Category Archives: Poems and other readings

Mindfulness of the Body and Working with Pain

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The body scan is a wonderful way to ground yourself in your body and in the present moment. Here is a 20-minute body scan from Tara Brach, and a 30-minute meditation from Jon Kabat Zinn. These guided meditations are wonderful, but know that you can do your own body scan, anywhere and anytime. Just start at the top of your head or at the bottom of your toes and work your way through your body, bringing a loving awareness to everything you encounter on the way.

 

Zinn is one the leading voices in mindfulness based stress reduction and ways to use mindfulness to deal with illness and pain. A good introduction to his work is the book Full Catastrophe Living. You can read about the book here and order it through your local bookshop or Amazon.com and other online book services.

Tara Brach has compiled a wonderful list of resources for working with pain, including a summary of mindfulness strategies and links to talks and guided meditations. You can access it here.

From Danna Faulds, this lovely poem about trusting prana — which is the breath or life force.

Trusting Prana
by Danna Faulds

Trust the energy that
Courses through you Trust,
Then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy.
Don’t push anything away. Follow each
Sensation back to its source
In vastness and pure presence.

Emerge so new, so fresh that
You don’t know who you are.

Welcome in the season of
Monsoons. Be the bridge
Across the flooded river
And the surging torrent
Underneath. Be unafraid of consummate wonder.

Be the energy and blaze a
Trail across the clear night
Sky like lightning. Dare to
Be your own illumination.

The Power of Intention

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In our last class of the Art of Communication class, we talked about the power of intention. When we think to set an intention before we meditate, or as we start out day, it shapes what follows. We also talked about the deep intention, the intention for a life, that comes out of knowing what we care about most. I told this story, drawn from a blog post by Jan Phillips on Krista Tippett’s On Being website, and I just realized I had neglected to post it. So here it is:

Former nun Jan Phillips had been a young postulant in her first theology class when a Jesuit priest asked the students what they believed about God. One by one, the young women quoted lines from the catechism: Continue reading →

John Lewis had some final words for us

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Today Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis is laid to rest. Just days before he died he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that he requested be published on the day of his funeral. His words are elemental in their clarity and truth. Read the full article in The New York Times. Or access a pdf here.

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Some excerpts:

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity. Continue reading →

Pray for Peace

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Thank you, Louis, for sharing this beautiful poem from Ellen Bass.
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Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail,
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, twirling pizzas–

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your Visa card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

— Ellen Bass, The Human Line

Living with Intention: Some poems …

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Half Life
by Stephen Levine

We walk through half our life
as if it were a fever dream
barely touching the ground
our eyes half open
our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are
we watch the ghost of us drift
from room to room
through friends and lovers
never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean
or meaning half we say
we dream ourselves
from birth to birth
seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks
and the heart can not abide
a moment longer
as the rest of us awakens,
summoned from the dream,
not half caring for anything but love.

Ah, Not to be cut off
by Rainer Marie Rilke

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner — what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

 

Ah, not to be cut off

by Rainer Maria Rilke

English version by Stephen Mitchell
Original Language German

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner — what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

— from Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

Communication as an act of courage …

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“Every act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility of planting into another mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it blossom into a breathtaking flower of mutual understanding; and the possibility of being wholly misunderstood, reduced to a withering weed. Candor and clarity go a long way in fertilizing the soil, but in the end there is always a degree of unpredictability in the climate of communication — even the warmest intention can be met with frost. Yet something impels us to hold these possibilities in both hands and go on surrendering to the beauty and terror of conversation, that ancient and abiding human gift. And the most magical thing, the most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening.”

— Maria Popova

Maria Popova is the brilliant editor of BrainPickings, one of the most insightful and provocative digests on the internet. This quotation is taken from her introduction to a discussion of Ursula Leguin’s essay “Telling is Listening.”

 

The Winter of Listening

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Kabli Hands on fire

The Winter of Listening
by David Whyte


No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.

Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

 

“The Winter of Listening” by David Whyte, from The House of Belonging. © Many Rivers Press, 1997.

Photography Credit: Detail from “Seeking Warmth”: A Kashmiri man warms his hands over a fire on a street on a cold morning in Srinagar, India,” by Fayaz Kabli/Reuters.

Poem and photograph found on A Year of Being Here: daily mindfulness poetry by wordsmiths of the here & now.

 

 

The Art of Listening—a poem

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The Art of Listening
by Jonathan Drane

I knew something of conversation, or so I thought
until I listened to another.
Knew something of the talk, the sounds the chatter,
But to listen and to speak when moments call,
that is far greater.
Of conversations past, I no longer can remember,
Since the day I silent kept- and listened to another,
There opened up a life which had ‘til then
been merely shadow
At first the life it seemed another’s, but when I was caught
and by the mirror
The face had changed, it told me of another.
Since the day I silent kept- and listened to another.

Published on poemhunter.com

 

On listening…

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“I Happened To Be Standing” by Mary Oliver

I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance.  A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep.  Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don’t know why.  And yet, why not.
I wouldn’t pursuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t.  That’s your business.
But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.

Metta in Poems and Laughter

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This darling video on metta or lovingkindness is as profound as it is sweet (and yes, I have reached an age where I can call something darling without apology, especially when done by darling, brilliant, loving young people.)

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Manidha and Alice in Seattle prepared this 7-minute video for a 2013 retreat sponsored by the Buddhist Centre Online. They talk about the five circles of lovingkindness — for self, a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person, and for all beings — and share a poem for each one. You can watch it here.

The poems are drawn from the book Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, compiled and interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky. Here is one of them, by the German theologian, philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart:

LOVE DOES THAT
by Meister Eckhart

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,

he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh, because love does
that.

Love frees.

— Meister Eckhart, born c. 1260 AD