Monday, July 22, 2013

How to Live Simply

A dialogue that came to me while writing in my journal this morning:
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Please note: When I address the Beloved, I use the word God. I hope this is not distracting or triggering for some people. For me, this word is meant as the most inclusive, welcoming to EVERY person and beyond any particular religious persuasion.  And my personal agenda is to take the word back from those that have used it in a hateful or closed hearted manner. I address the one that I experience shining as pure love everywhere and in everyone. It is the still and quiet voice within.
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 How do I live simply, God?

"Take a year to fill the pages of this book.
Then lift out a single sentence.
Give those words away, with no name attached.
Burn the book.
Begin the book again, as if for the first time."

That's a tall order, God.

"You will do all these things anyway.
(If you do it willingly you are truly free.)*
The meaning you seek is the space
between the words.
That space is sufficient.
That space is everything.
That space is me, within you."

Then, how do we live This day together, God?

"The Compassionate Spirits are here.
They know the winding ways of time
lead always to the place that is no place at all.
So, tend your garden.
Give all (that you seek and have)* away,
even in the exchange of wants and desire.
Love your friends and enemies,
especially those inside of you...
the ones you call yourself

Tell me one thing more about this living simply.

"Be free, write, say, sow, reap what wills itself 
out of the bardo called LOVE."



Love,
Rick

*(Parentheses) Are my interpretation.


Copyright Rick Sievers, July 2013, All Rights Reserved 

Thursday, July 18, 2013

The Desk and the Mist


A rare summer mist hovers over the cabin. 
The grasses in the field are bent 
like an army of monks in prayer.
Outside I recognize the new Earth.
The old is healed, renewed and vibrant 
with all possibility.
Inside, I linger over my desk:
loving this altar of solitude, my old friend.
I fashioned the boards with my own two hands.
But first the grain ripened 
in the rings of sun circles and forest song.
Me and the desk, both from the wild, 
bent for a time, refined, awaiting renewal, 
cleansed by the morning mist.
O, Sacred Earth come.
O, Beloved, come.

Rick

(c) Copyright Rick Sievers, July 2013, All Rights Reserved