A New Impulse to Write

Someone shared something with me the other day that convinced me that I need to write again... or perhaps it wasn't so much, even, the sharing of someone... but I, in fact, remembered-- moved by the impulse of something beyond human-- that it was time to stop messing around and share something of my heart on these pages again.

Part of the title of the blog entertains the very essential question: What is home? Is it something that someone can find or discover? When I think about the specific place and geography of where I am from--- Upstate, NY--- still a lot of idealism stays with me: This is the land where you can see the leaves fall and the hills change colors with the autumn. This is a place where the landscape is not yet fully ruined by the plastic, box-line architecture of modern suburbia... This is a place where children can still be involved in play and not so fully scheduled that they have forgotten the definition of fun.

Then too: What about home am I searching for? Well, the answer has nothing, really, to do with Upstate, NY-- although I miss the place--> I think, tonight, home for me is more about being in a space of connection & unity--- where I am in touch with the truest love there is..........

A lovely Poem

This poem stopped me in my tracks this morning---- speaking to many images that made me wake up--- the industrial worker, the child naming a star, the banana leaves filled with rain.....

The Unnamable River

1.

Is it in the anthracite face of a coal miner,
crystallized in the veins and lungs of a steel
worker, pulverized in the grimy hands of a railroad engineer?
Is it in a child naming a star, coconuts washing
ashore, dormant in a volcano along the Rio Grande?

You can travel the four thousand miles of the Nile
to its source and never find it.
You can climb the five highest peaks of the Himalayas
and never recognize it.
You can gaze though the largest telescope
and never see it.

But it's in the capillaries of your lungs.
It's in the space as you slice open a lemon.
It's in a corpse burning on the Ganges,
in rain splashing on banana leaves.

Perhaps you have to know you are about to die
to hunger for it. Perhaps you have to go
alone in the jungle armed with a spear
to truly see it. Perhaps you have to
have pneumonia to sense its crush.

But it's also in the scissor hands of a clock.
It's in the precessing motion of a top
when a torque makes the axis of rotation describe a cone:
and the cone spinning on a point gathers
past, present, future.

2.

In a crude theory of perception, the apple you
see is supposed to be a copy of the actual apple,
but who can step out of his body to compare the two?
Who can step out of his life and feel
the Milky Way flow out of his hands?

An unpicked apple dies on a branch:
that is all we know of it.
It turns black and hard, a corpse on the Ganges.
The go ahead and map out three thousand mile of the Yantze;
walk each inch, feel its surge and
flow as you feel the surge and flow in your own body.

And the spinning cone of a precessing top
is a form of existence that gathers and spins death and life into one.
It is in the duration of words, but beyond words -
river river river, river river.
The coal miner may not know he has it.
The steel worker may not know he has it.
The railroad engineer may not know he has it.
But it is there. It is in the smell
of an avocado blossom, and in the true passion of a kiss.

~ Arthur Sze ~

The Wisdom of Fools....

I continue to find myself fascinated in re-definitions of wisdom and power-- One I found in a book entitled "Contentment" by Robert A. Johnson & Jerry M Ruhl.....

"There is an old proverb that God wanted to hide wisdom so that no everyone would indiscriminately find it. Accordingly, God decided to place it in innocent children and fools. It is hard to get wisdom out of an innocent child, and we would never think to get it out of a fool. In both cases it is fairly safe..." (page 51)...

What am I thinking? It is time to hang out with more children & "fools"!!

I woke up with a question this morning... (well, sometime during the morning): Am I living my life the way that I've always wanted and dreamed (Shyam's question)? How can I relax whatever fears I have and continue to live into the moment-- compose that "Little Guru" story I am always crafting in my head, lay to rest too many considerations about the future-- all will come to fruition soon--- and just be me! :) I saw a woman, holding a baby in a sack that holds the baby to your stomach, and I was awed by the simplicity and beauty. I want to be simple and beautiful. .... in the way that is me. I am... and will continue....

poetic musing....

Today was brilliant and lovely... What did I learn??? Or what am I experiencing? The reminder of the beauty of not acting, of calm, of rest.... These things are filling me now, and it is like there is new air flowing in my lungs, and somewhere, deep within, my heart is singing...

Wow.

I am now a candidate for Ministry of Word & Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Word & Sacrament: Literature meets Religion..... Being a candidate has stopped me, delightfully, in my tracks-- like another kind of deep conversion. I am so happy. I feel so happy. This is meaningful......... and not about me, alone.

New Day

Wow. Today the day greets me with the usual lethargy and fatigue of the last two days. I feel like I am trying to make up sleep deficits from the last year... But it is so good to try to stay still... or rather, stay still, sleep, and type. This is a good discipline. I feel like I am back at Taize at the silent retreat, where I learned the beauty of just staying still and felt God inspiring me simply to use the time to sleep-- Totally not a cop-out!

At the moment, I have this strange propulsion to sleep and read at the same time and am wondering if my mind and body would be content with reading my dreams for awhile......