To Marvel At

Be like the wing on the way to the party

that can lift yourself and others.

Expectations, let them serve you, until the

present is always enough to marvel at. 

Rumi 

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

...the future unknown...

i.

The calendar all booked up, the future unknown.

The cable silently hums some folk song

but lacks a country.  Snow falls in the gray sea.  Shadows

fight out on the dock. 

ii.

Halfway through your life, death turns up

and takes your pertinent measurements.  We forget

the visit.  Life goes on.  But someone is sewing 

the suit in silence.  

Tomas Transtromer

translation:  Robert Bly 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

I happened to be standing

I don't know where prayers go,

or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it 

crosses the street?

The sunflowers?  The old black oak

growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

along the shore or under the trees,

with my mind filled with things

of little importance, in full

self-attendance.  A condition I can't really

call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,

or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep.  Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

just outside my door, with my notebook open, 

which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, 

I don't know why.  And yet, why not.

I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe

or whatever you don't .  That's your business.

But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be

if it isn't a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.  

Mary Oliver

For Freedom

As a bird soars high

In the free holding of the wind,

Clear of the certainty of ground,

Opening the imagination of wings

Into the grace of emptiness

To fulfill new voyagings,

May your life awaken

To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself

Of the expectation of land,

Approaching only

In the form of waves

That fill and pleat and fall

With such gradual elegance

As to make of the limit

A sonorous threshold

Whose music echoes back along

The give and strain of memory,

Thus may your heart know the patience

That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth

Welcomes all we call death,

Taking deep into itself

The tight solitude of a seed, 

Allowing it time

To shed the grip of former form

And to give way to a deeper generosity

That will one day send it forth,

A tree into springtime,

May all that holds you

Fall from its hungry ledge

Into the fecund surge of your heart. 

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

On Christmas Eve

I salute you.  I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not.
But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take heaven !

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace !
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
There is a radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look.
I beseech you to look !

Life is so generous a giver.
But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as
ugly or heavy or hard.
Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor,
woven of love by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me,
that angel's hand is there.
The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.
Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys.
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering,
that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage then to claim it; that is all!
But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.





Fra Giovanni
(1435 - 1515)
letter written to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve 1513

Millennium Blessing

There is a grace approaching

that we shun as much as death,

it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,

but in timelessness

when the mind sinks into the heart

and we remember.

It is insistent grace that draws us

to the edge and beckons us surrender

safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass

beyond knowing

and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward

none-the-less

through forgotten ghosts

and unexpected angels,

luminous.

And there is nothing left to say

but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.

Stephen Levine

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For Absence

May you know that absence is alive with hidden

presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.

May the absences in your life grow full of eternal 

echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere

where the presences that have left you dwell.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow

of presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never 

hear from.

May you have the courage to speak for the excluded

ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject

of your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle

words or false belonging.  

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and

twilight are one. 

May your longing inhabit its dreams within the 

Great Belonging.

John O'Donohue 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Message From Space

Everything that happens is the message:

you read an event and be one and wait,

like breasting a wave, all the while knowing

by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna - a dish

aimed at stars - and they themselves are its message, 

crawling in and out, being worlds that loom, 

dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up

eye and ear - suddenly we fall into

sound before it begins, the breathing

so still it waits there under the breath - 

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills

where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied

stillness unfolding their careful words:

"Everything counts.  The message is the world."

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

The Task

It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.

We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair - 

a robe unfurled

in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.

And yes, it is a simple enough task

we've taken on,

though also vast; 

from dusk to dawn,

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not

be blinded by the praising.

To lie like a cat in hot

sun, fur fully blazing,

and dream the mouse;

and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch

within the deep rooms of the house,

where the leaf-flocked

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms. 

Jane Hirshfield

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against, 

A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, 

Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn't need to hold you down. 

It doesn't need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

And disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

And now live over a quarry of noise and dust

Cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

It too could wake up filled with possibilities

Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

And love even the floor which needs to be swept,

The soiled linens and scratched records...

Since there is no place large enough

To contain so much happiness,

You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

Into everything you touch.  You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

For the moon, but continue to hold it, and to share it,

And in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Half Life

We walk through half our life

as if it were a fever dream

barely touching the ground

our eyes half open

our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are

we watch the ghost of us drift

from room to room

through friends and lovers

never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean

or meaning half we say

we dream ourselves

from birth to birth

seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks

and the heart can not abide

a moment longer

as the rest of us awakens,

summoned from the dream,

not half caring for anything but love. 

Stephen Levine

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Two Loves

I have two Loves.

Sisters.

One is Immanence,

The other, Transcendence.

Loving each more than words can say,

I fear I cannot Live

Without either of them,

Even as one slowly...slips...away.

Growing older, I'm as a man on a train,

My Love on the platform, gazing wistfully.

Our certain parting,

Making Her more Beautiful than I can bear.

For some time now, I've seen Her everywhere,

Breathed Her, Heard Her voice in every sound,

Felt Her beneath my feet as I walk,

And Her warmth as sunlight upon my face.

This Knowing, that I'll not long be with Her,

A Poignancy, near unbearable,

Rather than diminishing our time, Enriches

Every...precious...moment.

As Life lurches forward, I hold Her closely.

But Vanishing Time, ever more so,

Allows only our Hearts to touch.

All that has ever...really...mattered.

I see Her still, our touch endures,

For how long, I do not know.

Her Perfume still surrounds me,

For how long, I do not know.

And yet...even as I leave one Love,

Arriving at another, in a time not known,

There is no place, within or without,

Where one ends...and the other begins.

No place where She ends,

and She begins.

No place where I end,

And I begin.

I leave, without moving,

From my Love,

To my Love,

As my Love.

Beloved Immanence,

Appearing within, 

And as,

My Beloved Transcendence. 

Chuck Surface

Photo:  Peter Bowers

As Shams Was to Me... (or You Are a Lion ! )

A sheep who had just lost her lamb was in grief, and 

the fullness of milk throbbed heavy within.  And she

prayed the best she could, in her sheep soul, for help.

Soon after that, she came across a lion cub, all alone

and near dying.  Although the scent of him triggered

every warning to her, 

her grief was so great to have a beloved near, and one 

who could bring release of the building pressure in

her glands, that she lay down beside him.

And after a while, he began to suckle her, and they

and God smiled in unison.

Strong, the young cub became, and he was accepted

into the flock by most, always reflecting their traits.

He even developed a passable baa.

About a year went by, when then a real lion came upon

the herd, and saw one of his own eating grass and 

thinking it was a timid creature.

So the aged lion said to his kin, "Brother, what has

happened to you, acting like that?  You have completely

identified with something you are not.

Come down to the lake with me, we will look into

it together.  It will be our mirror.  You will see you

are just like me, a great and powerful king."

Yes, that is the role of the Teacher, as Shams was to

me - showing the one who they are, so they can stop

bleating, crying at the night, and never again be afraid.  

Rumi 

tranlation by Daniel Ladinsky

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - 

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old?  Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?  Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is 

that we live forever.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Body Revelations

Today I woke seeing

not with my eyes,

but seeing the world

through the heart.

The location of things

seemed to drop

from my brain

and was peering

out from my chest.

My forehead unwrinkled

its long years of worry;

my throat released

all of its grip;

and now there's a breath

that fills my whole being,

a breath so open and free

that instead of stopping

at the top of my lungs,

it pirouettes in the heavens above

and swirls inside middle earth.

And here in this body,

this small human body,

that's always and only 

belonged to God,

the secret of deep

abidance in peace seems

to be to live from the heart;

for the mind of the brain

seems to want some gain,

but the mind of the heart stays clear.

Who would ever believe 

that this very body,

the one I spent years to transcend,

would turn out to be

Truth's continual key

to abide as the One I am?

And who could imagine

it's possible to see,

not through eyes,

but the heart's pure intimacy?

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Long Before We Ever Tried

To meditate is

to realize what has

always been meditating,

the vast and empty sky

in which the 

clouds of meditating

and not meditating

appear and

then disappear.

To meditate is to

realize this sky

that kissed the

clouds long before

we ever tried

to love what is.

John Astin

Photo:  Peter Bowers

What Can I Say

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is the face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the

chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you 

were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy four,

and the leaf is singing still.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

Ever Arriving

"At the still point of the turning world...

there the dance is...

Except for the point, the still point,

there would be no dance,

and there is only the dance."

T.S. Eliot 

I think of it

as the Swirling Radiance,

movement that never ceases,

ever arriving

from the last moment 

of eternity,

the plundered second

of all that will ever be.

And you, here,

are at the midpoint,

the demarcation

of what has always been

and what is perpetually approaching,

your seeing is that which sustains,

carries forth,

enables.

You are the perpetual 

witness,

heaven's link to time.

If you listen, you can 

almost hear it swish 

as it goes by.

Dorothy Walters.

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Journey of Return

When the Beloved wants to take you Home, 

extend your hand to His welcoming

even though your body may be trembling

and your mind may want to flee;

even though those around you grieve,

and you yourself have mourned, even before they,

the changing form of your body.

Tears are not the final truth

though they will come and go

like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.

Death is not a failure of a mind

that is not strong enough,

or positive enough, or pure enough.

Those who hold such views are simply

masking fear with ideas of being in control

We are being lived by the Creator of this life.

Do you really think a finite mind can change

the mind of God?  Jesus tried and failed.

"Please take this cup from me!" he begged,

as we all do in the midst of anguish.

But anguish, fear, or deepest grief

cannot alter Who you really are.

The beautiful Spirit that extended Itself

in space and time, and called Itself by your name,

is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,

to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,

that kisses you at birth,

and holds your hand in death,

and never for a moment

forgets you are Itself.

The mind imagines you are leaving,

but where could you truly go?

You are Life Itself!  Unceasingly flowing,

moment to moment unfolding Yourself.

A body is born; a body dies; but you do not. 

Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.

Rest there.  Rest in the knowing that

opens your heart to all that IS,

that loves Itself in all that comes,

and returns to Itself in all that goes. 

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Marriage

To see your face

with the eye of emptiness

is to have your face

as my own, and to find

between seeing and loving

not even a hairbreadth.

Colin Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Beauty

And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.

And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how

shall you find her unless she herself be your

way and your guide?

And how shall you speak of her except

she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, 

"Beauty is kind and gentle.

Like a young mother half-shy of her

own glory she walks among us."

And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is

a thing of might and dread.

Like the tempest she shakes the earth

beneath us and the sky above us."

The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is

of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.

Her voice yields to our silences like a faint

light that quivers in fear of the shadow."

But the restless say, "We have heard her

shouting among the mountains, 

And with her cries came the sound of

hoofs, and the beating of wings and the

roaring of lions."

At night the watchmen of the city say,

"Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the 

east."

And at noontide the toilers and wayfarers

say, "We have seen her leaning over

the earth from the windows of the sunset."

In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall

come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

And in the summer heat the reapers say,

"We have seen her dancing with the autumn

leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her

hair."

All these things have you said of beauty, 

Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of

needs unsatisfied,

And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty

hand stretched forth,

But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.  

It is not the image you would see nor the

song you would hear,

But rather an image you see though you 

close your eyes and a song you hear though

you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,

nor a wing attached to a claw,

But rather a garden for ever in bloom and

a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when

life unveils her holy face. 

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and you are the mirror.  

Kahlil Gibran 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Nocturne

You are woken in the night
by something that cannot speak
in daylight, that has no purchase
in the hard currency of your life.

Outside is the shallow well
of a sleeping town; electric lights
peek faintly into black space,
and the lithe ghost of the dark

slips into the only house that
bids it welcome.  Your husband
lies snoring, dreams of another
world, offers you rough the gift

of aloneness:  Know this
what arrives here cannot
be other than itself, and
has no care for you.  It

has no words, and no respect
for yours, so finds your body,
colonises your spine, feeds
you up into the sea of stars.  You

may think you are changing,
or hope; but you are simply
failing to forget, allowing
stillness to be recognized.

You are momentarily disappearing,
to enter your own voice, see
with your own eyes, become
 the body you gave birth to;

you have returned to
your own faithfulness,
your own unimaginable
emptiness.





Andrew Colliver
via Poetry Chaikhana
Photo:  Peter Bowers

...content with not-knowing

(The Master) lets the confused

stay confused

if that is what they want

and is always available

to those with a passion for the truth.

In the welter of opinions

She is content with not-knowing.

She makes distinctions

but doesn't take them seriously.

She sees the world constantly breaking

apart, and stays centered in the whole.

She sees the world endlessly changing

and never wants it to be

different from what it is.  

Chuang-tzu

Adapted by Stephen Mitchell

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Prayer

Then a priestess said, Speak to us of Prayer.

And he answered, saying: 

You pray in your distress and in your need; 

would that you might pray also in the fullness 

of your joy and in your days of abundance.

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself

into the living ether?

And if it is for your comfort to pour your

darkness into space, it is also for your 

delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.

And if you cannot but weep when your 

soul summons you to prayer, she should spur

you again and yet again, though weeping,

until you shall come laughing.

When you pray you rise to meet in the 

air those who are praying at that very hour,

and whom save in prayer you may not

meet.  

Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible

be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion.

For if you should enter the temple for no 

other purpose than asking you shall not receive:

And if you should enter into it to humble 

yourself you shall not be lifted:

Or even if you should enter into it to

beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.

It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

God listens not to your words save when 

He Himself utters them through your lips.

And I cannot teach you the prayer of the 

seas and the forests and the mountains.

But you who are born of the mountains

and the forests and the seas can find their

prayer in your heart.

And if you but listen in the stillness of the 

night you shall hear them saying in silence,

"Our God, who art our winged self, it 

is thy will in us that willeth.

It is thy desire in us that desireth.

Is is thy urge in us that would turn our

nights, which are thine, into days which are 

thine also.

We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou

knowest our needs before they are born in us:

Thou art our need; and in giving us more

of thyself thou givest us all."

Kahlil Gibran 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Speak to us of Children...

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

Enough

I think it is enough,

at times,

to go without knowing

where the end is,

what the beginning - 

so long ago.

Perhaps you have friends

who can whisper

such things

in your ear,

hear little bits of 

messages

in the laughter of children

But mostly we just proceed ahead,

not remembering

how it all started,

where it is leading,

not sure

if we are the waiting animal

or the animal's passing

shadow 

in the grass.

Dorothy Walters

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

The Bright Core of Failure (or.. My Heart is a Saucepan)

Sometimes you enter the heart.  Sometimes

you're born from the soul.  Sometimes you

weep a song of separation:  all the same

glory.  You live in beautiful forms and

you're the energy that breaks images.  All 

light, neither this nor that.  Human beings

go places on foot; angels, with wings.  Even

if they find nothing but ruins and failure,

you're the bright core of that.  When angels

and humans are free of feet and wings, they'll

understand that you are that lack, pure

absence.  You're in my eyes like a taste of 

wine that blocks my understanding.  That

ignorance glorifies.  You talk and feel in

the talking:  kingdom, finances, fire, smoke,

the senses, incense:  all are your favourites! 

A ship, Noah, blessings, luck, troubles that 

pull us unknowingly toward treasure:  look,

he's being dragged away from his friends! 

Nobody will see him anymore.  This is your

story.  I ask you, "Should I talk to this one?

Is he being drawn to me?"  Silence.  That too.  

What is desire? What is it! Don't laugh, my

soul.  Show me the way through this desiring.

All the  world loves you, but you are nowhere

to be found.  Hidden and completely obvious.

You are the soul! You boil me down in a 

saucepan, then ask why I'm spilling out.  Is

it time for patience?  Your bright being.  My

heart is a saucepan.  This writing, the record

of being torn apart in your fire, as aloe

wood most becomes itself when burning up.

Enough talk about burning!  Everything, even

the end of this poem, is a taste of your glory.

Rumi

The True Person

The true person is 

Not anyone in particular; 

But, like the deep blue colour

of the limitless sky,

It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

Dogen

Mother, Silence

Sometimes when life is difficult,

I curl up in my Mother's lap 

and drink her ever-present love

that never has required

a single thing to change.

And when my life requires courage,

or I don't know what to say

or how to be, 

I go to her and

listen with my heart.

My Mother birthed the world

and everything that's in it.

Her wisdom excludes nothing; 

and yet she rushes to my side

if I but beckon her.

What a pure, abiding presence

is my Mother, Silence.  

Dorothy Hunt

photo:  Peter Bowers