worship

.

Emanating from the embrace

Of the Goddess and her God

Is a wheel of shimmering divine energies.

This is the sacred spot

Where worship is done.

The center of this wheel

Is right where you are.

Live here, and let your heart stream

With an unending flow of adoration.

In this way, tend the altar of love.  

The Radiance Sutras - 151

Lorin Roche 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Stand Still

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you 

Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,

I have made this place around you,

If you leave it you may come back again saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows

Where you are.  You must let it find you.

David Wagoner

Photo:  Peter Bowers

the real work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work, 

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.  

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

Photo:  Peter Bowers

nothing to say

Birth, old age,

Sickness, and death:

From the beginning,

This is the way

Things have always been.

Any thought

Of release from this life

Will wrap you only more tightly

In its snares.

The sleeping person

Looks for a Buddha,

The troubled person

Turns toward meditation.

But the one who knows

That there's nothing to seek

Knows too that there's nothing to say.

She keeps her mouth closed.

Ly Ngoc Kieu

(1041-1113)

Photo:  Peter Bowers

like a fountain of water...thingness

For me there is no materiality to apparent

materiality.  In our bodies, 3 billion cells a minute are

dying and being reborn.  So our bodies look solid,

but they aren't.  How many minutes have just gone

by and how many cells have died and been reborn?

We're like a fountain.  A fountain of water looks

solid, but you can put your fingers right through it.  

Our bodies look like things, but there's no

thingness to them.  

Li-Young Lee
Photo:  Peter Bowers

I worried

I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it, and I am, well, 

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up.  And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Morgan

The Message of the Rain

when i was a child

i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox

and spoke with them in their tongues

climbed their trees dug their dens

and knew the taste 

of every grass and stone

and meaning of the sun

and message of the night

now i am old and past

both work and battle

and know no shame

to go alone to the forest

to speak again to squirrel fox and bird

to taste the world

to find the meaning of the wind

the message of the rain

Norman H. Russell 

listen

The sound of rain needs no translation.

Allan Watts

Happy are those ..

Happy are those who know

behind all words, the Unsayable stands,

and from that source, the Infinite

crosses over to gladness, and us.

Free of those bridges we raise

with constructed distinctions;

so that always, in each separate joy,

we gaze at the single, wholly mutual core.

Grace is not something to be acquired from others.

If it is external, it is useless.

All that is necessary is to know its existence in you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

drink from this cup

Adorable Goddess,

These practices are a nectar I share with you.

Drink from this cup whenever you are thirsty

Or crave to be refreshed in the essence of life.

Know that this ambrosia is available to you 

Everywhere, for the universe is made out of it.

Simply go to the intersection of flesh and spirit,

Breathe the tiny sparks that fly.

Within this very body

Are many gateways to the infinite,

Where incarnation and immortality

Consummate their passion for each other.

Share these teachings

With all generous-hearted people

Who come your way and ask.

When you meet someone

Whose heart is vibrating

With the flow of love,

Share the teachings without reservation.

Let your words and energies

Be free as your breathing.

Friends, relatives, neighbors, people who abide

in your village, city, country...

Be not concerned with their attitudes

Towards these teachings.

Everyone is discovering the intimate universe 

in their own way.

Openings to this nectar are here

In every breath, every desire, every transition

From waking to sleeping and sleeping to waking.

Once you have set out on the path of intimacy with

The immortal essence of life,

Never turn your back on it, my shining one.

Never turn away.

Though every moment be surprising,

Revelatory, unrecognizable and full of wonder,

Continue to cherish each breath.

Live in gratitude for the supreme nectar we imbibe

In each turning, outbreath to inbreath into outbreath.

Lorin Roche

The Radiance Sutras
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Solstice

I'm lying on a couch by the open window, listening to a 

warm breeze fluttering the leaves of the sycamore, cars

sighing and grumbling down Broadway with some destination

in mind.  A crow drops elegantly toward the pavement, 

the noon light splintering silver across the tops of his flattened

wings.  The air stills.  An unseen jet rakes the sky with

thunder.  Small tufts of tree-cotton drift by, their progress

hesitant but always angled upward.  In less than a month 

I will have been ill for exactly half my life, a milestone I

could never have imagined reaching with my sanity intact.

I seldom know what I need to be doing, or if I really need to

be here at all.  And yet I am here, and my life is connected

to other lives in ways I cannot fully comprehend.  A ripple 

of breeze presses one leaf against another and another, and

the sound empties and fills my heart with a sensation that

is indistinguishable from love.  I think of Meister Eckhart:

If the only prayer you say in your entire life is thank you, it

will be enough. 

Elizabeth Nordeen