Against Certainty

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.

If I then say “that,” it too is taken away.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.

--Jane Hirshfield

[Photo from Newgrange, Ireland--June 2018]

A Morning Offering

There is a quiet light
that shines in every heart.
It draws no attention to itself
though it is always secretly there.
It is what illuminates
our minds to see beauty,
our desire to seek possibility
and our hearts to love life.
Without this subtle quickening
our days would be empty and wearisome,
and no horizon would ever
awaken our longing.
Our passion for life is quietly sustained
from somewhere in us
that is wedded to the
energy and excitement of life.
This shy inner light
is what enables us
to recognize and receive
our very presence here as blessing.
We enter the world as strangers
who all at once become
heirs to a harvest of memory,
spirit, and dream
that has long preceded us
and will now enfold,
nourish, and sustain us.

--JOHN O'DONOHUE

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--Elizabeth Bishop

[Photo of Glencoe, Scotland, July 2018]

For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

--John O'Donohue

November 22

On this day long years ago, our promising
young President was killed. He was far too young
to die and I too young to watch my world unravel
as it did. I grieved my loss, our loss, then started
to reweave—a work, a life, a world—not knowing
then what I know now: the world unravels always,
and it must be rewoven time and time again.

You must keep collecting threads—threads of meaning,
threads of hope, threads of purpose, energy and will—
along with all the knowledge, skill that every weaver needs.
You must keep on weaving—stopping sometimes only
to repair your broken loom—weave a cloak of warmth
and light against the dark and cold, a cloak in which
to wrap whoever comes to you in need—the world
with all its suffering, those near at hand, yourself.

And, if you are lucky, you will find along the way
the thread with which you can reweave your own
tattered life, the thread that more than any other
laces us with warmth and light, making both the
weaver and the weaving true—the red thread
they call Love, the thread you hold, then
hand along, saying to another, “You.”

--Parker J. Palmer

[A favorite photo from our son's wedding to illustrate the thread of love.]

Silence

There are no words for the deepest things.
Words become feeble when mystery visits
and prayer moves into silence.
In post-modern culture
the ceaseless din of chatter has killed
our acquaintance with silence.
Consequently, we are stressed and anxious.
Silence is a fascinating presence.
Silence is shy; it is patient and never
draws attention to itself.
Without the presence of silence,
no word could ever be said or heard.
Our thoughts constantly call up new words.
We become so taken with words
that we barely notice the silence,
but the silence is always there.
The best words are born
in the fecund silence
that minds the mystery.

--John O'Donohue

Small Kindnesses

 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

--

Danusha Laméris