Parker J. Palmer on Poetry:
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“When I Am Asked” by Lisel Mueller seems like a simple poem. But it has drawn me into two questions that aren’t simple. If my questions aren’t for you, please accept this beautiful poem to ponder on your own time and in your own way!
(1) Why is poetry a life-giving form of expression? There are lots of answers, but Mueller's speaks to me: Reading and writing poetry can help us feel seen and heard during hard times when everything and everyone around us is looking away. It offers companionship at times of need.
For me, that companionship goes beyond self-soothing. When I read a good poem, it feels as if I’m in dialogue with something much larger than myself, or other humans, or the natural world. I feel grounded in something vital that lies just beyond my reach—an elusive realm of life-giving truth that evades ordinary language used in ordinary ways...
(2) Why do we find comfort in nature when nature can seem indifferent to our suffering? Maybe the answer is hidden in the question. Nature’s indifference is good for us because it puts our lives in perspective. It de-centers our human lives and makes us more aware of the vastness and resilience of life.
When we grasp our tiny role in that vastness, we lose our self-obsession, and that in itself is healing. When we become more aware of all the suffering, and all the joy, that arises moment by moment in our world, it gives our existence more meaning and purpose than self-centeredness will ever yield...
[The Mueller poem is from https://tinyurl.com/2arumwzc. The photo is unattributed and in the public domain.]
SOURCE: Parker J. Palmer Facebook https://www.facebook.com/86750497077/posts/10158426031327078/?d=n
Excerpted from A New Earth
by Eckhart Tolle
The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his nextdoor neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting and accusing that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. All he replied was, “Is that so?”
News of the scandal spread throughout the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him anymore. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. “You are the father, so you look after him.” The Master took loving care of the child. A year later, the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that the real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to see Hakuin to apologize and ask for forgiveness. “We are really sorry. We have come to take the baby back. Our daughter confessed that you are not the father.” “Is that so?” is all he would say as he handed the baby over to them.
The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: “Is that so?” He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama.
To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody’s victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.
The baby is looked after with loving care. Bad turns into good through the power of nonresistance. Always responding to what the present moment requires, he lets go of the baby when it is time to do so.Imagine briefly how the ego would have reacted during the various stages of the unfolding of these events.
A New Community of Soul
by Maureen B. Roberts, PhD www.psychiatrywithsoul.com
Brace yourselves and fasten yer seatbelts, folk - we’re in for even rougher seas - but it’s all part of the necessary upheaval that will clear the path for a new 'community of soul': the Net Of Indra as a living web in which each unique and equally valuable gem reflects the beauty of all others.
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All across the world, power-based hierarchies are on the way out, but there’s much work to be done to help give this old paradigm the final boot. We can each play our part by remaining alert, ethically and discerningly speaking up and acting when it’s called for, doing our own independent 're-search', and protecting our sacred spaces, bodies and personal integrity. Don’t lose heart, but rather remain centred in the heart, instead of in fear, anxiety and blind obedience (e.g. to coercive Government ‘mandates’.)
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The World Soul in its ancient wisdom, knows what it’s doing and what needs to unfold. Nothing can stop the massive shift in the collective soul that is now underway. Many are finding ‘opportunity in adversity’ amidst the angst, uncertainty and chaos; new support networks and communities are taking shape, people are doing more soul-searching, folk are coming together to resist new tyrannies that are attempting to stifle the individual and shared life of soul.
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Be comforted in knowing that ‘truth will out’ and that events are now unfolding at an accelerating pace, as the energies shaping and activating needed change intensify in order to bring matters that need to ‘come to light’ to a head. Things will get white hot before they start to cool, but the heat will purge and cleanse and out of the ashes, the Phoenix will then have an opportunity to arise.
Artwork by Romany Soup
Parker J. Palmer on Mary Oliver's Poem, In Blackwater Woods
“To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things”, says Mary Oliver in this beautiful poem so redolent of Fall. What comes next is challenging, but undeniably true...
Twenty years ago, as I began to deal with the realities of aging, I began asking myself two questions: “What do I need to let go of? What do I want to hang onto?”
I still ask the first question, but the second no longer works for me. As life constantly reminds us, we can’t “hang on” to what we love—all of it will take its leave sooner or later, and so will we.
So I’m grateful that I was given a different question to ask: “What do I want to give myself to?”
Trying to hang on to what I treasure defies the law of life, and it’s a needy, clingy, scarcity-based way of being in the world. But asking what I want to give myself to directs me toward places where I can find meaning, energy, and a reminder of life’s abundance.
For me, at least, “What do I want to give myself to?” is a question that can open up a path with a heart...
Photo Credit: Kim Nixon Hainstock
Michael Meade of Mosaic Voices on Gratitude
We live in troubled times, amidst increasing uncertainty and rampant inauthenticity. Yet, when people forget that life is a gift and that each person arrives here already gifted; then the world becomes an even darker, more isolating place. Becoming grateful, even if only for a moment, can make us feel whole again and bring a little more grace to the world.
Gratitude involves a flowering of the soul in which even a small sense of gratefulness can generate a full sense of abundance.
Feeling grateful makes things whole and gratitude can make life feel holy again. At such times, the pain of separation and isolation is redeemed, at least for a moment.
Gratitude has been called the parent of all virtues and is connected to the natural nobility of the soul. We need occasions of grace and gratitude however small they may be in order to rekindle our spirits and ease our souls. We need to feel that life, despite all the current divisions and conflicts, remains holy and that healing remains possible.
Gratitude and grace cannot really be measured; nor can they be willed. Each requires that we be open and vulnerable. We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the wonder of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given. Practices of giving thanks and giving gifts demonstrate that we know in some way that there is an underlying wholeness and an enduring holiness to life.
