Jun 14
Readings
Please post or e-mail your favorite readings.
A Certain Sharpness in the Morning Air
In the morning
it shuffles, unhurried,
across the wet fields
in its black slippers,
in its coal-colored coat
with the white stripe like a river
running down its spine–
a glossy animal with a quick temper
and two bulbs of such diatribe under its tail
that when I see it I pray
not to be noticed–
not to be strick
by the flat boards of its anger–
for the whole haul of its smell
is unendurable–
like tragedy
that can’t be borne,
like death
that has to be buried, or burned–
but a little of it is another story–
for it’s tru, isn’t it,
in our world,
that the petals pooled with nectar, and the polished thorns
are a single thing–
that even the curest light, lacking the robe of darkness,
would be without expression–
that love itself, without its pain, would be
no more than a shruggable comfort.
Lately, I have noticed, when the skunk’s temper has tilted in the distance,
and the acids are floating everywhere,
and I am touched, it is all, even in my nostrils and my throat, as the brushing of thorns,
and I stand there
thinking of the old, wild life of the fields, when, as I remember it,
I was shaggy, and beautiful,
like the rose.
~Mary Oliver
“Just Be What You Are”
Drop all impatience
Drop all frustrations;
Just be what you are
Just be what you are.
There is no need for projection
There is no need to create impression;
Just be what you are
Just be what you are.
Stop this fighting with yourself
Stop this struggle with yourself;
Stop being sad with yourself
Stop further hurting yourself;
Just be what you are
Just be what you are.
You do not have to become something
You do not have to achieve something;
Just be what you are
Just be what you are.
Accept yourself as you are
Love yourself as you are;
Just be what you are
Just be what you are.
~ Swamiji
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver
Untitled
Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten-every piece of fruit-had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before?
- Alison Luterman, “What They Came For”
August
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
~Mary Oliver
Peace
Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.
I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.
I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies—
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.
By Sara Teasdale from Love Songs (1917)
Untitled, prayer written by Bapuji, Swami Sri Kripalvananda
My beloved child,
break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself,
you break your own heart,
you stop feeding on the love
which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come. Your time.
To live. To Celebrate.
And to see the Goddess that you are.
You, my child, are divine.
You are pure.
You are sublimely free.
You are God in disguise.
And you are always perfectly safe.
Do not fight the dark.
Just turn on the light.
Let go.
And breathe into the goodness that you are.
Untitled
You are the sky and the ground.
You alone, the day and the night air.
You are the meal that’s being brought,
the sandal knot, flowers and their watering.
You are all this.
What could I possibly bring You!
~Lalla~
Translation by Coleman Barks
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi ~
The Seed Market
Can you find another market like this?
Where,with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where,for one seed
get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
a divine wind?
You’ve been fearful
of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it’s still water
The essence is the same.
This giving up is not a repenting.
It’s a deep honoring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry at once, quickly,
for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.
~Rumi~
(The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)
Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
~Mary Oliver ~
Letting Go
Letting go is letting God.
Letting God is letting love.
Letting love is extending love,
extending patience and tolerance.
It is being quick to see, slow to misunderstand.
Letting love is relaxing, being still, accepting, submitting and enjoying.
~Hugh Prather~
from Notes to Eachother
Untitled
The soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again.
And I have seen the ocean
continuously creating.
Since I scoured my mind
and my body, I too, Lalla,
am new, each moment new.
My teacher told me one thing,
Live in the soul.
When that was so,
I began to go naked,
and dance.
~Lalla~
Translations by Coleman Barks