I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the…
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer…
Light cannot see inside things. That is what the dark is for: Minding the interior, Nurturing the draw of growth Through places where death In its own way turns into life. In the glare of neon times, Let our eyes not be worn By surfaces that shine With hunger made attractive. When we look into…
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. by Rainer Maria Rilke As with most of Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings,…
What is this meditation, then? Pure fascination with this moment, exactly as it is. Allowing everything to be. Drenching one’s present experience in curiosity. Not adding anything. Not taking anything away. No goal. No seeking. No agenda. No special state to attain. No special experience to have. Pure wonder. The extraordinary ordinariness of what is.…
Sunrise at the octagonal hut; beyond, where two decks meet, a lizard does pushups in the sun. I see the green, chattering world through the window, I see my image in the window. Both are present; are both true? A bee enters the hut, buzzes insistently against the window, but the window won’t yield to…
Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind you. Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude. If you sing…
And sometimes when I move at the edge of a greatness— a lake or a sea or a mountainside— my insignificance thrills me and the largest of my sadnesses dwindle smaller than the space between grains of sand and in that moment, knowing my place, comes a love so enormous I can love anyone, anyone,…
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to…