“Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?” “…The saints and poets, maybe they do some…”
―
Each week I’m grateful to find and share a poem to highlight our weekly class themes. What a joy to practice being present together, season by season, moment by moment.
Unconditional
Divine Love is Alive (Danna Faulds)
Knowing all the way down
to the marrow of my bones
that divine love is alive
inside me is the greatest
of all gifts. To remember
that love exists in moments
of difficulty — to breathe it,
be it, share it, and shine
with a light that isn’t mine —
that’s what I pray for.
There is no showy evidence,
no proof that what I say is true,
but I know it the way
that trees know sun
and fish know water.
I know it as a stream knows
its banks and a mountain
knows its ground of being.
There isn’t a hint of judgment
in this love but there is
purity and certainty —
an unconditional embrace
that never wanes or falters.
I turn within and there it is,
like cool shade on a hot day,
yet also like a burning flame.
Love teaches paradox and
mystery without needing to
speak a word of instruction.
Interconnectedness
Interrelationship (Thich Nhat Hanh)
You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.
Wage Peace (Judyth Hill)
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothespins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea …and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
Presence
“The mind is like tofu. It tastes like whatever you marinate it in.”
―
Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain (Li Bai)
Appreciation
and a large bird of prey
gliding spirals in the sky
and my husband on my right
my sweet friend on my left
and the two-person band
transforming sorrow into joy
just by singing it in harmony
and giving the song their everything,
and maybe that’s what is ours to do—
to give ourselves wholly to a moment
as if we are the singers and life the song,
so I give myself to the low summer sun
and the dust on my feet,
to the pucker of lime
and the tears of my friend,
give myself to the ache that never leaves
and the relentless beauty that ever arrives,
and the more I give myself to the world,
the more the world rushes in
and says home, home, home,
you are home.
JUN
2024