The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow.

It goes among things that change.

But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen;

people get hurt or die;

and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford ~

Mystery of Life

The mystery of life

is not a problem to

be solved,

but a reality

to be experienced.

 

~ Aart Van Der Leeuw ~

 

(quoted in The Soul Unearthed)

Not dawdling

 

 

Not dawdling
not doubting
intrepid all the way
walk toward clarity
with sharp eye
With sharpened sword
clearcut the path
to the lucent surprise
of enlightenment
At every crossroad
be prepared to bump into wonder

 

~ James Broughton ~

In the Book

In The Book

A hand appears.
It writes on the wall.
Just a hand moving in the air,
and writing on the wall.

A voice comes and says the words,
"You have been weighed,
you have been judged,
and have failed."

The hand disappears, the voice
fades away into silence.
And a spirit stirs and fills
and room, all space, all things.

All this in The Book
asks, "What have you done wrong?"
But The Spirit says,
"Come to me, who need comfort."

And the hand, the wall, the voice
are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.
The story ends inside the book,
but outside, wherever you are --

It goes on.

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

 

~ Wendell Berry ~

 

(Collected Poems)

AMONG THE MULTITUDES

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

 

I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from under another tree.

 

Nature's wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, field mouse.
each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

 

I didn't get a choice either,
but I can't complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
Someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape tousled by the wind.

 

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

 

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

 

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

 

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.

 

What if I'd prompted only fear,
loathing,
or pity?

 

If I'd been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?

 

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

 

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments.

 

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

 

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

 

(Poems New and Collected 1957-1997,
trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

A quiet man

 

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

 

~ Wendell Berry ~

 

(Given)

My heart is so small

My heart is so small
it's almost invisible.
How can You place
such big sorrows in it?

 

"Look," He answered,
"your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world."

 

~ Rumi ~

 

(Whispers of the Beloved  by Maryam & Azima Melita Kolin)

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

 

 

Chapter 1

 

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

 

Chapter 2

 

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

 

Chapter 3

 

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

 

Chapter 4

 

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

 

Chapter 5

 

I walk down another street.

 

~ Portia Nelson ~

 (There's a Hole in My Sidewalk)

What We Want

(Credit : Panhala)

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

 

~ Linda Pastan ~

What we notice

life is a garden,

not a road

we enter and exit

through the same gate

wandering,

where we go matters less

than what we notice


~ Bokonon ~
(The Lost Book)

There is nothing you can't achieve

 If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

 

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut yourself.

 

(Tao Te Ching, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

 

Truth

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

~ e. e. cummings ~
(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

(credit)

The same Beloved, singing the same song...

No postmortems, please.
The world is immortal.
The world renews itself.

 

What about poems and songs --
Do they perish?
Maybe they only
Vanish awhile.
Maybe they go underground
To gather some other
Knowledge and come back
In another form:

 

New words, a new melody,
Yet somehow
The same beloved,
Singing the same song.

 

~ Gregory Orr ~

 

   

(Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved)

 

 

Not A Courtroom...

The world is not a courtroom,
there is no judge, no jury, no plaintiff.

This is a carvan,
filled with eccentric beings
telling wondrous stories about God.

~ Saadi ~

What Is There Beyond Knowing?

What Is There Beyond Knowing?

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me?  I can't

turn in any direction
but it's there.  I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same -- what shall I say --
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out.  Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(New and Selected Poems Volume Two)

Too marvelous to be understood

Mysteries, Yes

 

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

 

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

 

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

 

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Evidence)

 

Awake awhile ... right now..

Awake awhile.

It does not have to be
Forever,
Right now.

One step upon the Sky's soft skirt
Would be enough.

Hafiz,
Awake awhile.
Just one True moment of Love
Will last for days.

Rest all your elaborate plans and tactics
For Knowing Him,
For they are all just frozen spring buds
Far,
So far from Summer's Divine Gold.

Awake, my dear.
Be kind to your sleeping heart.
Take it out into the vast fields of Light
And let it breathe.

Say,
"Love,
Give me back my wings.
Lift me,
Lift me nearer."

Say to the sun and moon,
Say to our dear Friend,

"I will take You up now, Beloved,
On that wonderful Dance You promised."

~ Hafiz ~

(I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz -- Daniel Ladinsky)

Sensation of the Mystical

Sensation of the Mystical
("found poetry")

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience
is the sensation of the mystical.
It is the sower of all true science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead.
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms -
this knowledge, this feeling,
is at the center of true religion.

~ Albert Einstein ~

(The Merging of Spirit and Science, cited in
All Things Give God Glory, ed. by S. Rena)

Love Letters

 

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, the snow and moon.

 

~ Ikkyu ~

 

 

(Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology, trans. by Sonya Arutzen)