Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
 
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
 
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
 
–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

There is No Path that Goes all the Way

'There is No Path that Goes all the Way'
Han Shan

Not that it stops us looking
for the full continuation.

The first line in the poem
we can start and follow

straight to the end. The fixed belief
we can hold, facing a stranger

that saves us the trouble
of a real conversation.

But one day you are not
just imagining an empty chair

where your loved one sat.
You are not just telling a story

where the bridge is down
and there’s nowhere to cross.

You are not just trying to pray
to a God you always imagined
would keep you safe.

No, you’ve come to a place
where nothing you’ve done

will impress and nothing you
can promise will avert

the silent confrontation,
the place where

your body already seems to know
the way, having kept

to the last, its own secret
reconnaissance.

But still, there is no path
that goes all the way,

one conversation
leads to another,

one breath to the next
until

there’s no breath
at all,
just
the inevitable
final release
of the burden.

And then,

wouldn’t your life
have to start
all over again
for you to know
even a little
of who you had been?

--David Whyte

Simplicity and Effort

“This tension between simplicity and effort works itself out in our daily lives. If we believe in the sudden transformation, the big score, we are less likely to pursue the harder and less immediately satisfying work of becoming the people we wish to be.

So here’s to the role of time, patience, and reflection in our lives. If we believe it is better to build than destroy, better to live and let live, better to be than to be seen, then we might have a chance, slowly, to find a satisfying way through life...”

Gordon Livingston | 1938 - 2016 | American psychiatrist & writer

Everything Falls Away

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
--William Stafford

Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, along-
side the times you became one with the
night. The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have
wished you ill, none of this is forever. All
of it is soon to go, or going, or long gone.

Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve
been and done, the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until, toward the end,
you see that the thread is what stays
as everything else falls away.

Follow that thread as far as you can and
you'll find that it does not end, but weaves
into the unimaginable vastness of life. Your
life never was the solo turn it seems to be.
It was always part of the great weave of
nature and humanity, an immensity we
come to know only as we follow our own
small threads to the place where they
merge with the boundless whole.

Each of our threads runs its course, then
joins in life together. This magnificent tapestry--
this masterpiece in which we live forever.

--Parker J. Palmer

All That We Are

All that we are
arises with our thoughts.
Speak or act with a pure mind and heart
and happiness will follow you
as your shadow, unshakable.

—The Buddha

There is a Road Always Beckoning

There is a road
always
beckoning.

When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon

and deep in
the foundations
of your own
heart
at exactly
the same
time,

that’s how
you know
it's where
you
have
to go.

That’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.

That’s
how you know.

It’s just beyond
yourself,

it’s
where you
need to be.

--David Whyte

[Photo from 

Thingvellir National Park, Iceland in Feb. 2020]

Groundhog Day

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,

this ball of fat and fur,

whom we so mysteriously endow

with the power to predict spring.

Let’s hear it for the improbable heroes who,

frightened at their own shadows,

nonetheless unwittingly work miracles.

Why shouldn’t we believe

this peculiar rodent holds power

over sun and seasons in his stubby paw?

Who says that God is all grandeur and glory?

Unnoticed in the earth, worms

are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil.

Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered

seeds that will take root and grow.

Grape hyacinths, against all reason,

have been holding up green shoots beneath the snow.

How do you think spring arrives?

There is nothing quieter, nothing

more secret, miraculous, mundane.

Do you want to play your part

in bringing it to birth? Nothing simpler.

Find a spot not too far from the ground

and wait.

-- Lynn Ungar