HOLY-DAY LIGHT OF PEACE
"Rumi told me yesterday………"
Free-write by Julia Bernbaum
If Rumi told me yesterday what Rumi told me today
I would be IN
High flying like listening to so much wisdom
If I listened to Rumi day after day
Gliding seamlessly through life would happen
Seeing obstacles as clouds
If I read him upon waking, upon going to sleep,
While waiting for the tea to boil, in the doctor’s office waiting room
I would be so high
I would touch the sky
I would not come down
I would not need anything but knowing that God is inside me,
The infinite
The impenetrable silence would enter my sleeping chambers,
My waking hours, each moment, today
Days drawn up as if by a lantern
His light blinding
Finding me waiting
Always panting
Grateful for his guidance
The why who where what when
Never felt so small
So distant
As when Rumi sat beside me.
And I would put Rumi quotes on my walls,
On the bathroom mirror, on my altar, the computer, the desktop,
Would wear buttons and pass out stickers to bank tellers
And Whole Foods checkers for I would be so bright and alive
Never to whisper a dull moment, or blink an eye to miss the beauty
Of one hand clapping in any religion, on any hill, with any priest, monk,
Poet or assassin
All walls open
Fear windows shut
For there is no time
There is no longer time
We can not wait for the infusion of wisdom
Painted across each pillow
So that when our heads at dusk find
Slumber, we are sleeping with creator again
And all the clouds will part, one at a time—
Wide rivers opening
Each gracefully jumping into pools of light
That could be of Heaven or Earth
For there would be no separation
No distance
No duty
No difference
Just candlelight forever
My sweet and sultry muse….
In the distance laughing, bells ringing, tolling
An audience of he-gods and she-gods
With goblets and grape-wine for a toast
To the pleasure we find at last in being alive
Anew, here, inside
Rumi, Rumi of the heart.
Josh Mann
March 1st, 2012
Write On, Sisters! Brothers! Here we are again, sharing our stories and discovering that we are less different than we thought, though each story is of course unique. The details are different, but the feelings, the values, the dreams are remarkably similar. We are all alive together. And, even now as I write this—sitting silently, looking down at my own piece of paper—I can see Marsha in my peripheral vision doing the same motion, moving her pen back and forth across the page. And, I see others of you; although, the image is a little more blurry. It's comforting, hearing the sounds of pens and paper meeting, quiet sniffling, the occasional sound of a throat being cleared or coins jingling in the pocket of my neighbor's jacket. I lived in this building for over a year-and-a-half. I can assure you that it's not always this quiet. But, there are moments like this when I feel so grateful to be here—sitting quietly with each of you, in a warm room, in a space permeated by peace. You know as well as I, perhaps better, that this neighborhood can get pretty crazy— people hustling you as you walk by, some more courteously than others. But, just for an hour or two, we can be here supporting one another in our healing, in our truth-seeking, in our quest to know our hearts and minds and souls. Just by sitting quietly together, each doing our own thing—our own thing that we do together—we participate in a kind of quiet communion.
And, when we read out loud and share and listen, we know that we're not alone.
I've been amazed over these last couple of years at how much I can relate to in other people's stories—at the number of times that one of you has read something—even one of you that seems so different from me—and I've heard myself say in response "me too."
Then again sometimes the stories are so different from my own. Descriptions of places I've never been, experiences I've never had. And, I can listen without having to defend myself.
Here, we get to talk in a way that conversations don't always allow for.
* * * * *
February 16th, 2012
Heart's knowing is co-opted by other voices, other parts of this psychosomatic-spiritual phenomenon that I identify as myself. The truth is that part of me suppresses the heart's knowing—age-old resentment, fears.
Longings creep in—the heart whispers amid the shouting, and my mind has calibrated some of its instruments to hear heart softly speaking. And, what does the heart say when it thinks that no one is listening? ...Remember, my own feelings of aliveness and gratitude. Appreciation is the way to the heart, of the heart, from the heart. Gratitude is the Way of the Heart. Love in its feminine form is appreciation, acceptance, caring for the beings around it. Feeling the pains and joys of others. Of course, I say "other" in the conventional sense. For, in truth, there is no other - only Mother, only Self with a capital "S." Only this reality of sounds, sights, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts. The Heart Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism then says that even these phenomena do not exist in any absolute sense. Only that which is beyond words, thoughts, symbols, ideas.
Who would have thought that my life would continue in unexpected ways? Continuing to bring me the motivation to change my location. Let's hope there's no fibrillation in the changing situation.
My station. Vacation.
Vocation of creation and re-integration.
Created in conversation about regeneration.
With seeds experiencing germination with the appropriate incubation. Grow to find healthy respiration in the forest of all there is.
The seeds of the heart, supported in the fertile soil of the gut - bearing fruit that supports the life of others.
Longings of the heart never seem as clear as I wish they were. But, then again they're most often blocked. The dark wizard of my psyche inhabiting my solar plexus thinks of nothing but revenge. But, even Darth Vader can know redemption.
His holiness
Her holiness was him
Before that, in the nunnery it was the women. She loved being busy caring for her fellow partners in Mormon style marriage even tho they were catholic. All those women together cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry and shopping and chopping the food and preparing the meals...... their periods hummed together. Sometimes the special scrub jobs couldn't be gotten to because there was so much everyday regular to do. They loved waiting on each other. In the cave under the hill, built behind the old shopping center they loved the musky damp dark that kept a chill and needing arms around for the inevitable gooseflesh particularly in anticipation of his holiness. They loved together seeing who could refrain the most to have the most space available to fill with that excitement. They picked flowers and kept clean to feel. His long skirts - there were so many feeling proud and useful that it was their fingers holding the needle making the stitch to keep his hem from just touching the ground, letting the folds move against the outline of his leg and show us the shape of his thigh or sway in his hip.
The holiness of getting up each day
The holiness of service
The holiness of chewing
The holiness of seeing
They wanted to lick his holiness clean. They wanted to wipe his bottom calling it of course letting the sun shine clear. Who could do him first? In a pile, one on top of one another pushing hands thru to find something soft. It was one of their favorite games...eyes closed, freshly showered and prepped, everyone smelling good - who can find a handle to hold to fill the unfillable hole that a lifetime of trying still returns empty space -
Call it red
Say it's blue
Maybe big
Could be tiny too
From top to bottom
We're all the same
Meg Margolis
Instead
No, I have never eaten locusts
though I have tasted honey
from the comb and on my bread
as I wandered in redwood forests,
on city streets and in the caverns
of my desires. Yes,
I have also lost myself
in the netherworld of
indulgence and the rarer air
of abstinence; but I do not think
this is the moment for confession
which might leave me trembling
with emptiness and exhaustion.
Years and years and years
have I spent in the wilderness
where my sandals have dropped
from my feet and my sunburned
neck has begged for some balm
to ease its burning. I know
the lapses of memory that
the moon encourages and
the mirages which the sun
inspires, so I do not cower
from any show of heavenly
eclipses or interventions
the future may have in store;
I am, instead, grateful for
all the lonely steps of my journey --
and that little taste of honey
that has touched my pilgrim lips
and nourished my imagination
with beauty born in the flowers
grown on this rough strewn
field of experience.
© December 28th 2011 Sheppard B. Kominars
WHAT’S IN FRONT OF ME
Eyes of Beloved
say you’re fine.
Not perfect
but perfectly fine;
learning to abide in aloneness,
not taking too great a pride in it.
So plaster walls of isolation
crumble down in Beloved’s own time
realizing they are soluble substance
dissolving in love’s waters—
not impenetrable barriers of steel.
And the world is mighty fine.
Not perfect,
but a multiple manifestation of light and sound
His Word made flesh
signifying perhaps different images of meaning
than you earlier conceived.
But phenomena so worthy of consideration
it may take lifetimes
to fully imbibe
what is both horrific and majestic,
petty and luminous, vibrant without evident sentience.
More than words or music
(yet promised by both)
Reality is worth all the praise
time, energy and focus
given towards its acceptance;
loving it deeply into fuller understanding.
Moh Breath January 5th 2012
Reconfiguring the life/death question into a morphing continuum—a child is born so very in touch with its true nature of divinity; yet with no awareness of this divine connection except for that provided by caretakers sensitive enough to their child’s essence to reflect it back to the young one. To live in this world, our child develops an ego and loses touch with essential identity. Though biologically bursting with vitality; without this essential component, how alive is the child?
What element of grace is it that lights individual curiosity about what more there might be in this existence other than three squares a day, a warm bed and pleasurable sensations galore. As Peggy Lee sang , “Is that all there is?” With curiosity on fire with compassion, each of us has the capacity to re-parent ourselves; to seek reflection of our essential nature. In receiving that reflection, we are then imbued with that knowing and are able to reconfigure our sense of who we are and begin to really live.
Moh Breath December 22nd 2011
GEORGE & GEORGETTE
George’s anger is non-existent. However the loops of his intestines are snarled in a knot that no longer permits digestion to occur. On the hottest day of the year, the repressive force to keep his anger out of sight drops his body temperature to near freezing.
Georgette’s anger is a wildfire consuming trees of her adversaries, bushes of her obstacles and meadow grass of what is annoying to her. She is never more complete in her mind than when this firestorm blazes through her body and its surroundings; smoking ashes of what’s left is her idea of a beautiful landscape.
At the restaurant where she waitresses, a major squabble with her boss, Joe, burns him into a pile of dying embers in a heap of incinerated flesh on the floor. Treated less royally than Georgette feels appropriate at the neighborhood movie theater, she strides triumphantly out of an inferno of blazing velour seats and smoking velvet walls. After an argument with hot headed husband, Carl, two piles of barbequed flesh and bones are left on their living room’s Persian carpet. Georgette’s body is slightly more charred than her fiery mate’s but both are in a similar condition. They can be swept up and offered as alkaline additive to magnificent lavender roses around their home filling the air with forgiveness and love.
Robert-Harry Rovin December 10th 2011
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