“The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees—to learn something by being nothing a little while but the rich lens of attention.”—Mary Oliver, excerpt from Entering the Kingdom
The Lens of Attention
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The Altar of Dawn
“I place on the altar of dawn:The quiet loyalty of breath,The tent of thought where I shelter,Waves of desire I am shore toAnd all beauty drawn to the eye.May my mind come alive todayTo the invisible geographyThat invites me to new frontiers,To break the dead shell of yesterdays,To risk being disturbed and changed.May I have the courage todayTo live the life that I would love,To postpone my dream no longerBut do at last what I came here forAnd waste my heart on fear no more.”-John O’Donohue
My Day of Enlightenment
I am sitting with the rain, feeling its love, loving it in turn. I am finding beauty again.
The bed sheets are washing. Life. The gift prevails.
Sheets of rain now cleansing the tall trees. Cathartic. It is always Mother Earth.
This is a special day, as they all are of course, but today’s moments are more present to me. I feel it all out there waiting. With the ancestors. With Mom and Dad.
I’m torn equally between watching a Hallmark movie and studying physics. The secrets of the universe calling me urgently. Or Craig’s laughter. Or being absorbed by the rain.
Each drop a revelation.
I make the bed with the clean sheets. Aware. Aware. They smell clean and fresh. Soft softness in the smell, in the light outside, in my heart. And still the revelations of the universe come in each raindrop.
I take a long shower craving the freshness on my skin, the exhilaration of the water like raindrops. It’s well water after all, held deeply underground from the rain, now pouring over me.
The water dries easily off my skin, but holds fast on the glass shower enclosure. Note to self. Be like skin and not glass, absorbent and easily dried, not reflective and hard like glass, never allowing the rain, the water, in.
I put on my softest Buddha clothes, Buddha pants. The Buddha, now there’s someone who can shed light into the mysteries of this rain soaked day.
But I don’t need his enlightenment. Only my own.
I google to see if Arianna Grande is married (she is), read Bewilderment (Richard Powers – brilliant!), and a bit of Louise Erdlich’s, Future Home of the Living God (how did I miss this in 2017?), then Andrew Doerr’s, Cloud Cookoo Land (so creatively crafted) – it’s truly strange how these random books I’ve selected for no apparent reason have threads that make sense to read them all at the same time – and Adam and Eve (Sena Jeter Naslund). I print out a beautiful piece of art I found on Facebook of a woman embedded in nature with her animal self tangible and put it in a frame by my desk upstairs in the loft.
Then, I opt for the Hallmark movie, in my Buddha pants, and Craig’s laughter, fresh sheets waiting.
Feeling my own enlightenment.
Focusing on the Light
“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.”-John O’Donohue
Focusing on the light as an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world… Thank you John O’Donohue, thank you to all the heart centered ones around the world doing all that they can, thank you for continuing to focus on the light, the goodness… It is difficult in these days. Let’s keep trying our best.
Become Whole Again
“Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings…The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water… You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ”
-Carl Jung
“Only when I walked into the forest did the world become whole again.”
-Lars Muhl
The Winter of Listening
THE WINTER OF LISTENING (by David Whyte)
“No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire.What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…And
here
in the tumult
of the night
I hear the walnut
above the child’s swing
swaying
its dark limbs
in the wind
and the snow now
come to
beat against my window
and somewhere
in this cold night
of wind and stars
the first whispered
opening of
those hidden
and invisible springs
that uncoil
in the still summer air
each yet
to be imagined
rose.”-David Whyte
Strong, clear and powerful moon on snow at home.
Center of Our Being
“May we not neglect the silenceprinted in the center of our being.It will not fail us.”-Thomas Merton
The Earth Remembered Me
I cannot get enough of Mary Oliver right now… her words are buoying me, reminding me of the earth’s deep sustenance and peace.
The earth does remember me and my heart is full of gratitude. I am deeply embedded in her peaceful embrace today with the rain sweetly softening and nourishing…
Softening and nourishing and sweetening everything including me.
“I thought the earth remembered me,she took me back so tenderly,arranging her dark skirts, her pocketsfull of lichens and seeds.I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,nothing between me and the white fire of the starsbut my thoughts and they floated light as mothsamong the branches of the perfect trees.All night I heard the small kingdomsbreathing around me, the insects,and the birds who do their work in the darkness.All night I rose and fell, as if in water,grappling with a luminous doom. By morningI had vanished at least a dozen times’into something better.”-Mary Oliver
Love All the Things
How I needed this today – I absorbed these words by David Whythe through every cell, with thankfulness and grace.
THE HOUSE OF BELONGINGI awokethis morningin the gold lightturning this wayand thatthinking fora momentit was onedaylike any other.Butthe veil had gonefrom mydarkened heartandI thoughtit must have been the quietcandlelightthat filled my room,it must have beenthe firsteasy rhythmwith which I breathedmyself to sleep,it must have beenthe prayer I saidspeaking to the othernessof the night.AndI thoughtthis is the good dayyou couldmeet your love,this is the gray daysomeone closeto you could die.This is the dayyou realizehow easily the threadis brokenbetween this worldand the nextand I found myselfsitting upin the quiet pathwayof light,the tawny closegrained cedarburning roundme like fireand all the angelsof this houselyheaven ascendingthrough the firstroof of lightthe sun had made.This is the bright homein which I live,this is whereI askmy friendsto come,this is where I wantto love all the thingsit has taken me so longto learn to love.This is the templeof my adult alonenessand I belongto that alonenessas I belong to my life.There is no houselike the house of belonging.”-David Whyte (The House of Belonging)“There is nothing like waking in a sunlit room with view, but perhaps nothing better than waking in a sunlit room with a view than waking with a writing desk in a sunlit room with a view. And in the case of this poem, waking in a sunlit room with a writing desk and a view after a passing through a very dark passage in life. ‘What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk?”
-David Whyte
Walk Slowly and Bow Often
When I Am Among the Trees (by Mary Oliver)
“When I am among the trees,especially the willows and the honey locust,equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,they give off such hints of gladness.I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,in which I have goodness, and discernment,and never hurry through the worldbut walk slowly, and bow often.Around me the trees stir in their leavesand call out, “Stay awhile.”The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,“and you too have comeinto the world to do this, to go easy, to be filledwith light, and to shine.”
-Mary Oliver
