On Solitude and Community

Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others--it means never living apart from one's self...

Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others--it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other...

--Parker J. Palmer

Tenderness

Before there was a carrot
Before there was a stick
Before there was a Zodiac
And 12 signs for it
Before there was Karma
Before Pavlov's dog
Before the thousand prayers
To the million names for God
Before the iron hand of fate
Before the IQ test
There was only tenderness

Before there was justice
Before there was hope
Before the braided strands
Of the hangman's rope
Before there was truth
Though it felt like a hammer
Before the truth marched
In Birmingham Alabama
Before the wages of sin
Before I confessed
There was only tenderness

Some believe in Jesus
Some keep Kosher
Some raise a pint of Guinness
To a four-leaf clover
Some believe in science
Some believe the rules
Now and then some believe
Believing is for fools
But I'll keep the faith
As I'm laid to rest
I believe in tenderness

--Tom Prasada-Rao © 9/10/12

We Look With Uncertainty

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

--

 Anne Hillman

Making Sense

Finding what makes sense
In senseless times
Takes grounding
Sometimes quite literally
In the two inches of humus
Faithfully recreating itself
Every hundred years.
It takes steadying oneself
Upon shale and clay and solid rock
Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer
Betting on all the still hidden springs.

You can believe in a tree,
With its broad-leafed perspective,
Dedicated to breathing in, and then out,
Reaching down, and then up,
Drinking in a goodness above and below
It’s splayed and mossy feet.
You can trust a tree’s careful
and drawn out way
of speaking.
One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie,
It knows how to stand true to itself
Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars,
And all the physical signs of where
and when It needed to bend,
Rather than break.
A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,
For in the gathering of the many,
There is comfort and courage,
Perseverance and protection,
From the storms that howl down from predictable
Or unexplainable directions.

In a senseless time
Hold close to what never stopped
Making sense.
Like love
Like trees
Like how a seed becomes a branch
And compost becomes seedlings again.
Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head
Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing.

It is all still happening
Even now.
Even now.

—Carrie Newcomer (2020)

[Photo from Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe]

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

---Mary Oliver

[Photo from Iceland, Feb. 2020]

Easter Blessings

"On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry -- old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling -- and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.

We don't realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren't put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously.

May the spirit and light of this Easter morning and the special spirit and light of this abbey at Corcomroe bless us all, watch over us and protect us on our journey, open us from the darkness into the light of peace and hope and transfiguration."

--John O'Donohue

Amplitude

I am suddenly aware of the surface of my palms,
the skin of my face, the distance between
my surfaces and inanimate, touchable surfaces
at the grocery store, the distance
between my animate surfaces
and the animate surfaces of loved bodies
and strange bodies. I do not yet deeply miss
the casual touch of a hand on a shoulder,
a bending together of heads,
but I will miss it, I will: genetic sequences
calling out for the days of the pack
curled together in sleep; our breathing,
our working hearts just a couple of ribcages
distant. If we are not lonely yet, we are about to long
for each other’s company: for concert sweat, for
are you thirsty, have a sip from my bottle; look,
the ball went through the hoop! Let’s stand and yell
and slap each other’s backs, let’s breathe
each other’s exhalations, utterly unconcerned.

--

Zoë Ryder White

For the Interim Time

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

 - -John O'Donohue