Ancient Language - Hannah Stephenson

 

https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/10/hannah-stephenson-ancient-language.html

Ancient Language by Hannah Stephenson 

If you stand at the edge of the forest

and stare into it 

every tree at the edge will blow a little extra 

oxygen toward you 

It has been proven 

leaves have admitted it. 

The pines I have known 

have been especially candid 

One said 

that all breath in this world 

is roped together.

that breathing 

is the most ancient language.

Trying to escape, trying to get something -

 "The quality of mind is conditioned by experience

 ~ The benefits of This practice grows with time

Story of Asian grandmother reading obits to their daughter ..."we're in relationship w/ thse people"....even if we don't know them... we are affected by all causes & conditions...by the lives of other people...helps us understand life & death. do I worry about my obit being worthy compared to other people's obits (records)

Being curious of how practice moves... how it progresses. Sharing this... we are all connected. We remain in connection as we learn from each other about this practice moves through all our lives.  

Recognizing when the mind is taking a self-centered view...or recognizes its social interconnectedness.

Steve Masters (a speaker at Common Ground?)...overcoming feeling  intimidated by the homeless. extending a hand ' Tell me your story'... it's about interconnectedness.

James Barrie on humility

https://insig.ht/JNywfngjPNb

“Life is a long lesson in humility.” James Barrie

C. S Lewis put it in a beautiful way “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Think about it 💕

'Lead' by Mary Oliver

 LEAD by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

 

Mary Oliver, (New and Selected Poems Volume Two), Beacon Press

James Lovelock and Gaia

https://nyti.ms/3vgQJcb#permid=119537907

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/climate/james-lovelock-dead.html?smid=url-share

28 Diamond Sutra Quotes — Niche Quotes 💬 on The Diamond Sutra

28 Diamond Sutra Quotes — Niche Quotes 💬

When we first hear about emptiness, we feel a little frightened. But after practicing for a while, we see that things do exist, only in a different way than we'd thought. Emptiness is the Middle Way between existent and nonexistent. The beautiful flower does not become empty when it fades and dies. It is already empty, in its essence. Looking deeply, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements — light, space, clouds, earth, and consciousness. It is empty of a separate, independent self. In the Diamond Sutra, we are taught that a human being is not independent of other species, so to protect humans, we have to protect the non-human species. If we pollute the water and air, the vegetables and minerals, we destroy ourselves. We have to learn to see ourselves in things that we thought were outside of ourselves in order to dissolve false boundaries.

~thich nhat hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh (The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation)

Galway Kinnell | Poetry Foundation

Galway Kinnell | Poetry Foundation

In an interview with Daniela Gioseffi for Hayden’s Ferry Review, Kinnell noted, “I don’t recognize the distinction between nature poetry and, what would be the other thing? Human civilization poetry? We are creatures of the earth who build our elaborate cities and beavers are creatures of the earth who build their elaborate lodges and canal operations and dams, just as we do … Poems about other creatures may have political and social implications for us.”

Marked by his early experiences as a Civil Rights and anti-war activist, Kinnell’s socially-engaged verse broadened in his later years to seek the essential in human nature, often by engaging the natural and animal worlds. With a remarkable career spanning many decades, Kinnell’s Selected Poems (1980) won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Naomi Shihab-Nye - Gate 4A

 

Gate A-4

Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Gate A-4" from Honeybee. Copyright © 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with permission.

https://poets.org/poem/gate-4
offered by Hugh Byrne on his 52nd consecutive Sunday meditation on Insightimer.com 

A drink of water - Jeffrey Harrison

 A Drink of Water

BY JEFFREY HARRISON

When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap

and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways

to drink directly from the stream of cool water,

I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,

who used to do the same thing at that age;

 

And when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,

wipes the water dripping from his cheek

with his shirtsleeve, it's the same casual gesture

my brother used to make; and I don't tell him

to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,

 

because I like remembering my brother

when he was young, decades before anything

went wrong, and I like the way my son

becomes a little more my brother for a moment

through this small habit born of a simple need,

 

which, natural and unprompted, ties them together

across the bounds of death, and across time . . .

as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds

and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,

my son and brother drinking the same water.

found via Danna Faulds, poet search

Interbeing

Although we are in different boats, you in your boat and we in our canoe, we share the same river of life. ~ Chief Oren Lyons

Our imperfect but Whole-hearted practice

Dogen:

To study zen is to study the self;
To study the self is to forget the self;
To forget the self is to see the interconnectedness of all beings.