listen...she will teach you her ways - mara friedman

Her lineage is impeccable..

But from whence has she come?..

She comes when you don’t want her
When you think you’re not ready

Yet,

When you most need her.

She tolerates no lack of attention
She tolerates no lack of love

She sticks pins in your tender spots
To see if

“You’re done yet”

She never forgives

Yet

She never condemns

See her

Flowing robes
Outstretched arms
Piercing eyes
Pinioned wings

See her

Missing teeth
Limping gate
Rheumy eyes
Shopping cart and cardboard box

Feel her rage that is not hate
Feel her love that is not lust

Hold the warmth and delight
In her newborn skin
Hold her strength and wisdom
In the boles and gnarls and knots of her ancient-ness

Seek her out
Across miles of barren waste
In the steppes of the Himalayas

In aisle ‘B’
next to the baked goods

In the mirror

Seek
Her

She
Seeks
You.

Paul Reynolds at Living the Question

(from ”Now I Become Myself” by May Sarton) 

Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces…

Planting the seeds of transformation - mara friedman

Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
That I will never fulfill my obligation
to surpass myself
unless I first accept myself,
and if I accept myself fully in the right way,
I will already have surpassed myself.
- Thomas Merton

imagine infinite potential ~ mara friedman

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives –
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,
feel like?
   
Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?
   
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
   
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
   
   
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
   
   
Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.
   
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
   
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
   
   
To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
   
To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
   
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
 in the night.
   
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind! 

~~~~~    
    

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
   
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
 and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep. 
    
  ~~~~~ 

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
   
I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

~~~~~

   
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
 

Fall in! Fall in! 
     

~~~~~
   
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
   
~~~~~ 
   
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
   
And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
   
That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.
   
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.
   
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

seen at return to the center

And I love the simplicity of the last lines:  I climb.  I backtrack.  I float.  I ramble my way home.  Perfect description of the easy grace and innocence that prevails when we slip the noose of sleepwalking through our lives and join the living, breathing, wonderous world that is our home.

michelangelo - delphic sibyl

The Ten Phases of a Woman’s Life

.  A little list I found tucked in the back of a little book by Joan Anderson (The Second Journey) that I haven’t actually read yet….but this caught my eye and I loved it.  It’s a list of the phases women go through on their journey to themselves.   It helps to explain the restlessness, aching and tugging going on inside during these last years.  And it helps me feel a bit less alone – maybe I’m not such a loser freak, after all.  Maybe there are other women out there who have had life-altering events slamming into them like the waves of a tsunami.  Maybe I’m not the only one reeling from a reversal of all I thought I knew and a new and sudden “knowing” of a completely different reality.  After so long of feeling that I was pushing through uncharted areas, lately I’ve begun to be reminded that I’m not alone at all.  There are myriads of women, past and present, who have trod this path before.  I just don’t have them with me in the flesh.  But I read their words, in books and blogs.  (like here, here and here, to start)  And, like this list, they give me hope and fresh purpose. 

michelangelo - libyan sibyl

• 0-7        childlike wonder
• 7-14      the beginning of hormonal activity
• 14-21    unfurling sexuality
• 21-28    being affirmed by a man-the desire to procreate
• 28-35    birthing, mothering, caretaking, putting others first
• 35-42    leaving self out but occasionally looking beyond
• 42-49    menopause approaching – is this all?  a desire for self-love
• 49-56    birthing of a mature psyche – a desire to go away, live without rules and become more instinctive
• 56-63    choosing one’s true purpose, work, vocation, finding one’s individual reason for being beyond the roles
• 63-70    reflection – becoming the watchwoman, recasting all that one has learned, being whatever one has become

michelangelo - cumaean sibyl

On my fridge is one of my favorite things – a hand-made card from Tay.  My own personal award of love from one of the coolest little chickies I know.  I love her picture of me on the front.

What I love even more is what is inside:

The feeling this card gives me is the best thing ever.

You think of the Path
As a long arduous climb
Up the mountain.

You concede there may be
Many paths
But you’re sure
All have the same
Exalted goal.

Ram Tzu knows this…

There ARE many Paths.

Like streams
They flow effortlessly
(though not necessarily painlessly)
Down the mountain.

All disappear
Into the desert sands below.

Ram Tzu  (Wayne Liquorman

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Jane Hirshfield

“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”  Albert Einstein

 True attention is rare.  This is an unfortunate truth.  It’s hard to make the sacrifices needed to stand naked before your reality.  This has certainly been my experience in the spiritual  journey.    It has also been my experience in going vegan.  I have been unwilling to grant true attention to the plight of  the  gentle creatures that live among us,  have been in unspoken complicity with the factory farms and with the shortened, tortured and pitiful existence of their prisoners.  I’ve been willing to place my own comfort and ease above seeing things as they really are and possibly becoming  inconvenienced.  Possibly having my world turned upside down. 

Which it has.

What is amazing to me is how wonderful this upside down world is!  How good I feel!  How light – as if a heavy load has been taken off of my shoulders.  I recently read about a spiritual practice called Tikkun Olam (at awake is good).  This is a Jewish tradition of putting back together the broken world.  Looking around at the violence, fear and suffering, it is easy to become overwhelmed.  With Tikkun Olam, one picks up one tiny misplaced piece and tries to find a way to put it back in place.  Maybe not change the world, but change one tiny piece of it.  That is what I feel I am doing.   I am picking up a tiny piece of thread and reworking it into the tapestry of life. 

Stanley Sapon defines veganism as : “an ethic that is committed to reverence and respect for all life and the planet that sustains it… bringing with it the joy of living with peace of spirit, and the comfort of knowing that one’s thoughts, feelings, words, and actions have a strongly benevolent effect on the world.”  That sounds like repairing the world to me.  That sounds like a way to live a more compassionate life, one that resounds with harmony and empathetic living by seeing and respecting the interconnectedness of all life.  I like knowing that my choices are having a benevolent effect on the world, animal and human.

I’ve been thinking of the yamas and niyamas, (which I understand to be less a list of dos and don’t than a declaration of who we are when we are connected to our true nature).  The very first of the 10 is the idea of non-violence, the ethical call to gentleness with both yourself and all of creation.   In my mind it has become the mantra of non-harming or compassion. 

This sense of being tender and withholding violence, judgment and criticism extends to myself and to all I encounter, as we are all part of  one living, breathing creation.  To harm you is to bring pain to myself.  To see myself in others is so freeing.  To just be with them, without having to stand judgement over them, is liberating and refreshing.  We are the same - we have the same obstacles and difficulties, we suffer both necessarily and needlessly, we want to be happy, we long for clarity and meaning in life.  I find myself loving people quickly, finding something interesting in those I see at work, daily or maybe only that one chance meeting ~ two eggs over-light, hold the grits.

I’ll not keep on about this change…it’s  just that this is quite momentous to me.  It reminds me of a moment I felt was life-changing in the past – deciding during a class on world religions when in my early 30s that there may be something out there…after being an agnostic since my early teens – this felt life-changing.  And, truly, it was.  I think I got off track a bit for a few years by letting myself get too drawn into conservative churchianity.  Yet, I think my heart was in the right place.  I constantly hungered for God and ran after Him with all I knew to do.  I prayed, I studied the sacred texts.  I tore apart the words in the original languages, as best as a lay-person can.  I studied the Bible, memorized it, prayed it, sang it.  I fell in love with the early mystics, found the echo to my longings in their words.   They wrote of a similar yearning to be ravished by the One. 

Perhaps one day I will find my way back to a connection with what some call the Divine.  I don’t have it now, although I long for it and pay  homage to it with my Kwan Yin and my Om Mani Padme Hum.  And in my head, I sometimes still converse with what I think of as the Witness.  I don’t know if it’s habit or sentimentality or something more sacred.  I just know that there is still that desire in me to have this conversation and I’ve  recently been relenting on my silent treatment.  I find myself  enriched and restored by this occasional conversation, so I let it be, without understanding it.  I just let it be what it is.  No expectations for more, no need for promises of anything at all to come.  Just the sharing of insight or wonder in some simple moment. 

Hmm.  The tone of this blathering on went from going vegan to going sacred.  I guess that is because I feel somehow more harmonious, more peaceful.  My palate has begun to feel, well, cleansed.  Simple food is becoming delightful to me and I feel excited by the prospect of a more healthy attitude towards food in general.   And, surprising me, this change has also worked within me a renewal of my committment to living a compassionate life.  I’ve been reminded of the need to give true attention to the ethical precepts of non-harming, truthfulness, generosity, sexual maturity, non-possesiveness… the yamas.  And also the niyamas… trying to keep always the observances of simplicity, contentment, spiritual practice (the clearing of daily residue that  can blur my perception), self-reflective awareness and also an awareness of  what I have come to think of as the Witness.  I didn’t expect my soul to expand like it has from this one decision, but I am certainly feeling buoyant beyond anything I have felt for a very long time.

Peace is the outcome of Love.

Love is the fruit of Compassion.

Compassion is reliant on Caring.

Caring is born of Understanding.

Understanding is contingent on Knowledge.

Knowledge is gained through Perceiving.

Perceiving is based on Observance.

Observance necessitates Awareness.

Awareness requires the ability

to see without eyes,

to hear without ears,

to sense with the heart

and recognize suffering as suffering

regardless of color, culture, language or form.

There is but one sky, one land, one wind, one sea.

We breathe the same air,

sip the same ocean,

share the same portion of time

as we pass through this moment together.

We are children of the Earth,

no less sisters and brothers.

Gather the spurious boundaries that separate our sibling spirits,

for we are family.

Come into my arms, my limbs, my leaves,

and let me stroke your shapeless self.

Let me know your pain.

Let me feel your truth.

Let me embrace our differences,

our sameness,

our uniqueness.

We blend seamlessly, imperceptibly,

distinctions dissolved.

I recognize you now.

Unmasked.

Relieved of our earthly robes,

we are One.

~Joanne Stepaniak~