WELCOMING ALL GUESTS

                                               THE GUEST HOUSE
                                                          By Rumi
                                             (Translation 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.

BECOMING SKY AND MOON

Evening Landscape With Rising Moon
Van Gogh
Painted in Saint-Remy, France, 1889

                                                        QUIETNESS

                                                           by Rumi

                                      Inside this new love, die.

                                      Your way begins on the other side.

                                      Become the sky.

                                      Take an axe to the prison wall.

                                      Escape.

                                      Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

                                      Do it now.

                                      You're covered with thick cloud.

                                      Slide out the side.  Die,

                                      and be quiet.  Quietness is the surest sign

                                      that you've died.

                                      Your old life was a frantic running 

                                      from silence.

                                      The speechless full moon 

                                      comes out now.

                                Translation from Persian by Coleman Barks

WIDENING RINGS OF BEING

Last night, while looking through some photographs I took in Israel a few years ago, I  stumbled upon the header image, which shows some details of the interior dome of a magnificent garden structure adjacent to the Dome of the Rock.  As I studied the richness of the colors, the invitational qualities of the archways, and the paths that seem to run throughout the design of the ceiling, I felt instinctively that Rumi was speaking to me.  Once again, and especially during these opening days of a new year, he was reminding me of the light-filled doorways that lead to renewal, expansion, and spiritual growth.

                              From A Community of the Spirit —

                                        Why do you stay in prison

                                        when the door is wide open?

                                        Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

                                        Live in silence.

                                        Flow down and down in always

                                        widening rings of being.

         

                                           

                             From Quietness

                                        Become the sky.

                                        Take an axe to the prison wall.

                                        Escape.

                                        Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

                                        Do it now.

                                                     

                             From Unfold Your Own Myth

                                        But don't be satisfied with stories, how things

                                        have gone with others.  Unfold

                                        your own myth, without complicated explanation,

                                        so everyone will understand the passage,

                                        We have opened you.

                                        Start walking toward Shams.  Your legs will get heavy

                                        and tired.  Then comes a moment

                                        of feeling the wings you've grown,

                                        lifting.

Note:  Quotations from The Essential Rumi (Translations by Coleman Barks).

SMALL POEMS, BIG IDEAS

Robert Frost famously wrote that "happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."  The same might also be said for poetry.  In my view, some of the shortest poems have the deepest meanings.

Set forth below are a few of the small poems that are included in the poetry anthologies I've been reading this winter.  If you have a favorite small poem and would like to include it in your comments, please feel free to do so.

                                            THE RED WHEELBARROW
                                                 William Carlos Williams


                                                      so much depends
                                                      upon


                                                      a red wheel 
                                                      barrow


                                                      glazed with rain
                                                      water


                                                      beside the white
                                                      chickens


                                                 THE SECRET SITS
                                                        Robert Frost
                                                         
                                   We dance round in a ring and suppose,
                                   But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.


                                                          COMMENT
                                                        Dorothy Parker


                                     Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
                                     A medley of extemporanea;
                                     And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
                                     And I am Marie of Roumania.


                                      TODAY, LIKE EVERY OTHER DAY
                                                                 Rumi


                                  Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
                                  and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
                                  and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.


                                  Let the beauty we love be what we do.
                                  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.


                                                LOVING THE RITUALS
                                               Palladus (4th Century A.D.)


                                      Loving the rituals that keep men close,
                                      Nature created means for friends apart;


                                      pen, paper, ink, the alphabet,
                                      signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.


                                                               WITNESS
                                                           Denise Levertov


                                                   Sometimes the mountain
                                                   is hidden from me in veils
                                                   of cloud, sometimes
                                                   I am hidden from the mountain
                                                   in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
                                                   when I forget or refuse to go
                                                   down to the shore or a few yards
                                                   up the road, on a clear day,
                                                   to reconfirm
                                                   that witnessing presence.


                                                           AUTO MIRROR
                                                           Adam Zagajewski
                                    (translation by Czelaw Milosz and Robert Hass)


                                               In the rear-view mirror suddenly
                                               I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral; 
                                               great things dwell in small ones
                                               for a moment.


                                                        A LONG LIFETIME
                                                           Kenneth Rexroth


                                                        A long lifetime
                                                        Peoples and places
                                                        And the crisis of mankind—
                                                        What survives is the crystal—
                                                        Infinitely small—
                                                        Infinitely large—


                                                        MY FIFTIETH YEAR
                                                         William Butler Yeats


                                               My fiftieth year had come and gone,
                                               I sat, a solitary man,
                                               In a crowded London shop,
                                               An open book and empty cup
                                               On a marble table-top.


                                               While on the shop and the street I gazed
                                               My body of a sudden blazed;
                                               And twenty minutes more or less
                                               It seemed, so great my happiness,
                                               That I was blessed and could bless.

THE WISDOM OF BIRDS

Snowy Egret

Like my late father, I find birds to be endlessly fascinating.  At some level, I suppose, we are all like Daedalus and Icarus, harboring a latent desire for wings that will liberate us from the narrow confines of the world's labyrinth.  At another level, however, I simply feel a personal connection with many birds, especially the large birds with whom one can establish and maintain eye contact.  With these birds, I always sense a kind of mutual empathy, a mutual awareness that, for better or worse, we will need each other for the journey ahead.  Maybe it's a mutual respect for each other's solitude, coupled with  a  recognition that even solitaries are interdependent in the greater scheme of things.

Whatever the case, I have been spending a great deal of time in recent weeks observing the abundant bird life that inhabits this part of coastal South Carolina.  A few photos of my friends are set forth below, together with some relevant observations by writers who have discovered the wisdom and metaphorical values of birds.

Great White Egret

With an eye made quiet by the power

of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

we see into the life of things.

Wordsworth

Great Blue Heron

I am looking at a great blue heron who is building a nest in the pine tree next to my father's home.  Every once in a while she stretches her long neck and points her head toward the heavens, and I feel the stretch in my throat.  She stands immobile for long periods staring into the eastern horizon and then floats to the canal below for some food.  I have seen this heron mother for years in the same pine tree.  Winter is her season to nest.  She stands like a blue-gray guardian of the past, not seeming to take notice of the flow of traffic on the highway . . . 

This great heron reminds me that storying is a kind of root medicine, a way for us to enter our depths and derive nourishment from the fruitful darkness.  For her life to succeed, this big mother heron needs her old pine tree and her dark inland water.  She needs continuity, heights, and depths for her life to be complete.  It is this way with tellings, with stories, with myths, with prayer, prophecy, and song.  They call forth the firmness of the tree and the yielding deep water in moments of transmitted inspiration.

Joan Haliflax
The Fruitful Darkness 

Great White Egret

                                        Birds make great sky-circles

                                        of their freedom.

                                        How do they learn it?

                                        They fall, and falling, 

                                        they're given wings.

                                                    Rumi

Great White Egret

I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing.  I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be a prayer that transforms us.

Sue Monk Kidd
When the Heart Waits

Great White Egret Egret

                                               Birdsong brings relief

                                               to my longing.

                                               I am just as ecstatic as they are,

                                               but with nothing to say!

                                               Please, universal soul, practice

                                               some song, or something, through me!

                                                                            Rumi

Great Blue Heron

THANKSGIVING EVERY DAY

As we enter this week of Thanksgiving, I want to thank all of my friends in the blogging community for enriching my life daily.  You have been, and continue to be, great sources of inspiration, education, and joy.  More importantly, you have proven yourselves to be true friends — fellow pilgrims on this magical and mysterious journey we call life.

My offering today is very simple:  some abstract photos taken during the past few weeks, some pertinent observations of others about unexpected beauty, and, finally, a lovely poem by Anne Sexton about everyday blessings.  Enjoy.

One of the most important — and most neglected — elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us.

Thomas Merton 

Everything is life is speaking, is audible, is communicating, in spite of its apparent silence.

Hazrat Inayat Khan 

 For lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.

Evelyn Underhill

                                 No more words.  In the name of this place we
                                 drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower,
                                 So the nightbirds will start singing.

Rumi

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.

George Washington Carver 

The moment one gives close attention to anything . . . it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller 

Take, for example, a pencil, ashtray, anything, and holding it before you in both hands, regard it for a while.  Forgetting its use and name, yet continuing to regard it, ask yourself seriously, "What is it?" . . . Its dimension of wonder opens; for the mystery of the being of that thing is identical with the mystery of the being of the universe, and yourself.

Joseph Campbell 

                                                 WELCOME MORNING

                                   There is joy

                                   in all:

                                   in the hair I brush each morning,

                                   in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

                                   that I rub my body with each morning,

                                   in the chapel of eggs I cook

                                   each morning,

                                   the spoon and the chair

                                   that cry "hello there, Anne"

                                   each morning,

                                   in the godhead of the table

                                   that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

                                   each morning.

                                   All this is God,

                                   right here in my pea-green house

                                   each morning

                                   and I mean,

                                   though often forget,

                                   to give thanks,

                                   to faint down by the kitchen table

                                   in prayer of rejoicing

                                   as the holy birds at the kitchen window

                                   peck into their marriage of seeds.

                                  So while I think of it,

                                  let me paint a thank-you on my palm

                                  for this God, this laughter of the morning,

                                  lest it go unspoken.

                                  The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

                                  dies young.

                                  Anne Sexton

Notes on photographs:  (1) detail from abandoned Chevrolet tow truck; (2) mooring line and reflections from dock in marina; (3) patina of old metal strip found in boatyard; (4) sailboat rudder and keg; (5) sunrise on Tred Avon River; (6) stern of old work boat; (7) water reflection of boat workshop; (8) water reflection of machinery and sailboat masts: (9) detail from abandoned Chevrolet tow truck; (10) collage of some of my other abstract photos created by my blogging friend, Neighbor, over at Temporary Reality .

HAPPY THANKSGIVING
TO 
EVERYONE!