We thought to include this lovely poem Robin Major shared at our New Year's Eve Celebration:
Packing up the life of an Office Manager I find to-do lists in her pockets.
Names to email
Items to order
Blankets to smell test
Registrations to release.
Imprints in consciousness
The urgency of the mundane
Samsara at its grossest and its finest
What do I learn here?
I climb the mountain and come back down to
An endless stream of tupperware
And an inbox made of quicksand
The job begins and I think I am a spider mending and weaving
But the web collapses. Is this a jungle? A great ocean? An ancient city?
Wherever there is a center there is dukkha, Ajahn Maha Boowa reminds me
I watch my life fold around this centerless center
My fingers on its keyboard and eyes on the phone
I learn to open to its river’s mouth
And the questions from every stream
You have two choices, my love: be swept away or to
Stay awake and watch your mind.
Ethics never seemed so important.
How words and their absence make contact, have ripples, have impact.
Who do I serve here? What do I serve?
Early one morning, at the closing of the solstice sit, a community member says:
“I have been given so much in my life, I feel like I can’t give enough in its return”
His words are another whisper of the way this place calls up a world made of gift.
The Buddha taught freedom is not dependent on conditions
She sits over the desk, with a babe in arms
This is how it is now, sister.
