To walk and breathe deeply
and have enough to eat
and love someone
or many
then to keep walking,
that is the First Dream, before and beyond the first illusions.
Detours and shortcuts, beckoning..
take us to darker places- thin of air, lonely, empty and rough,
where others are shouting
“Here! Now! No! Stop!”
It is there that the illusion becomes the Dream
and walking becomes a dissipating hope..
In the space between me and you
there is no space.
Sometimes (oftentimes) I get in the way
and step back
or move aside
or kowtow
or threaten.
But then we breathe
and the breath of all beings
makes the space small again.
And when I leave,
the space is gone.
So I must practice
leaving.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
-Isaiah 2:4
Look beyond the earth-ripping, flesh-tearing tanks and the silent so-soft sliding of munition-laden drones through springtime skies, pouring fire on enemies, wedding parties, and some guy standing there in the shade.
Look beyond- see beyond, imagine beyond, hope beyond- dirt and metal embedded in the torn skin of young men with pictures of children in their wallets, and of young, such young women, bleeding.
Look beyond the desire for plastic bags, air shows, beach balls, Styrofoam cups, plastic forks, bead-filled shampoo, another car, another tv, another dress, more shoes, Styrofoam peanuts for the packing of plastic-wrapped plastic electrical replacement components for plastic encased computers on plastic counters, 73 degrees of warmth instead of 65 and a wool sweater, and hair gel.
Look beyond the 18.5 billion dollars being spent monthly on death and injury instead of water wells and pipes and salves and wind generators and schools and Alzheimers research and levees and bridges to somewhere.
Look beyond, see beyond, imagine beyond, and pray. Pray not for a supernatural miracle to appear in the eastern sky, but for the strength and the courage to cause one to happen.
Ocean, water vapor, cloud, rain,
grass, cow, milk, ice cream.
All are part of the other.
None are without the other,
except in name.
Mishka, Francois, Arlene, Jose,
Alberto, Lao, Jagathi, Roy,
Simon, Ki, Marisol, Christy.
Deliver us from the evil
of not-knowing
where ice cream comes from.
Luke 23:9: Pilate questioned Jesus at length, but Jesus gave him no answer.
The stillpoint is where the dance leads to, and from whence it begins.
Jesus was not quiet so that others could answer for him;
he was quiet so that others would listen
and hear.
And continue the dance.
I know something of the Buddha;
that means I know very little.
I am very knowledgeable about the Christ;
which means I know almost nothing.
The more I know
the less I understand
and that is the way it must be-
it is the way that the universe moves,
It is the way I learned to walk,
it is the way the moon caresses
the oceans;
and it is the only way I know to pray.
What I know, I become attached to.
And attachment ends movement.
What I am free of, I can be curious about:
I can learn more, seek more,
love more.
Sitting beside an early-springtime lake,
the wind in my face is still a bit chilly
and the shore plants- reeds and grasses-
are now barely beginning green.
I try to imagine what it would be like
to watch this lakeside world
knowing
I was the only one doing so.
To watch with
no anticipation nor anxiety but my own,
no memory nor regret
no lies
and no truths.
I would
(I also imagine)
hear only the unending echo of
“I Am.”
without Desire.
only Attraction.
and in some green-leafy,
insect-clicking, cloud-rolling
ways,
a very real Love.
Qoheleth declared all to be
Vanity:
emptiness encased in
shiny superficiality,
marketed as meaningful,
but quickly forgotten in the glare
of that which is shinier,
newer,
and just beyond our reach.
Vanity, my name is Vanity..
until I learn my true name.
And that name can be learned
only
by leaning into the image of myself
in the mirror of a pine tree’s
sticky, sap-stained bark;
or in the mirror of a mountain range
where snow-covered peaks are hidden
behind winter’s-grey/golden clouds;
or in the mirror of a thousand soldiers’
graves at the edges of a
Pennsylvanian battlefield;
or in the mirror of flashing fish scales
or a red/yellow/blue/white supernovas
or in a drop of sidewalk rainwater.
There
I am, too:
in Meaning without words
in Reflection without plot
in Holiness without divinity.
And my true name?
My true name is that
I have
no name.
Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath
were stored but now
are turned into land mines,
and buried.
On the third day
(or the second or the fifth,
or maybe some day years from now)
some unsuspecting chump
will step on a long-forgotten mine,
rise,
and ascend into heaven
on the loosed lightning of TNT,
in a smear of furious death.
I believe in the Holy Spirit:
I’ve seen him in the watchfires
of a hundred circling camps.
And I believe in the holy catholic church-
they’ve builded him an altar in the morning dews and damps.
I believe in the communion of saints
and the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of bodies,
(even blown-apart ones)
and life everlasting.
Even though
Our god
Our god
Our god is marching on.
other reactions to the TTC: http://taochow.wikispaces.com/
Drawing a picture of the bird outside my window
gives me no control (none at all) over him.
No matter that the scarlet and ecru of the bird’s wings
are perfectly blended in an imagined water-color
flurry of feathers..
the bird is gone, flying away from the sound of my
commanding voice,
and beyond the reach of the prayers
with which I plead to the God of my bidding,
for the bird’s return.
Either God is not listening, or
I am irrelevant in Creation’s
thrusting toward tomorrow.
The bird doesn’t need me.
Nor, it seems-
at least in the way I believed it to be so-
does God.
I am free now to enjoy both.
Unencumbered by chains.
The First Morning 