People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

by William Stafford

Many of the poems that we feature here in this blog, that feel mindful, take us from the busy distracted mind towards moments of space, peace and presence. We need to be taken through this door, and poems are little doorways. This poem however, by Twentieth Century American poet William Stafford, begins in the luxuriation of a moment fully embraced – a ‘piece of heaven’, and then seems to concede to the inevitability of going back through the doorway into the melee of a busy mind and life.

Yet even though that necessity to return exists, because the fulsome early morning moment was deeply absorbed, might the day ahead feel just slightly different? The piece of heaven that was not ‘left lying around’ and was instead taken to heart may well live on clandestinely in the body as the poet gets up off the couch.

There’s something so particularly enticing about the way Stafford makes these moments feel contraband. Quiet little rebellions of mindfulness that are intimately secret. He encourages us to swim against the pervasive tide of doing, monitoring progress and conforming. He seems to be saying ‘Claim this moment as yours to enjoy, don’t give a care to what ‘they’ think. Let taking joy in the moment matter.’

Throughout the day I’m aware of many forks in the road. I can continue full pelt through the to do list and end the day frowning and rung out, or I can claim moments of appreciation for just being in between tasks and stay loyal to a human timescale, rather than a mechanical one. Might time be elastic? If I rebel against the urgency of getting on with it all, will I really end up regretting it and failing to keep up? I’ve been entering into the stealthy experiment of claiming these ‘little corners’ as gifts to myself for a couple of days now, and I feel enriched! There’s a gentle mirthful joy about it, like a serene smile with a wink. And my world hasn’t fallen apart yet.

Will you join in the experiment?

PS if you’d like to practice pausing and claiming ‘little corners’ of time and space alongside others, there’s a new Mindfulness level 1 course starting soon…

Photo by Laurence BL on Unsplash

by Emily Pearce

I didn’t used to value rest all that much, if anything it seemed like an annoying necessity to keep going. If you google ‘human being, human doing’, you’ll find an endless list of articles, books, practices, and it looks to me like most are urging us to value the being more. Easier said than done, judging by all that output about it!

I recently came across a quote from Nicola Jane Hobbs, who has just written a book on the psychology of rest, which says

Instead of asking, ‘Have I worked hard enough to deserve to rest?’, I’ve started asking, ‘Have I rested enough to do my most loving, meaningful work?’.

It’s a privilege, of course, to be able to ask this question, and there may be many situations and jobs where that question might come across as a painful joke. But I also believe that there are many for whom valuing output and doing more has become an unquestioned habitual pattern, and where asking the ‘have I rested enough’ question could land as a wise wakeup call.

This poem by Emily Pearce (who I’ve not been able to find online to give a credit to) speaks of the deep rest that winter invites. Whether it’s my age and stage or practice finally sinking in or maybe my surroundings, I’m feeling it now… How precious to be able to pause and rest wholeheartedly, even if only in brief windows of time. Very worth practising, at least!

PS If you want to explore resting, why it may not be straightforward and how to access it more, our Level 1 course ‘being present’ would be a good place to start!

Photo by Ice Tea on Unsplash

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

by Judy Brown

A clear call, in this poem by educator, speaker, facilitator, poet and writer Judy Brown, for making sure there’s enough breathing spaces in the fire that is your life. I especially like the trust and confidence that speaks in the last few lines: ‘the flame that knows just how it wants to burn’. But it does need space to find its way. Good to remember in a culture where ‘more’ seems to mean the same as ‘better’!

So let’s pause to create space, and remember to rest…

PS If you’d like to (re-)start your mindfulness journey because you’ve realised there are too many logs on your fire and you feel stressed, join the Mindfulness for Stress weekend either online or in Samye Ling to explore how to create more space and ease in your life…

Photo by Obed Hernández on Unsplash

to be just a being on this earth

my head objects:
there’s a life to be lived
a path to be followed
a skill to be learned
a friend to be seen
a change to be made
a corner to be cleaned
a standard to be reached

to see everything I could pursue
in this world
and to stay sane

to know all that could be done
in this world
and to choose not to

sometimes

just to fall back on the grass
and be

by Olga Bloemen

How hard it can seem sometimes to pause all the worthwhile doing and rest awhile, actually present… which is different from the ‘taking a break’ which looks like getting distracted in some juicy social media or other form of virtual entertainment, however fun that might be at times. The ‘falling back on the grass’ version of pausing I know to be a deeper resting, one that is fully present and connected with the bigger picture where of course we can afford ‘to be just a being on this earth’, as that is what we are… and from there, newly resourced, it’s possible to turn again to all that could be pursued and done in this world, and to do the doing with joyful effort.

Grateful to my friend and poet, activist and grassroots facilitator Olga Bloemen for this timely reminder of what’s important in this life…

PS. If you’d like to practice the magical pause together, there are free and daily opportunities to do so… if would be lovely to see you there some time!

Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash

by Rebecca Parker

A very dear friend read this poem to me under the stars on the longest night of this year, so the words landed deeply into my heart. It’s a meaningful time for me, the solstice, I connect more with this earth-gesture than the more human-originated celebrations of this month. The solstice offers that moment of pause and big perspectives both with the patterns in our solar system and with 12,000 years of human marking of this event all over the world (I enjoyed reading both this and this article about the many ways it’s celebrated in different cultures).

This year in particular I’ve experienced it as a time of hope and prayer, which I also hear in Rebecca Parker’s poem – ‘let this be the time we wake to life’, where individually and collectively we start making choices that reflect the tilt of the ‘earth’s axis towards love’. And there’s a flavour of trust in the way she describes the great web of stars where we’re cradled and rocked as ‘babes of the universe’. I feel like I need its reassurance in these dark days where our human web of connections and rituals seems both more frail and more precious than in other years.

So gratitude to theologian and United Methodist minister Rebecca Ann Parker, who has written several books as well as some beautiful poetry, for capturing this mixture of hope and trust and prayer, and for the invitation and reminder to pause in the middle of the northern hemisphere darkness…

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash