A Meadow Just for you

Walking through tall grass
on a narrow path, my fingers
spread wide to pull through the seedheads.
As if to touch is to be touched.
As if, with open palms,
I could pull this beauty
inside me and carry it with me
until I give it to you—
as if I could somehow
slip a whole meadow into your pocket
so you could unfold it anytime
and wander through grass
as high as your chest
and feel how the vastness
reminds us who we are.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

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For When People Ask by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

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There will be days when you do not feel

fearless

and you choose to get up

and go to sea anyway.

And my friend,

let me tell you,

this is what it means to be brave.

It is that gentle shove toward the water

that says "I will go,

and I will go afraid."

It is not a feeling.

It is not a thought.

It is that inward wind that pulls you out of sleep

and says "I will go forth,

with all I have now:

a breath, a dozen steps,

and a pocket full of fears,

but no matter what tries to pull me back,

I will find the strength to be here."

Morgan Harper Nichols

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When everyone else was meditating, I’d be outside circling the hall.

Finally, I went to confess. I’m hopeless, I said.

The elder nun smiled. Just keep going, she said.

Nothing stays in orbit forever.

If this circling is all you have, why not make this circling your home?

I did as she told me, and went on circling the hall.

If you find yourself partly in and partly out—

if you find yourself drawn to this Path and also drawing away—

I can assure you, you’re in good company.

Just keep going.

Sometimes the most direct path is not a straight line.

—Bhikshuni Vijaya, Therigatha (Poems of the First Buddhist Nuns)

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Reading from DAY ONE of “30 days of mindfulness.”

Few skills are more essential than the ability to settle your body. If you can settle your body, you are more likely to be calm, alert, and fully present, no matter what is going on around you. A settled body enables you to harmonize and connect with other bodies around you, while encouraging those bodies to settle as well. Gather together a large group of unsettled bodies or assemble a group of bodies and then unsettle them- and you get a bob or a riot. But bring a large group of settled bodies together and you have a potential movement-and a potential force for tremendous good in the world. A calm, settled body is the foundation for health, for healing. for helping others, and for changing the world.

Excerpt from “My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menakem (read it!)

Readings from class

Yoga by Joan Gelfand

Pigeon poses problems.

The particular angle of calf to thigh

The troubles secreted

Inside knotty tendon

Ache of gnarled hamstring.

Stored sadness.

Bend, curl, fold.

Abrade the unnamable.

I return to pigeon like a child worrying a scab,

Exposing fresh wound.

Until I am a pigeon, roosting

Mottled, sturdy, and grey.

I become a landed bird

Perennially homing, homing.

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There will be hundreds of those “hard days”. The kind where you struggle to find the strength to even deal with whats in front of you. A major catastrophe at work, a horrendous family matter, a debilitating disappointment in your self, a business breakdown.

Hundreds of those will happen throughout all of your glorious years. So for the next one (the inevitable next one) bring out the flashlight and the tool box and the notebook and INVESTIGATE exactly what goes on in our heart, our head, and our behevour during these times. Figure out what your tools are to get through these: who you can call when these hit you, what place you can escape to in order to find peace and direction, what foods give you comfort or strength, what music gives you the pause you need, what authors or articles give you the kick in the pants that help you recalibrate.

STUDY YOURSELF. That self awareness is a gentle way of loving on a future flustered version of yourself.

Your curating your first aid box before the pain comes your way again. It will still be hard unfortunately, but you will at least be able to manage it, use your tools to work through it and get back to the good stuff.

Rachel Cargle (instagram @rachael.cargle)

"You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone – any person or any force – dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth and follow its dictates"

– From John Lewis’ 2017 memoir, "Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America"

"Cultivating wholesome intentions and actions of body, speech, and mind, and letting go of historical and ensnaring attitudes, is a constant throughout the entire path of yoga." 
~Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga

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"Our bodies guide and follow other bodies; a settled nervous system encourages other nervous systems to settle. This is why a calm, settled presence can create room for a multitude of possibilities, and become the foundation for changing the world.”
~Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands

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“Life will break you. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

―Excerpt from  Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

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An excerpt from “Tell me More” by Kelly Corrigan

Maybe Will’s curious phrase-it’s like this- applies here, too. This forgetting, this slide into smallness, this irritability and shame, this disorienting grief: It’s like this. Minds don’t rest; they reel and wander and fixate and roll back and reconsider because it’s like this, having a mind. Hearts don’t idle; they swell and constrict and break and forgive and behold because it’s like this, having a heart. Lives don’t last; they thrill and confound and circle and overflow and disappear because it’s lie this, having a life.

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“Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.” ― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

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Clearing 

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue. - Martha Postlewaite

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"In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers."

~Fred Rogers

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Historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks our dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skied behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world, and ready to fight for it.

Susanna Arundati Roy (Contemporary Indian author)

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So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.

― Pádraig Ó Tuama, Irish Poet and Theologian 

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Let everything happen to you

beauty and terror

Just keep going 

No feeling is final.

-Rilke

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“In the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger, something better, pushing right back.”

-Albert Camus

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We have a choice.
Epidemics, like earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, are part of the cycle of life on planet Earth.
How will we respond?
With greed, hatred, fear and ignorance? This only brings more suffering.
Or with generosity, clarity, steadiness and love?

Jack Kornfield on Coronavirus

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This is the time for love.Aisha S. Ahmad 27 March 2020

Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure

Among my academic colleagues and friends, I have observed a common response to the continuing Covid-19 crisis. They are fighting valiantly for a sense of normalcy — hustling to move courses online, maintaining strict writing schedules, creating Montessori schools at their kitchen tables. They hope to buckle down for a short stint until things get back to normal. I wish anyone who pursues that path the very best of luck and health.

Yet as someone who has experience with crises around the world, what I see behind this scramble for productivity is a perilous assumption. The answer to the question everyone is asking — “When will this be over?” — is simple and obvious, yet terribly hard to accept. The answer is never.

Global catastrophes change the world, and this pandemic is very much akin to a major war. Even if we contain the Covid-19 crisis within a few months, the legacy of this pandemic will live with us for years, perhaps decades to come. It will change the way we move, build, learn, and connect. There is simply no way that our lives will resume as if this had never happened. And so, while it may feel good in the moment, it is foolish to dive into a frenzy of activity or obsess about your scholarly productivity right now. That is denial and delusion. The emotionally and spiritually sane response is to prepare to be forever changed.

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Swami Anandamayi Ma 1896 - 1982

Living without certainty or guarantees, being fully with what is happening now, is living in the flow itself. Living in this way ensures at we will not break but will bend like the graceful willow as inevitable change occurs.

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