All Out of Still — Orphan Wisdom

A few months ago a certain degree of unspectacular life adversity leaned over to me and whispered: “What if you stop for a while? You were obliged off the road anyhow by the plague. Why not go the rest of the way there, and choose stillness?” Clever fellow. Years ago I remember coming across some stout…

All Out of Still — Orphan Wisdom

GOSH! I am SO grateful for the above post from Stephen Jenkinson. It put words to all the things, and in them, I became still. The still, for me can then leave room for creation. Of what!? My built in forgetter thinks it gets to control that outcome. Sometimes I believe my actions are proof that I can. The part feeling so proud and SEE yes I did! and Control is GOOD! Is all perked in the I Have Arrived pose. And then, the muscles start to quake and to shiver. The pose doesn’t hold up for long. It collapses in exhaustion long before my thinking, my mind even begins to notice. While I write it, I’m smiling like an indulgent parent watching a toddle learn… But IN it, oh I believe it’s Hell! I’m prone to grab, and to shove, and to rant. Thank you, Sir, for the Spring in my step. For now.

Morning Trip (362)

“A good practitioner is not someone who no longer has any anger or suffering. This is not possible. A good practitioner is someone who knows how to take good care of her anger and suffering as soon as they arise. Someone who does not practice does not know how to handle the energy of anger when it manifests, and he or she can easily be overwhelmed by anger.”
—-Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

25 April 2022

Wendy Martyna

The life of sensation is the life of greed;  it requires more and more.
The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample
and its passage sweet.

~ Annie Dillard (b. 1945), American novelist, essayist, memoirist;
Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, 1975; from The Writing Life, 1989

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12 April 2022

Wendy Martyna

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~ David Wagoner (1926-2021), American poet, novelist, editor,
educator; from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems, 1999

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Jack Gilbert

The Vale of Soul-Making

We think the fire eats the wood.
We are wrong. The wood reaches out
to the flame. The fire licks at
what the wood harbors, and the wood
gives itself away to that intimacy,
the manner in which we and the world
meet each new day. Harm and boon
in the meetings. As heart meets what
is not heart, the way the spirit
encounters the flesh and the mouth meets
the foreignness in another mouth. We stand
looking at the ruin of our garden
in the early dark of November, hearing crows
go over while the first snow shines coldly
everywhere. Grief makes the heart
apparent as much as sudden happiness can.

—Jack Gilbert, “Harm and Boon in the Meetings,” The Great Fires: Poems, 1982-1992 (Alfred A.Knopf, 1994)

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Morning Trip (361)

“Then as you get distracted by everyday life, you begin to forget this new perspective and your focus slips from your Person Dream to the Dream of the Planet. Your harmony is shaken as you give in to the illusion. But before long, you have another moment of clarity, and you start the process again—-this time with a little more resolve and a little more experience.”
—-Don Miguel Ruiz, Jr., Living a Life of Awareness, p.196