“The question holds the lantern…”

John O’Donohue was a much loved Irish poet and philosopher who died last year–much too soon–at 52 years of age. As the poet, David Whyte, put it, John was a love-letter to humanity from some address in the firmament we have yet to find and locate, though we may wander many a year looking or listening for it. He has gone home to that original address and cannot be spoken with except in the quiet cradle of the imagination that he dared to visit so often himself. I’ve just begun to read his work and love the idea that “the question holds the lantern.”

THE QUESTION HOLDS THE LANTERN

Humans have an uncanny ability to domesticate everything they touch. Eventually, even the strangest things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety and contentment. Only seldom does the haze lift, and we glimpse for a second, the amazing plenitude of being here. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is suffering or threat that awakens us. It could happen that one evening, you are busy with many things, netted into your role and the phone rings. Someone you love is suddenly in the grip of an illness that could end their life within hours. It only takes a few seconds to receive that news. Yet, when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. All you know has just been rendered unsure and dangerous. You realise that the ground has turned into quicksand. Now it seems to you that even mountains are suspended on strings.

If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it would be less incredible than the story of being here. And the ironic thing is that story is not a story, it is true. It takes us so long to see where we are. It takes us even longer to see who we are. This is why the greatest gift you could ever dream is a gift that you can only receive from one person. And that person is you yourself. Therefore, the most subversive invitation you could ever accept is the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed. Plato said in The Symposium that one of the greatest privileges of a human life is to become midwife to the birth of the soul in another. When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it through our protective barriers of domestication and control. The normal way never leads home.

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realise how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits.

You have come out of Plato’s Cave of Images into the sunlight and the mystery of colour and imagination. When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with living thought so that you can begin to see. As Meister Eckhart says: Thoughts are our inner senses. When the inner senses are dull and blurred, you can see nothing in or of yourself; you become a respectable prisoner of received images. Now you realise that ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ and you undertake the difficult but beautiful path to freedom. On this journey, you begin to see how the sides of your heart that seemed awkward, contradictory and uneven are the places where the treasure lies hidden. You begin to become true to yourself. And as Shakespeare says in Hamlet: To thine own self be true, then as surely as night follows day, thou canst to no man be false.

The journey shows you that from this inner dedication you can reconstruct your own values and action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgement, comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever, you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. At the deepest level, this adventure of growth is in fact a transfigurative conversation with your own death. And when the time comes for you to leave, the view from your death bed will show a life of growth that gladdens the heart and takes away all fear.

- JOHN O’DONOHUE -

“Ephemeral as my own certainty…”

INITIATION, II

At the crossroads, hens scratched circles
into the white dust. There was a shop
where I bought coffee and eggs, coarse-grained
chocolate almost too sweet to eat.
When I walked up the road, the string sack
heavy on my arm, I thought
that my legs could take me anywhere,
into any country, any life.
The air, dazzling as sand, grew dense
with light: bougainvillea spilled
over the salmon walls, the road
veered into the ravine. The world
could be those colors, the mangoes,
the melons, the avocado evenings
releasing their circles of moon.
I climbed the pink stairs, entered
the house as calm and ephemeral
as my own certainty:
this is my house, my key,
my hand with its new lines.
I am as old as I will ever be.

- NINA BOGIN -

I am as old as I will ever be…this is my house, my key, my hand with it’s new lines…I love this poem! The sense of light and color and memory, smell, taste. The calm and ephemeral certainty; the legs that can travel into any life, anywhere. The dazzling and the sense of age, wisdom and the present moment. Ahhhh.

“White quiet beginning…”

THE HUNKERING

In October the red leaves going brown heap and
scatter
over hayfield and dirt road, over garden and circular
driveway,

and rise in a curl of wind disheveled as
schoolchildren
at recess, school just starting and summer done,
winter’s

white quiet beginning in ice on the windshield, in
hard frost
that only blue asters survive, and in the long houses
that once

more tighten themselves for darkness and
hunker down.

- DONALD HALL -

“Still the heart…”

STANDING DEER

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

- JANE HIRSHFIELD –

“Hidden inside…”

…you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

- KABIR – (trans. Robert Bly)

Autumn in the Hudson Valley. This morning a blizzard of yellow leaves storms into the yard. Such an elegant, graceful letting go. Dancing toward the dark; toward the frozen; toward the time of sorting seeds from the harvest. I love this time of year. It is the time of root vegetables; rich creamy soups–parsnip apple; gingery butternut squash; cauliflower with potato, cumin and coriander. It is the time of pies and crisps; of hot morning cereals; of reading by the fireplace. It is the time of walks in the woods ablaze with color. The faint smell of smoke in the early morning, the smell of moist leaves and oak and locust drying in the woodpile.

I am in the autumn of my life. Officially, one year away from “early retirement” age. The thought boggles my mind–unimaginable! Now is the intersection of life experience and wisdom; now is the cornucopia of a bountiful harvest; now just is. Gray and white hairs, wrinkles, sagging skin tell a story so different from how I feel–strong, balanced, joyful, inspired, excited and filled with gratitude.

“What we notice…”

life is a garden,
not a road
we enter and exit
through the same gate
wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice

- BOKONON -

“A single fabric…”

Five days of silence can change the interior landscape. There is no place to hide. The mind is a whirling dervish that slows and stills. What initially resembles a cell phone tower receiving multiple conversations becomes a clear quiet lake. The reflections there are not distorted and have no context…what is, what has been, what will be simply is, has been and will be. There is nothing extra; no footnote or interpretive analysis…no because…no cause and no effect.

This may sound abstract. Let me simplify. The man in photo above is my husband. We have been acquainted for over twenty years…sometimes knowing each other deeply; sometimes unwilling to be that vulnerable. I’ve concocted various story lines over time about him, about me, about us…now, out of silence, I see, feel and know that nothing can tear or mend the fabric of our loving.

FOR WHAT BINDS US

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down –
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest –

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

- JANE HIRSHFIELD -

“In no hurry…”

AUTUMN WAITING

Cold wind.
The day is waiting for winter
Without a sound.
Everything is waiting—
Broken-down cars in the dead weeds.
The weeds themselves.
Trees.
Even sunlight
Is in no hurry and stays
For a long time
On each cornstalk.
Blackbirds are silent
And sit in piles.
From a distance
They look like
Something
Spilled on the road.

- TOM HENNEN -

“All but hidden in a tangle…”

INTO OCTOBER

These must be the colors of returning
the leaves darkened now but staying on
into the bronzed morning among the seed heads
and the dry stems and the umbers of October
the secret season that appears on its own
a recognition without sound
long after the day when I stood in its light
out on the parched barrens beside a spring
all but hidden in a tangle of eglantine
and picked the bright berries made of that summer

- W.S. MERWIN -

Recently I received a note from an “Inner Edger.” It was a kind inquiry–checking to see if I was okay; looking for a fresh post. I was both touched and inspired. I responded first by posting and then with a personal email of thanks for the concern. Below is a portion of the response to my email.

Your words and heart and path truly seemed to touch others in an important way. Why will you not post on a regular basis?  Can that be part of your posting? We all have lots going on…..but connection to others, known and unknown, is like a ripple in a pond.

I hope you will try to find to keep up your connections to the “Inner Edges.”

It’s so true. We all have lots going on. We are preoccupied in so many ways. Not long ago I looked back through my blog and was surprised by how much I had forgotten about my own life. Small moments, captured in a photo or a poem. Things that mattered, since faded and replaced by now, and now, and now. Knowing that perhaps those moments can touch another human being often fails to occur to me. So thank you, Peggy…thank you for urging me on and reminding me that we are all connected by visible and invisible bonds. I’ll do my best!

PS…to stay current, you can click the RSS feed in the URL box…

“Here at this moment…”

The two Zen Masters in my life sharing a moment and some Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Snacks. My father and my grandson. Both so completely in the present. Both entirely captivated by the here and now. Each living his own koan practice.

My father posits, “When did I get here?” And, “How long will I stay?” Last week, earnestly serious, he asked, “When did I die–what year?”

Dashiell pauses to examine the lint in the corner; to turn the piano stool like he’s steering an ocean liner; to stomp in a puddle; to listen and talk with the frogs in the pond; to exclaim “fire truck” when the very faintest semblance of a siren–barely audible–sounds in the far distance.

Daily my father is loosing command of his memory. The moment is simply the moment without context. Whenever I visit him, I am barely out of the parking lot when my cell phone rings. His questions always predictable: “How are you and where are you?” And, “How come I never see you anymore?”

Dashiell is building memory; busy cataloguing and naming objects and experiences. He’ll sometimes soften his gaze…musing and say, “Pop-Pop…track-tor…” And then, because he is growing up with a dog and knows the command, “Come!” he’ll say, “Pop-Pop, COME!” as though he fully expects Pop-Pop to round the corner of the living room perched on the yellow tractor seat.

Sometimes I am able to tap a memory line with my father. It’s a bit like Morse Code…tap, tap, tap. No response. Tap…Tap, Tap. Tap…Tap…Tap. Ah, yes…2203 Wright Avenue, Greensboro, North Carolina. Yes, I remember! The white clapboard house perched on a small hill. The bay window and the black shutters. The brick patio and rock garden in the back. The round black Plymouth coupe in the driveway. Mr. Staley’s truck garden with tomatoes and shiny eggplants between our house and the corner. Yes, I remember that…for now.

A MOMENTARY CREED

I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me

it extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me

- W.S. MERWIN -

The photo above was taken by my daughter Sara during a recent visit.