: Sustainability as an Infinite Game,” Hawken’s 2006 Bioneers conference plenary, which is available for purchase on CD or DVD (or mp3 dowload, only $1.99) at the Bioneers Store.

meditation for the 17th day

2007-04-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

"In this week of Tiferet, we are given a Day of the Heart. We are blessed with Tiferet in Tiferet, encouraging our focus on the higher identity we call ruach, the non-ego identity which senses itself in all beings.

"What is healed in Tiferet, in the space of the Heart, is the overwhelming sense of separateness with which we often experience ourselves in our world. We reach beyond that fragmentation to perceive the deeper Consciousness within each of us. In this Consciousness we are always connected. That which animates all Being is One. And in Tiferet, we touch that One through the gift of Compassion.

"Through this awareness, we understand that all human possibilities live in each of us. There is nothing which is truly foreign. When we stop throwing others from our hearts by pretending that we are better or that they are better, the possibilities for the healing of humankind can be realized. In Tiferet, we know intimately that any person's pain is our pain, that we are part of all humankind. In Tiferet, we celebrate the awakening of others and understand how their awakening supports our own.

"Today we renew our dedication to healing by realizing how all human energies awaken in the One Light of this Greater Self. Indulgence of our violence makes a mockery of evolution; Compassion for our darkness opens the way to true growth.

"We seek to balance the energies of light anad dark, high and low, heaven and earth. From that balance, transformation emerges. In Tiferet we accept all selves, so we might more clearly discover the deeper Self we share. Through this Identity, we awaken to the deeper truth of our own uniqueness."

Daily Focus:
"I release myself to the Light of Tiferet now. I allow this Light to reach outward from my heart-space to fill my entire body. I feel this Light expand beyond myself and reflect back to me from those I meet. Now all the energies of confusion and doubt within me meet in this Light. A deep inner healing flows as blessing through every cell and every level of my being. In this Light of Comapassion, I am One now."

~~Rabbi Ted Falcon, PhD, A Journey of Awakening: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tree of Life, pp 78-79

neohasid

2007-04-14T23:08:00.001-07:00

From neohasid:

"We don't know whether our actions will make a difference now. That puts our efforts in the realm of ritual, where the invisible consequence of what we do is often more important or more recognizable than the visible or physical element."

Oops! How appropriate that I neglected to blog all the Counting the Omer meditations for the rest of the week of Gevurah, which means Discipline (and Limits, and Strength). So now we are in the week of Tiferet, which is translated as Balance, Beauty, Compassion, Harmony, and which is at the heart-center of the human body and at the center of the Tree of Life. (The Tree is diagrammed onto the body, with each of the sefirot corresponding to a particular place.)

Rabbi Ted says, "Tiferet is the Center of the Tree of Life. The right side of the Tree signifies force, and the left side, form. The central pillar symbolizes balance and identity. The identity of Tiferet is the 'Inclusive I,' the inclusive shared-Self behind the exclusive ego-self.
"In Tiferet, there is a balance between the self which resides in the body and the Universal Self beyond individuation. Here the worlds are connected.
"At Tiferet there is also a balance of force and form. Tiferet is the 'heart-space' of the Tree, reflected as the heart-space within each of us. Tiferet holds an ever-expanding Compassionate Awareness."

The Meditative Focus for this week is: "Now we allow ourselves to awaken to a greater sense of balance. There is a peacefulness which expands within the Heart of our being, a peacefulness which gradually radiates through our consciousness. We open to an awareness that holds compassion for everything it touches."

Tree of Life painting above, Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918)

eco-omer and 2people

2007-04-13T23:06:00.001-07:00

Today there were more than 1400 actions large and small all over the nation, for Step It Up 2007, National Day of Climate Action. Here, there was sun and rain and sun and then lots of rain (of course there was, it's Seattle) but there were still lots and lots of people (the news said "hundreds" but our conservative count from the sidelines before joining the parade/march was more like a couple of thousand) calling on Congress to enact legislation to reduce US carbon emissions 80% by the year 2050. There were marching salmon, trees and unindentifiable forest denizens (sorry we didn't get any good photos of them), as well as a graphic and crunchy line of sunflower seeds along Second Avenue in the downtown gallery district, showing where the waterline would be if predictions of a 20-foot high increase in the ocean's reach should come true with the melting of the polar ice caps.

One of the ways to continue to be involved is to join 2People.org, the brainchild of local organizer Phil Mitchell. 2People is a combination of social networking site and climate change solutions think tank, extending this invitation: "If you're looking for ways to get involved, and people to connect with, you can find them here. We're a community of concerned citizens, helping each other find ideas and form teams, whether it's for taking political action, greening your lifestyle, or letting others know about what you're doing."

There were a lot of faith groups in the march, too, since the reverent stewardship of this world which sustains us turns out to be an inherent teaching of many religions. And here's the connection to the counting of the Omer (because yes, it is still Omer time! Now, having said the blessing, it is the 12th day, of the 49): there is a lovely "eco-omer to honor the earth, omer lich'vod haaretz" at Bet Haverim in Atlanta, "to draw attention to the actions and attitudes that can bring an ecologically sustainable world...subtitled Project New Leaves, the experiment will attempt to engage congregants in outings and simple personal actions. The goal is to transform habits and mobilize hope. The ecological theme of each successive week is based on a successive day of creation from the Genesis story." Thanks to the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Omer count, which is also emphasizing religious environmentalism, for the link.

And here is just another little photo of downtown Seattle from today.

good night, mud!

2007-04-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

Another wonderful selection from Joe who sends out a poem every day via his Panhala listserv (to subscribe, visit the archives page)

In memory of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1922-2007

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith

(excerpt)

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud

that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ~

(Cat's Cradle)

(the drawing above is from Kurt Vonnegut's art site)

energy and form

2007-04-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

This week resonates with the energies of the level on the Tree of Life called Gevurah (Strength, Limits) or Din (Judgment). Last night and today was the day of Gevurah in Gevurah, and tonight we enter into the day of Tiferet (Beauty, Balance) in Gevurah.

Rabbi Ted points out that,
"Gevurah, 'Strength,' is the most problematic sefirah on the Tree of Life. It is generally seen as the sefirah of Judgment, since another traditional name for this sefirah is Din, which literally means 'judgment.' Gevurah is on the left side of the Tree and so represents form, and within the world of form unfold the polarities of our experience. Gevurah represents the forms called 'feelings,' forms which contain and limit emotional energy. With Gevurah comes happiness as well as sadness, pleasure as well as pain. We cannot know one without the other. So Gevurah is seen as the origin of 'evil,' since it is the place where we first feel 'good.'

Part of the Ted's suggested meditative focus for Gevurah in Gevurah is "When I accept my current experience, I allow an expansion of feelings. New forms emerge to express deeper levels of my own integrity."

And now we've entered into the day of Tiferet -- the center and heart of the Tree of Life, which holds the qualities of Balance, Beauty, Compassion -- still in the week of Gevurah.

Today's meditative focus: "Today what was closed opens again. New possibilities awaken with the day, as I experience a renewed sense of wonder at the expansion I feel deeply within. I discover a fountain of Compassion that nourishes the fuller expression of my Being. In this Compassion, I discover forms of feeling more inviting for the energies of openness and Oneness. There is new joy in this day."

the bottom of the tree of life

2007-04-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

Counting the Omer (with Homer!) and continuing to take the steps from the place of enslavement ("mitzrayim") towards the place of revelation ("Sinai") that correspond to levels of energy on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, we walked yesterday through Malchut (kingdom) in Chesed (lovingkindness), and tonight into a new week, with Chesed in Gevurah (discipline, limitation, strength).

Malchut is the energetic level at the "bottom" of the Tree of Life (the bottom being the branches and leaves and fruit, with the roots reaching the other way, "up" into undifferentiated Source); all the previous energies pour like a fountain into the kingdom, the dense realm of materiality, the world of our ordinary reality. Although the material world (the earth, the dirt) is regarded in some systems of thought as the opposite of the spiritual (the heavens, the sun), far away from the realms of ascended realization, in this perspective the mundane world is always, absolutely, just as suffused with Being as any other realm -- even though it can be shadier here, and foggier. Dark, and cold, and heaviness, are all Yin qualities, as are interiority, femaleness, receptivity, stillness, depth. In many ways the most Yin aspect of the Tree of Life, Malchut corresponds to the aspect of the Divine called the "Shechinah," the Presence that dwells within (shechinah comes from the Hebrew root that also branches into the word for "dwell"), the interiority of Being, often described as the feminine aspect of the Eternal.

Rabbi Ted writes,
"In Malchut all the flavors of the upper vessels manifest, but the Holy is hidden in husks of materiality..."

"I grow more aware of the Presence of Lovingkindness in which this world is held. I feel this deeper influence through every cell of my being. I am always one with this Universal Source of Life. All reality reflects this Loving Presence. In all I meet, I sense the blessing of this Love."

The meditative focus for this next day, of Lovingkindness held in Limitation (the energy that restricts, constricts, and allows for the shaping and channeling of what would otherwise overflow and flood; allows for the formation of all the array of feelings from pure Love):
"I awaken to a new reverence for all the feelings which arise in me now. I grow more aware than ever that the energy of Lovingkindess animates all feelings. This awareness helps me appreciate the incredible dance of feelings I experience. I begin this second week with blessing."

step it up 2007: national day of climate action

2007-04-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2007, is "National Day of Climate Action." Serving as the organizing hub is Step It Up 2007, a grassroots group which has used email, word of mouth, and online networking (plus a write-up in Business Week, and an endorsement by Al Gore) to inspire and invite gatherings, actions and rallies of all kinds, in order to send the message to Congress to "Step it up -- cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050."

The Step It Up 2007 team writes,
"As a truly global crisis, global warming will impact everyone. However, the impact will be felt greatest among the most vulnerable of the world’s population. While global warming presents us with our most pressing challenge, it also presents our most inspiring opportunity. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure that our solutions to this crisis take these populations into account."

So far there are over 1300 rallies and actions being planned by local volunteers, with at least one in every state, and people adding new ones to the list every day. There are going to be over a dozen in Seattle alone, including "The Marching Forest of Shoreline" ("Calling all aspiring trees, squirrels, mushrooms, suns, streams, hills, bunnies, bushes, butterflies, birds, bees, fish, flowers and bad English Ivy! We invite you, even if you don't live in Shoreline, to join our carbon-offsetting forest to help raise awareness about the global warming crisis"), a Solutions Fair, a couple of actions to mark how far the waters will rise if the polar ice caps melt into the sea, and a march between Pioneer Square through downtown to a rally at Myrtle Edwards Park (across the street from Seattle icon the Pike Place Market)

In case you can't make it on Saturday, I will try to get some good photos of the marching forest!

bonding in lovingkindness

2007-04-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

"The sixth day of this meditative process brings the energy of Yesod (Foundation) into Chesed (Lovingkindness). Yesod...represents the ego identity in all its glories and all its limitations...

Chesed, the center of Lovingkindness, needs Yesod to carry its energies into the world, and Yesod needs Chesed in order to remember the deeper Nature of its being...

Yesod brings the personal identity, through whom all Creation will be met, into Chesed, the Lovingkindness which seeks that realization."

from A Journey of Awakening, Rabbi Ted Falcon, PhD

"Yesod of Chesed: Bonding in Lovingkindness

For love to be eternal it requires bonding. A sense of togetherness which actualizes the love in a joint effort. An intimate connection, kinship and attachment, benefiting both parties. This bonding bears fruit; the fruit born out of a healthy union.

Exercise for the day: Start building something constructive together with a loved one"

from The Meaningful Life Center, Rabbi Simon Jacobson

eternity and glory in lovingkindness

2007-04-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today was represented by the energy of Netzach (Reverberation, Endurance, Eternity) in Chesed (Lovingkindness), with the suggested focus phrase from Rabbi Ted, "...There are no limits to the energies now available. Today I honor the new possibilities for self and for the world."

And tonight -- which is not the fourth, and not the sixth, day of the counting of the Omer (the curious custom is that you don't count the day till after you have said the blessing) -- begins the day of Hod in Chesed. Hod means Glory, and Splendor, and according to some teachers is also associated with devotion and humility.

Jay Michaelson writes, "Netzach means 'eternity;' it is the aspect of revelation which stretches horizontally for all time, and the attribute of endurance within the Divine — in the sense both of "God's mercy endures forever" and the more common usage of endurance through difficult times. Hod, its complement, means 'splendor.' It is the aspect of revelation which exists vertically, as a peak experience, or contact with that which is transcendence. It is the source of what Heschel called the experience of radical amazement: the shattering encounter with the numinous that engenders the birth of wonder.

"On the more mundane planes, we can (borrowing from Thomas Edison) understand hod as inspiration, and netzach as perspiration. Hod are those moments of insight at which we sing and shout "awwww!" Netzach are the rest of the times. Hod are, in relationship, those perfect evenings on tropical islands, where the sun sets over the water and the night is filled with love. Netzach are the times you pick your lover up at the airport. To paraphrase Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, hod is like a Ferrari; netzach like a Jeep. To paraphrase Jack Kornfield, hod is the ecstasy; netzach is the laundry."

Rabbi Ted offers this focus for meditation: "My sensations embody Lovingkindness. Through every sensation this Lovingkindness manifests. Today I perceive this Lovingkindness reflected in every perception, and know the blessing of the One Who gives all life its beauty and its glory."

(Kabbalistic Tree of Life above, silkscreen print by David Friedman in Safed, Israel)

tiferet in chesed

2007-04-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight is not the second, and not the fourth, day of the counting of the Omer. Still in the week that corresponds to Chesed (lovingkindness), this day corresponds to Tiferet (harmony, beauty).

Rabbi Ted writes, "On the third day of our process, we seek the balance of Tiferet in Chesed. Tiferet is the Heart Space, translated as "Beauty." It is the sefirah symbolizing the energies ofthe Greater Self, the Individuated "I."
"The Greater Self that lives within each one of us is drawn this day into the field of Lovingkindness. We receive from this outpouring of emotion that which supports the fuller awakening of our deep self. And, in turn, this Self contributes to the reality of Chesed itself..."

The meditative focus for the day:
"Within my heart I meet the deeper message of Love to be expressed through word and deed. I honor the Compassion brought this day into the flow of Lovingkindness. I feel the light of Lovingkindness illuminate my entire being, as I breathe these universal rhythms deeply. I am nourished by the compassionate flow of Life awakening within me now. In this fuller awareness, I grow and I share."

gevurah in chesed

2007-04-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight is not the first, and not the third, day of counting the Omer. This week corresponds to the sefirah of Chesed (lovingkindness) and this day to Gevurah (might/limitation).

Rabbi Marcia Prager explains in her lovely book, The Path of Blessing: Experiencing the Energy and Abundance of the Divine,

"Chesed is God suffusing all the worlds with life without restraint. Chesed is the boundless outpouring of divine desire to give. [Gevurah, or] 'might,' on the other hand, refers to the energy of constriction or withdrawal, also called tzimtzum, which contains and circumscribes the rush of life-force.
Through tzimtzum the full and unbearable intensity of God's unrestrained energy is reduced, cooled, and modulated...Through the quality of "might" divine light is shielded, hidden, so that our lives are possible.
...When we are in touch with [this] aspect of the divine, we discover that divine self-restraint, withdrawal, and constriction, far from being negative, are as full an expression of God's love as is God's chesed. Both are essential for our flourishing."

Rabbi Ted's meditative focus for this day:

"I honor both the energy and the form of emotional expression now. I relax body and mind, and trust the higher energies to manifest through me in supportive and healing ways. I receive more fully now, that I might express more effectively in my world."

journey of awakening

2007-04-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day and tonight is the second night of Passover. Tonight we begin to count the Omer, the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, the 49 stages between leaving the place of enslavement, and standing in the place of revelation.

Rabbi Ted's book, A Journey of Awakening: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tree of Life (for some reason, this book is crazy expensive on Amazon -- but you can find it at many bookstores), is a guide through those 49 steps (with the encouragment to travel through them at any meaningful time during the year). He writes,

"The traditional Counting of the Omer includes the following blessing, recited in the evening (or during the ma'ariv, the evening worship service), followed by the counting itself. When you are practicing these meditations during the actual days between Passover and Shavuot, the meditations follow the blessing and the counting.

"Our blessings themselves become meditations when they flow with kavannah, with "intentionality" and "one-pointed attention." Savor the blessing. Let it speak through the Heart of your Inner Silence. Be receptive to the meanings it holds.

"The Blessing Preceding the Counting
Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheynu Melech ha-olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu ahl s'firat ha'Omer. Blessed are You, Eternal One our God, Universal Creative Presence, Who sanctifies us with paths of holiness and gives us this path of counting the days of Omer.
The formula for Counting the 49 Days of the Omer Journey
Today is the ____ day, [comprising _____ weeks and ____ days] of the Omer."

Rabbi Ted's meditations for this time follow the flow of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with each of the seven weeks of the journey, and each of the seven days of each week, reflecting one of the lower seven of the ten universal energies (sefirot). The first week, and the first day of the week (which is tomorrow), correspond to Chesed (Lovingkindness).

There is much more explanation and guidance in the book. Here is a little bit of Rabbi Ted's suggested focus for the first day: "I step beyond the safe confines of my enslavements now. I am filled with exactly the energies I need as I begin my journey toward greater purpose and meaning. I welcome this deep Lovingkindness that naturally supports my growing."

And here is the poem-of-the-day from Panhala:

Passover

Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .

and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
-Exodus 12: 7 & 13

They thought they were safe
that spring night; when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.

~ Lynn Ungar ~

(Blessing the Bread)

educating for delight and responsibility

2007-03-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

BBC Radio 4 has on its website for the next few days a charming and inspiring little (about half an hour) conversation between author Philip Pullman and Enid Jones who was his secondary school teacher in Wales almost 50 years ago. Pullman is the author of many books, including the intricately imaginative trilogy His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass -- called The Northern Lights in some editions -- The Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass). His Dark Materials is often what comes to my mind when I'm asked what is my favorite book (even though it is three books!). My family was lucky to discover the set only after the third one was published, so that we didn' t have to wait for years between books like earlier fans did. Now the books are being made into a film (you can read more about that in Pullman's own words here)

Pullman has stayed in touch with Miss Jones over the years, and in their conversation they touch on what the radio show host describes as "trying to trace the impossible -- the sources of his inspiration" -- education as a practice of "delight and responsibility," Pullman's own early teaching career as "a wonderful apprenticeship in storytelling," writing as "a process of discovery" and that if you have a plan and an outline (as writing instructors in our schools these days tend to insist) "in advance you won't discover anything."

But it looks like the shows only stay available till the next week's show gets posted, so best to go hear it now! (it's on the right, under "Listen Again" for Thursday)

voices, songs

2007-03-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there is too much to say, and all the ideas and words get piled up at the door -- so to free up the flow a bit, here are some as gleaming links, each deserving to be looked at close-up and in detail. (Update: and here is a much better clip of the amazing Discovery Channel program mentioned below -- this one a clip of a awesomely massive great white shark hurling its whole body out of the water to engulf a seal.)

My friend Karen described to me the other day what it felt like in the woods where she used to live, hearing the watery warbling songs of a type of thrush, each calling across the forest to the others, so that you could feel by the songs how deep the place was.

Here are some beautiful voices that are helping me feel how deep this place is:

Recovering Whole Mind: Jeff Aitken is posting rich excerpts from his doctoral dissertation on indigenous traditional knowledge and Open Space:

"My center of gravity has shifted. I feel that I am in the land, not on the land. These trees outside my window are my relatives, older relatives (chayyah, “sprouting beings”), who came here before my kind, and made it possible for my kind (m'dahber, “the talking beings”) to come forth, nurturing us with life giving breath (ruach), with fruits and nuts (pri ha'etz), with wood and leaves to build structures for warmth and comfort."

The One Voice Movement was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos this year to deliver their message: "Our destinies will no longer be ruled by extremists. We - Israelis, Palestinians and international supporters - will work ceaselessly to support our elected leaders in their efforts to end the conflict. We will stand up as OneVoice for conflict resolution and non-violent citizen action" via powerful videos of passionate voices in several languages.

Avaaz ("voice" or "song" in Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Nepalese, Dari, Turkish, and Bosnian) "is a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. The aim of Avaaz.org is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decisions. Avaaz.org members act for a more just and peaceful world and a globalisation with a human face." Their video, "Stop the Clash of Civilizations" is here.

The New Wilderness Project: "Through performances, workshops, and educational expeditions, New Wilderness Project is an exploration of wilderness and all of its social, cultural, artistic, and environmental implications. Our programs are designed to break down traditional barriers and create an open space where participants are encouraged to take a journey of discovery into difference, and otherness, toward the vital relationships that define social and ecological well-being."

KarmaTube, which is part of CharityFocus ("an experiment in the joy of giving"), "is a collection of short, "do something" videos coupled with simple actions that every viewer can take. Our mission is to spread the good. Thank you for your partnership in service."

Last link for today is to the stunning images in the Discovery Channel program "Planet Earth." The official website is fancy but pages seem to take a long time to load. Video clips of some of the most spectacular shots are easier to view on the Nature Conservancy site (and unlike the above video clips, I prefer to watch these ones without the voice-over track switched on!)

time and perfection

2007-03-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear, I got out of the blogging saddle for a little while, and now I think I've forgotten how!

Hmm. So. Well, the past couple of weeks have been plushly full. On Friday I had the privilege and deep pleasure of filling in with what thoughts I was able to gather together, for my friend Bill who was teaching Advanced Naturopathic Therapeutics to the senior naturopathic medical students before he passed away. The students are so generous and receptive, and were willing to thoughtfully and heartfully engage with all of the ideas I scattered before them. I am very appreciative of their powerful collective presence and imagination.

One of the things I spoke with them about was our relationship with time, as human beings and particularly as clinicians (if you visit this link, scroll down to #4, Dr. Bob May's comments). One of the aspects that characterizes holistic care is the amount of time we dedicate to cultivating relationships, to listening and perceiving and exploring.

Bill taught us an expanded understanding of time and perfection and our place in the scheme. He wrote in his chapter on The Healing Power of Nature, for the forthcoming Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine textbook,

“…the possibility for higher wellness predates the effort or even the awareness, but exists as an attractive force because the healing power of nature has more wisdom than the sentient present tense of the person.

“In this sense, we are attracted to a higher level of wellness by the future.” Bill Mitchell, the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, pg. 8.

Another view on time that I've been carrying close in the past couple of weeks comes from No End, No Beginning: The Intimate Heart of Zen, by Jakusho Kwong Roshi:

"...the first teacher you will meet at a Zen center is the schedule. No matter what you may want to do or not do, the schedule provides a kind of natural pressure that pushes you past your hindrances, past your ideas of yourself and your fears or inhibitions...All of this pressure begins to accumulate like frost gathering on snow; it functions like the pressure that transforms coal into diamond."

Being so busy lately has me feeling very acutely the edges of my schedule; Kwong Roshi's view gives me a new appreciation for those edges. Regarding it as my teacher I am even starting to show up on time (most of the time!)

meeting space

2007-02-23T22:04:00.000-08:00

We are just back from a few days visiting family in northern California, where I grew up and where my mom still lives.

If you peer very closely at this view of the Marin headlands, facing south towards San Francisco, you really can see the top of the Golden Gate bridge peeking up in the dip between the hills. One of the trailheads up to the headlands, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area, begins just up the hill next to my elementary school (well, from the school you wind your way up the hill through a development of multi-million-dollar homes, then you get to the trail)

A special treat on Thursday was getting to meet with Jeff Aitken face to face for the first time, after a long while of being words-on-a-screen friends through the Open Space world community, and its warm loose confluence of bloggers connected in heart and soul if not in time and space.

Here we are at Caffee Puccini, one of Jeff's neighborhood favorites where we told stories and laughed and drank coffee with an opera soundtrack for a background.

Looking west from the trail, you are met by this view of the Pacific ocean.

real work

2007-02-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

"I do like my work," she said to her friends over coffee and chocolate biscotti. "When I'm in my practice, I'm engaged, and doing good work, and people seem to be benefiting. But, when I'm not in the office, I think of my real work work as this," she said. She waved her arms vaguely.

"What is "this"?" her friends asked kindly.

"This -- the medicine of hanging out together," she said.

"Ooooo. That's good," said her friends.

fonting

2007-02-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

Well, switching over to the "new" Blogger, I find that the font size I used to use is WAY too small in this version, so even though I am planning to finally get reading glasses any second now, I think I will gradually edit my archives. Plus, I get to label and categorize now, which is satisfying! Apologies in advance to my friends who are tracking me via subscription feed, for the potential cramming up with the updates.

Just a little ice, and some things starting to bud:

songs of ascent

2007-02-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

As I sit down to begin this post, it is not quite sunset. So it is still, just barely, the 15th of Shevat -- Tu B'shvat -- which is the date of a Jewish holiday called the New Year for Trees. Being a lunar calendar, the beginning of the month is always the new moon, and the 15th is the full moon. The full moon this month marks a traditionally minor agricultural festival whose esoteric meaning is not minor at all: it is the day in the very dead of winter when the Tree of Life begins to reawaken. In modern times it has become a popular time for tree-planting and remembering the importance of wise ecological stewardship and for celebration of the wood beings.

Psalms 120-134 are known as the "songs of ascent," (shirot ha'maalot) and are traditionally chanted on Tu B'shvat, or on the fifteen days between the beginning and middle of the month. Rabbi Jill Hammer teaches that the ascending nature of this practice echoes the rising of the sap in the trees at this time of year (in the mid-east countries, anyway!) It's also thought that these 15 songs of praise might have been sung by pilgrims ascending the great steps up to the massive Temple in Jerusalem.

Last night, with a misty full moon glowing through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Bastyr's darkened cafeteria, the student-organized Mystery School hosted a circle gathering in memory and mourning and celebration of their beloved mentor and professor, Dr. Bill Mitchell. Circle participants were asked to bring something that reminded them of Bill, for a small altar set up in the center of the room. Bill's long-time companion Joanie brought Bill's amazing beaded wooden rattle, the top made of a twisted tree branch that looked vaguely like the skull of a goat, and which we got to use as a talking stick. Many people brought special plants and poems and music, and everyone had a story. Just as during his memorial service, the abundant stories last night revealed again and again Bill's extraordinary capacity for infusing all of his relationships and even brief encounters with presence and kindness and joy. How amazing it is to realize that every one of us who considered ourselves his friend is correctly certain that our relationship with him was a particularly treasured, and intimate, and loving connection -- and I think that, without exaggeration, "us" equals thousands of people -- family and friends, patients and colleagues and especially current students.

For the circle, I brought one of those songs of ascent, Psalm 121, as translated/interpreted by Stephen Mitchell.

I look deep into my heart,
to the core where wisdom arises.
Wisdom comes from the Unnamable
and unifies heaven and earth.
The Unnamable is always with you,
shining from the depths of your heart.
His peace will keep you untroubled
even in the greatest pain.
When you find him present within you,
you find truth at every moment.
He will guard you from all wrongdoing;
he will guide your feet on his path.
He will temper your youth with patience;
he will crown your old age with fulfillment.
And dying, you will leave your body
as effortlessly as a sigh.

(This illluminated text is a fragment of the Psalm by Jerusalem scribe Avraham Borshevsky)

I also brought to the circle the Hebrew words set to music, which I learned from the gorgeous Israeli group Sheva (I can't figure out how to access the direct link, so if you go to their site, choose English, click on Discography, and then on the second CD from the top -- "Day and Night" -- then on the first song, and you can hear a tiny tiny snip)

Their translation for what Stephen Mitchell calls "the Unnamable" is "the Pure Being".

Now, it really is dark, the moon is on the wane, and so it's become the 16th of Shevat.

The Tree of Life continues to surge with the juices of new vitality.

And in our basement office, with its plant-friendly compact fluorescent lights, a descendant of the Tree of the Consciousness is already bearing leaves and fruit (Rabbi Ted like to point out that in the Hebrew version of the Eden story, it does not say "apple," it says "fruit," though afterwards the incarnating beings did sew fig leaves together for clothes...as long as we're pretty sure it couldn't have been a mango, then can't you imagine the luscious fig in that role of the sweet irresistible temptation luring the new humans onto the path of awakening incarnation?)

impermanence

2007-02-02T15:56:00.000-08:00

one day it cracks them open

2007-01-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

After talking today with a dear friend about his obviously powerful practice of kundalini yoga (a practice that awakens the energy lying like a serpent coiled at the base of spine, which then rises to enable the yogi's individual consciousness to merge with the Divine Consciousness), I remembered that my hero-friend Bill Mitchell practiced and taught a type of kundalini yoga for many years. I have had a sweet strong sense of Bill yesterday and today as a being who has suddenly shifted form, merged with the cosmos, gone super-nova, and become an intense radiance that has lit up the stars in our eyes... and now I recall a lovely comment that Chris wrote at Ashley's when a soul friend of theirs died a month ago at the solstice: "I have had this image with me all day of a star exploding, shedding layers and layers and seeding many new stars all around."

So many new stars.

I think that this star-burst/snake-uncoiling energy is an ecstatic one. An energy that takes us far beyond our ordinary sense of who we are, beyond where we think we end and the rest of the universe begins. A power that we experience at numinous times like these, when the veil floats aside for a moment and we are tossed high and low by the great winds of life and death. When we feel pinned through the heart to this present time; and when there's nothing left of us to be pinned, because we've already been dissolved into the fertile emptiness.

An energy to appreciate, and maybe, like my friends, to cultivate.

"Many myths...speak of a snake that glides, sinuous and silent, through the shimmering branches of the body-tree. Universally, the snake symbolizes the primordial creative energy of the cosmos in general and the life force within the body in particular. What we call ecstasy is the dance of the serpent through the tree of our consciousness.
--
"If you think of your body as a house, the serpentine force is the electricity that flows through all the rooms and lights them up. Seen with the inner eye, every living body appears luminous -- it shines, shimmers and scintillates, each cell a little star.
--
"Ecstasy is always a gift of grace. Its comings and goings cannot be controlled...Or, as Rumi puts it, "God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box."
~Jalaja Bonheim, PhD

Unmarked Boxes
Jalal al-din Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round
in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flower bed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open.

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, "Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away.
You're back in the room.
I don't want to make any one fearful.
Hear what's behind what I say.

Tatatumtum tatum tatadum.
There's the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night.

dreaming bill

2007-01-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

(Updated 2/15/07: There will be two memorial services for Bill at Bastyr University, one on Friday Feb. 23 at 5:30 pm in the chapel, moving to the fire circle on the hill above the herb garden at 6:30. The second will be the following day, Saturday Feb 24, a formal service in the chapel at 2 pm that will be webcast)

My spirit buddy and teacher, Dr. Bill Mitchell, died the night before last of a broken heart. His son Noah, aged 27, had died suddenly in the morning, and Bill died that night in his sleep. They both died of myocardial infarction ("heart attack").

Bill was one of the co-founders of the John Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine, where I went to medical school, which has since grown up to become Bastyr University.

For the first 15 or 16 years that I knew Bill, I really mostly just knew of him, and he didn't really know me. Like many of my school mates, I was in awe of his brilliance, his robust connection to the natural world, and his weirdness -- little realizing how weird I was going to turn out to be myself.

In 2002, when I started a two year stint as Assistant Dean in the Naturopathic Medicine department at Bastyr, one of my first and favorite assignments was to support Bill's teaching of a new elective course, the prototype for a series meant to embody and make explicit the part of Bastyr's mission statement that emphasizes education and services that "integrate mind, body, spirit and nature". I got to talk with him often on the phone and meet with him to create the syllabus and course requirements and other things he was not so interested in. He told me early on that "the syllabus can't really be created until after the course is over, because I won't know till then what Spirit's going to want me to say." Then we laughed for a long time and knew that we understood each other, and ever since then we have loved each other.

I last saw Bill a couple of months ago over lunch at a little restaurant near his office. He talked about an idea of leaving his practice to his daughter, who is also a naturopathic doctor, and maybe leaving this city where he had been for so many years, about going to a place where he could swim for hours in the warm ocean. Our last interaction, though, was by email, which turned out to be a pretty reliable way to keep very loose track of his moonbeam self. I had written him to describe a dream I'd had of him on New Year's Eve, where I had been so happy to run into him because I needed to ask him a question about Dr. Bastyr's practice. In my dream, he'd said, "well, that means Dr. Bastyr has something to tell you!" and pulled a large phone out his jacket, to connect me with Dr. Bastyr (who died in 1995). Then I woke up. Bill's email reply to me was "Wow what a great dream. Dr. Bastyr healed you. You knew you were being healed. He didn't say a lot. And he worked on your back and neck. Love and laughter in the new year. Bill"

Bill had ravishingly hard times in the past few years, enough to break a heart many times over. He was scoured out from the inside and became almost transparent; you could see the light shining straight through him. He let all the hardship pour through him like a great river, and he didn't hide from it or hide it from those of us who orbited him.

It turned out that I often had occasion to weep in Bill's presence, for very varied reasons. He never minded, it was always OK with him. I know that it's OK with him, now, too. Leaning on his presence was like leaning on a mountain. And that's still true, too.

The soundtrack for my day yesterday, before I had heard about Bill, happened to be Joni Mitchell's Blue, and her song "A Case of You" has gotten woven now into the missing him that rises up today:

I remember
that time you told me
you said,
'love is touching souls'
surely
you've touched mine
Part of you
pours out of me
in these lines from time to time

You're in my blood
like holy wine

and from Hildegard von Bingen, one of Bill's patron saints
and about whom he was exceedingly knowledgeable:

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

happy birthday, rabbi ted!

2007-01-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

Yom huledet sameach, Rabbi Ted! Happy 65th birthday, with deep love and appreciation for the way you have been willing to enter the center of the fray all your life in order to offer the teachings of the one silence.

A birthday sort of poem, courtesy of Panhala:

Instructions

Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.

~ Sheri Hostetler ~

(A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry)

that last curving and impossible sliver of light

2007-01-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

one of Saturn's moons
photo source

our moon's phase tonight: waning, 1% of full

FAITH
by David Whyte

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this, then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

by David Whyte, from *Where Many Rivers Meet*

dangerous unselfishness

2007-01-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

In a new book by University of Washington, Tacoma, professor Michael Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, one of the 1300 sanitation workers on whose behalf Dr. King was there in Memphis, says of him: "King was like Moses. You can't keep treating people wrong, you gotta do right some time."

It was in Memphis on the eve of his assasination that he gave the prophetic "I've been to the mountaintop" speech, in which he declared, "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness." He explored the parable of the good Samaritan who helped the man along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho:

"But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the 'Bloody Pass.'

…And so the first question that the Levite asked was, 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

That's the question before you tonight. Not, 'If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?' The question is not, 'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?' 'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?' That's the question."

That speech, his last, ends like this:

"…Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Though the words are powerful to read (find the complete transcript here), it is immeasurably more powerful to actually hear him, which you can do from here, or hear and see him, which you can do here or here; to feel his deep, slow, deliberate, rhythmic voice, and his message, and his force of spirit, roll through you and carry you and hold you up.

"But Moses never got to the Promised Land, and I just couldn't understand it...Moses only got to see the Promised Land and to watch the others go there. Everyone else had been given their dream. It didn't seem fair to me.
"When I told this to my grandfather, he smiled. 'But Moses did get his dream,' he said. 'Moses was a leader, Neshume-le, and a leader always has a different dream from the others.'
"He reminded me of mitzvot, those human actions that help move things in the direction in which God is trying to move them. When a person does such an action, they become God's hands in the world. 'There are many mitzvot, but the greatest mitzvah of all is said to be the freeing of captives,' he told me. 'Moses's dream was for his people to be free. And so his reward was that he got to see that happen. Because he was a leader, his dream was different from the dreams of the people, Neshume-le.

"A real leader has the same dream that God has.'"

~My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

winter and water

2007-01-07T15:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I caught a brief, a really really brief, glimpse of the possibility that the light will remember to come back here.

Looking into the Cascade mountain range from my backyard.

Well, that view is just a tiny bit telephotoed...

This is what I actually see from my backyard.

This is how the world usually looks around here these days -- including just a little while after the first photo.

(although earlier tonight it snowed, and it's still crystally and brilliant white)

And this is how it feels sometimes: windblown, dampish, and getting frayed around the edges (but in the meantime, the prayers are dissolving into the air and are carried off by the wind)

I rediscovered some elemental fragments I contributed to Wings, the community playground at Easily Amazed (please come play!!)

Here is the part that tells about where we are now:
Winter and Water. Black and deep blue. Kidney, Bladder, bones, ears. Death and the "end" of the cycle. Reflection, stillness, depth, silence. Wisdom and the will to live. Water is the reservoir of our lineage (genetic and spiritual), our generative potency. It is the seeds in the dark, cold, silent ground full of intensely concentrated essence of future. The archetype of the Sage. Water is adaptable, enduring, patient, flows according to where the way is open, goes around obstacles, stores our power. The source of our capacity for awe.
In his teachings on the elements, my friend Paul adds this: Water is community. Gathering. Things coming together. Sense of holding on, with feeling. Water practices: holding every moment as precious; deep listening.

Little update: still all water, all the time, mostly the frozen kind -- the prayer flags stiff and unmoving as the snow fell; just tonight starting to melt and drip and run down the hills or be drawn up into sky or stem or trunk. Just like the water in the world, the water moving in us can be frozen stiff, can rush and flood, can drip and penetrate, can soak and nourish...how does the water within you flow these days?

sacred conversation

2007-01-05T18:51:00.000-08:00

Peggy Holman recently posted a beautiful article called "Evolution, Process and Conversation: A Foundation for Conscious Evolutionary Agency" to the Open Space listserv, originally written for the Evolutionary Life e-magazine.

In it, she wonders/suggests:

"Could it be that consciousness is the latest evolutionary innovation that, when applied to conversation, catalyzes a new form of social system, the conscious co-creative collective, the radiant network of deep community? I believe that conscious conversation is the path to what Thich Nhat Hanh imagined when he said: "It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation." [Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Next Buddha May Be a Sangha" in Inquiring Mind, Vol 10, No.2, Spring 1994]

which reminds me of a teaching I read a couple of years ago -- a similar co-evolutionary idea in a different costume:

"'Messiah' in the original Hebrew is understood by the Kabbalists, quite astoundingly, to mean 'conversation'. Master Nachum of Chernobyl, mystic and philosopher, points out that the Hebrew word for messiah, Mashiach, can be understood as the Hebrew word Ma-siach -- Messiah, meaning 'from dialogue' or 'of conversation.' [Me'or Enayim, Parashat Pinchas] His assertion radically implies that the Messiah is potentially present in every human conversation -- every mutual act of voice-giving.

"All conversation is sacred. The ability to have an honest face-to-face talk in whihch both sides are true to themselves, vulnerable and powerful at the same time, is messianic. Simply put, sacred conversation is the vessel that receives the light of Messiah."

a radiant network

life awakens and is new

2007-01-01T22:45:00.000-08:00

“Human breath is rooted in Divine breath, and Divine breath is inherent in human breath, reflecting the interdependent nature of the human and the Divine...

"Please ask yourself how long the breath of life that moves through you so freely at this very moment has been here. How long have these literal molecules circulated in one form or another in our world? …continue to breathe naturally and allow the question to touch your imagination lightly. There is no need to think of any particular answer...

"After you have considered how long your breath has been part of the world, extend your inquiry to include the molecules that make up your entire body. How long have these been around? How long has all of your body circulated around and around in our world, transforming from one form to another? Please engage this with your whole body and mind, allowing yourself to feel the question as it moves through every part of you...

"Remember, when the spirit or wind of creativity is brought to our tasks, and when we follow the example of the Creator and breathe life into what we undertake, life itself awakens and is new.”

Peter Levitt, Fingerpainting On the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom

Thank you to Meredith, for showing the way to this book full of incandescent sparks.

This photo is from a morning's showshoeing on Mt Werner in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where we have been for the past week.
May this new year be as fresh, and enlivening, and may our interdependence with one another and the Divine become ever clearer.

being a conduit

2006-12-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

From Charity Focus' inspiration offering DailyGood quote of the day:

"Art condenses the experience we all have as human beings, and, by forming it, makes it significant. We all have an in-built need for harmony and the structures that create harmony. Basically, art is an affirmation of life."

From the artist's resume:

"I think about things that excite me: convoluted strata, the eroded and broken edges of cliffs, the constant interaction of the elements, the movement of boats on water…

I think about the object and its inner image; the activity of each and the play between the two and I try to be straightforward to remove unnecessary information.

For all the theorizing, formal and conceptual notions, the truth of the matter is that I see myself as a conduit. The titles come afterwards so that I don't impose myself on the work as it goes along. Then I leave it alone.

I have been saying the same thing all my working life. Just in different ways."

five micro stories

2006-12-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

I was reading Chris' detailed, surprising and really interesting contribution to the "five things you might not know about me" story percolating around the blogworld. Then I got to the end and found that he'd handed me one of his five batons to carry on (though Chris, since you were tagged by Dan and two other friends, wouldn't you have 15 batons?) This is actually a combination of "you might not know" plus "I'm pretty sure you don't know" plus "maybe you do already know, I can't remember what I've said already":

1. My oldest boyfriend was (still is!) 30 years older than me. It was actually a pretty brief affair, and then we stayed friendly by letter. A few years later, after I was married, my husband and I got to visit with him and his lovely new wife when we were traveling through their part of the world. And then I got to reconnect with them again a couple of years ago after being out of touch for 15 years -- they are both still adorable.
One of the things I like best about being middle-aged is that there are friends you have loved for 20 or 30 or 40 years or more, and even if you have not seen them for many years there can still be such deep unchanged affection.

2. I have three sons, but usually I say that I have two, because our first little guy, Nadav, died at 12 weeks old of sudden infant death. While I am grateful to have had him for as long as we did, and am also grateful for my youngest who would not have been born without the loss of the first, and don't mind talking about him, I don't mention him much in public. My relationship with him continues in a very different form, a very interior form. His gradual appearance and swift disappearance from human form tenderized me forever and created the beginning of a gradual unfurling of the leaves of both my inner and outer life.

3. If it weren't poisonous, I would definitely be a smoker. I love the way smoke looks curling out of a cigarette, the drawing it in and blowing out. I don't actually even mind the smell so much, though my preferred cigarettes are filtered "kreteks" (Indonesian clove cigarettes) which have their own distinctive heavy-incense smell.

4. I have been to beautiful Indonesia, land of the kretek: after Robert and I got married we took almost all of our wedding gifts back to the stores, got money, and bought round-the-world tickets. We started in Los Angeles, spent a week in Hawaii, and then went to Asia for a year: Japan, China and Tibet, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, India and Nepal for from a few weeks to a few months in each country. Then about six more months spent partly on a kibbutz in the north of Israel, partly in Spain (my in-laws met us there for a whirlwind 4-star driving trip, so different from the way we'd been traveling! I hardly remember any of it, it was such a blur), then visiting friends in Paris and in London, and then back home.

5. The name I got from the Chinese side of my family (the other side being Japanese, by the way) is not our family's original name -- my grandfather bought the papers of someone named Lee to come to the US from China, but his family's name was really Kwan (or Quan depending on what system of transliteration you use). My husband's family changed their name, too, though only a generation before us -- his dad and uncles decided that "Eisikowitz" was too hard to spell (in fact I think I am spelling it wrong), and changed it to "Engel" (which hardly anyone spells correctly on the first try either!). If all that hadn't happened, instead of Lee-Engel, our last name would be Quan-Eisikowitz...has a different feel to it, doesn't it?

Here are some people I am very curious to know more about (curious, and not sure you will see this, so I am going to cheat and send you a note)(and please ignore this invitation if it doesn't sound fun to you): Andy, Meredith, Thomas, Jon. And Doug, I am curious to see what aspects of you would come through your very poetic style. And I am definitely looking forward to reading what Ashley will write! (already tagged by Chris)

no less amazed

2006-12-08T16:17:00.000-08:00

I so love it when I read my own vague thoughts and feelings expressed in someone else's simple, true, gently precise words:

Incomplete Knowledge
~Jeffrey Harrison

I am of those whose knowledge will always be
incomplete, who know something about the world
but not a whole lot, who will forever confuse
steeplebush and meadowsweet
but know at least by the shape of the flower
that it has to be one or the other.

Don't ask me the difference between
a pitch pine and a red, or even a Jeffrey,
though I know it's a pine, not a spruce or tamarack
(a.k.a. hackmatack, but what's a larch?).
The difference between a sycamore
and a plane tree? It's beyond me.

I've never had a real grip on
Japanese painting—the different periods and styles.
I don't even know that much about Dutch—
Vermeer of course, Rembrandt sure,
but could I distinguish a De Hooch from a Steen?
Do I even know how to pronounce their names?

I know next to nothing about what goes on
under the hood of a car, though I try to hide that fact
in the presence of mechanics. Herakleitus
(am I spelling that right?) said something
about how we hide our ignorance,
but I can't remember exactly what it was.

Birds, music, fishing, history, it's appalling
how limited my knowledge is.
I'm not even going to begin to list
all the books I haven't read.
I'm the antithesis of a Renaissance man,
spread so thin I hardly exist.

I have a friend who knows what seems like
close to everything. Certainly everything in the woods.
He was explaining to me the difference
between steeplebush and meadowsweet
(which I understood at the time but didn't retain,
as if it were the theory of relativity),

when I looked up and saw a jet whose trail
of fine white cloud kept disappearing, reappearing,
and disappearing again, and I asked why,
and, holding the meadowsweet in one hand
and the steeplebush in the other, he explained it.
And he wasn't bullshitting, either—he knew.

I'm not sure I even understand what it means
to know that much. Does all that knowledge
add up to some encompassing wisdom,
something beyond the sum of the names
and data, vast and unknowable? Unknowable
at least to me: I will never be like my friend.

I misplace facts as easily as my glasses,
so the world seems blurred for a while—
but then I find them, put them on, and go outside
to greet the ten thousand things (is that a Buddhist
or Taoist expression?), no less amazed
for my not being able to keep them straight.

(Today's selection at Poetry Daily)

sleep and snow and melting into

2006-12-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

I think that I got enough sleep last night for the first time in ages! I went to bed at 7:00 last night -- then around 7:30 the "Seattle Christmas Ship" docked at Matthews Beach (half a mile downhill from our house) and the Bellevue Chamber Chorus (through mighty loudspeakers) serenaded everyone for miles around with Christmas carols for 20 minutes before going on to their next stop along Lake Washington. So, I went to sleep at around 7:51, and didn't wake up till 8:30 this morning. Ahh! Satisfying my mammalian hibernation compulsion.

Plus, things have been very full lately. On Friday morning I went downtown to the "Building a WISER Sustainability Commons," which was inspiring and exciting & about which I will write later. Then went home for an hour, baked cookies for our office building's (the Seattle Healing Arts Center) holiday gala, and then with my 11-year old and his friend went to the fancy party which mixed tuxedos and string quartets and champagne with Cuban soul music and potluck desserts and little kids playing with surgical masks and an astrologer colleague dressed all in dazzing white including some kind of big ruff of snowy fur around his neck. Last year there were 400 guests, and I think this year there might have been more!

But I didn't stay too late because yesterday morning I had to get up early to catch the 9 am ferry to Whidbey Island, to join in a day-long workshop with poet David Whyte at the Whidbey Institute / Chinook Learning Center. Though last week's snow has pretty much disappeared from Seattle, there is still lots of snow and ice covering the fields and rooftops and driveways of South Whidbey, about a half an hour's drive and a 15 minute ferry ride away.

I am still mulling over the day's rich conversation, replete with stories and poetry and quiet time on that magnificent land, and will write more about that later, too.

In the meantime I'll just note that David Whyte has a beautiful new book of poetry out, called River Flow: New and Selected Poems 1984-2007. While I was paging through the book on the ferry ride home, I stopped at a favorite one, an unflinching and elemental poem called "Self-Portrait," from Fire in the Earth.

There is a very popular New Age-type poem that you can find quoted on coffee cups and greeting cards and such, called "The Invitation," that begins: "It doesn't interest me to know what you do for a living/ I want to know what you ache for/ and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing..." I first saw it on a scrap of paper under the glass tabletop of the neighborhood teashop and liked it very much. A few years later I read David's poem and loved it very much, and was surprised to see the identical structure, so I looked for the website of the author of "The Invitation" and learned that she wrote it after a writing workshop with David where he gave them his poem as a writing exercise template. Here is the piercing original:

SELF-PORTRAIT
~David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

glowing from the inside out

2006-11-28T22:23:00.000-08:00

Patti's writings at 37Days always glow, full of truth and humor and love and insight. This one glows with special fire, and offers up with deep and breathtaking tenderness the essence of love and community and thankfulness.

This photo is by Hamed Saber