Seek the Light, Be the Light

Today, in another perfect summer day, I am thinking of light. Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, firelight, candle light. Spotlight, harbor light, kitchen light, flood light, porch light. The reality of light and the metaphor of it. How sunlight covers all equally, blesses impartially. How we see (or not) in the available light. How we use light to find our way.

I share here an untitled, unpublished piece by my friend Dana Knighten:

"What is it about the glimmer of a single distant light across water that calls to all that is unanswered? It stirs such wordless yearning. Its beckoning call, the sense of hope, the promise of fixity in the flow of uncertainty, a still point in the midst of troubled waters.

"Just a single light evoking home. The warmth of a light left on to guide the way, a light that says someone's home, someone's expecting you, here's some help to guide you in to safe harbor.

"A light left on in the darkness conveys so much."

Perfect Weather

Sky clear, deep pool, bright blue,
trees chuckling in a mild and balmy breeze,
a sprinkling of birds and blooms--

Life does not get any better than this.

Conscious of Delight

"Just today she discovered she can not only walk without falling every half-dozen steps or so, she can run!" the voice on the phone told me last week. In the background I could hear the laughter and the chortling screams of the one year old to whom the sentence applied.

My granddaughter's joy translated into my joy. There she was, experiencing a full-body awareness of her new mobility, the freedom of it, the like-Mommy-'n-Daddy feeling of it.

She'd discovered the ability to choose, to be intentional in her embodied, moving self. Her noisy glee seemed to indicate a consciousness of delight felt from crown to tippy-toe .

Homo sapien sapien: the species conscious of consciousness; the ones aware of being aware.

What wisdom do we sacrifice if we relinquish noticing that full-body experience and awareness in favor of the life we live in our minds? I think we're incomplete without both. How do we find balance?

I wish for you, today, moments of the conscious experience of some delight, some joy embodied in you and felt from your crown to your tippy-toes.

Rain! Some much needed rain falls here at the moment. A day full of such gentle patter would serve well, and now it starts. I will walk out into it for the experience it brings, and perhaps I will translate the sensations as delight. Or if not delight, at the very least I will translate the swing and shift of my body as the present, specific experience of life.

Find the Unexpected

"Go find the unexpected," my sister said as I left for my walk.

On my ordinary, routine walk, I am instructed to find the unexpected.

Some people travel the world to see much, and some people stay in their place to see much.

This morning I found three things of note:

1. A natural bouquet of blue chickory and orange day lilies, twined by sun, wind and growing so that they formed a unit, seven blue blossoms and two orange. I stopped and examined them, petals perfect in their imperfection. A Japanese artist could not have done better.

2. A young bunny sitting by the side of the road, so very still, perhaps hoping I wouldn't notice, so small and complete in it's fur. It knew itself too exposed, though, so it ran ahead of me and hopped off into the grass, which waved and then was still. When I came to the place where bunny had left the road, I saw a splay-legged, fragile little body huddled on a patch of earth exposed by mowing. It seemed the essence of hope and fear, combined, wanting to not be seen. It reminded me of us, how we wish to be seen, deeply seen, and simultaneously wish to go unnoticed, under the radar.

3. The constancy of changing green and growing things, the glory of the ordinary.

These were three things noticed, unexpected, on this morning's ordinary, routine walk. There were also many other things of note, to go unmentioned here.

P.S. My sister came yesterday, to my delight, not quite unexpected but on short notice. We had a rare overnight, and it is lovely to have a "real" visit.

Change and Compassion

The sun shines, this morning, through white air, and the temperature outside is already warmer than our not-cold, air conditioned house. A Maryland summer day: hazy, hot and humid.

Last night lightening flashed and played the sky, and thunder rumbled, but not right over us, and we had no rain. Perhaps by evening, or tomorrow, I will water the flowers a bit, for my impatiens love moisture. I planted more flowers this year then usual, for we have a new, glass door at the foot of our stairs, and I noticed that I wanted to see flowers in that view.

My impatiens this year range from white through many tints and shades of one family of purply red, so a whole range of pinks. They are growing well. I am thankful for all the green, and also thankful for the lighter, bright, shining flower faces.

I want to say the world is smiling. What I mean is the world is alive, the colors so vivid, the sounds so vibrant, the scents so rich and fecund.

I want to say those things because simultaneous to this joyous glory, I have recently spent some hours struggling with feelings of despair, and I want to say that, too.

A lover of music wishes to experience all the notes, the full range, in all variety of glory. Likewise, this lover of life wishes to recognize the life she is experiencing. And occasionally despair is one of the notes.

All sorts of philosophers assure me, in their writing, that despair has its roots in fear of death. Perhaps. Death is the ultimate change in the span of a life, the ultimate change that is beyond our control.

I'm observing in my experience, though, that I'm not so much afraid of being dead as I'm afraid of what the process of getting there might entail. I'm afraid of pain. Again and again I come face to face with the understanding that I'm afraid of pain, physical and emotional. Over and over I must notice when I've huddled and turned away from the mists of pain,then open myself to turn toward it full face, notice and pay attention. It is then that pain shows itself for the mist that it is, and one may walk right through.

I am also afraid of loss of control.

Despair as the clear recognition of loss of control.

I could have walked with Misty, and then scooped him up and brought him back inside, prevented his death on June 15. But I could not make him strong and frisky again, and I could not prevent his ultimate death. I mostly believe that allowing him the freedom to choose his day without my hovering presence-- he could always sense my hovering presence-- was the compassionate thing.

How does one weigh compassion?

Life is change. We do and do not control our lives.

Today I believe I will walk out into this alive world, being life, experiencing life, exchanging with all life, both being life and having a life. I will celebrate the full catastrophe. Celebrate the glory of change. Notice all I do not control. Then, with a deepened sense of compassion for myself and my full-scale range of experience, come back and take charge of what I do control.

Imagine Compassion

A recounting, in near approximation, of what I spoke as Opening Words at the UUFHC on Sunday, June 19, at the annual arts service:

Imagine compassion.

I believe that compassion is primarily an exchange, and an experience.

Mystery, for me, is found in the interplay among experience, exchange, translation, and imagination.

There have been a few times in my life when I have been stunned by an experience of that which I had never imagined. More commonly, though, I am aware that I organize and arrange and build my daily life from what I can and do imagine. I arrange the furniture in my living space, the utensils in my kitchen, the placement of decorations. I arrange my schedule from how I imagine I will fulfill my desires or the duties I've accepted. I imagine possibilities, and thus I build. Sometimes I'm disappointed, of course, chance happens, and then I re-imagine.

In this context, it seems to me that a failure of compassion is akin to a failure of imagination.

In her poem "Pastorale," Anita Barrows tells of twin lambs born one January, of how the first one immediately stood and nursed, "it's tail crazy with want," she writes. The second struggled and flailed until Barrows thought she must act: wipe it dry, wrap it in her coat. She didn't know what to do, though, so she stayed outside the fence and watched. (The lamb did live) In her not knowing, Barrows recognized the possibility that simply allowing events to unfold might be the most compassionate thing.

Thich Naht Hahn gives a well-known illustration of how we don't know how to judge. He simply reminds us that compost becomes a flower, which becomes compost, which becomes flower, compost, flower... All is one, Hahn teaches.

Noticed or not, we are in exchange with all with every breath. Our reasoning minds cannot absorb all. So it is simply the human condition that we do not know how to judge right/wrong, good/bad with deep, true compassion.

In her book Hand Wash Cold, Karen Mazen Miller writes of watching a heron take a koi from their fish pond, the gold crescent hanging from the narrow beak as wings beat into the air. She writes of how she knew in that unresisted, dreadful moment that she saw a fish turning into a bird.

We experience the world through our senses. We exchange with the world, starting with breath. We translate and interpret meaning. And we imagine, as in my own little poem, titled:

Imagine

Do you know how?
Wait.

Study your desire:
heart
gut
spine
breath.

Swim in
your reward.


I wrote three more paragraphs about coming to art as a full body experience. I wrote about how all works of art carry rhythm and balance, color and tone, and we may experience all art with every part of our being. It's true, but you already know that anyway.

What I want to say is that
between Alone and All One
there is only that one L-letter
of difference.

Sometimes that space between
feels so small, snug,
warm, fed, clean and restful

and sometimes
it feels like
an enormous, yawning gap,
ragged and jagged
and bigger than the Grand Canyon
or even the whole Milky Way.

In that echo-y,
huge, small space,
I want to say
that I desire
with all of my being
to imagine compassion.

The Guest House (by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks)

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 Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)