Mixed Metaphors

Returning after an estate sale at my parent's house this week:

When I think of all the stuff I saw disappear. Sold. Poof....years of collecting, thrown out into the world. All the beautiful things were like cotton on the dandelion, yet not so fertile. The things were inert, like dust. The memories and hopes still hovered around them though. It was like their life was a blast of material fun.

This world, being an entertainment of the senses. Then the movie ends. The parents edge toward the paths of the other world. And I imagine my last days too. Can it be that those will really come for me? For you? What will the end be like? And how am I present now?

This life appears as so many metaphors all mixed together: Seed, dust, vision, path.
How poignant and fleeting, how seemingly pointless and truly fantastic this experience is.
Is there an answer to all the question the things ask as the once upon a time treasures fly out the door under the arm of a new customer?

At this stage of my life I'm not so ashamed of sounding trite or corny. So I repeat the only answer I hear rising out of my parent's empty house. Things disintegrate into loss. Yet there is nothing to lose with the one thing that is not a thing at all: LOVE.

Love is the answer to all the pondering. Not the metaphor of love, but the ordinary, nitty-gritty, terrorizing, infusing wonder that is love. Love of life. Love of the people. Love of the Earth. Love of the dust and the seed. Love of the vision of what is. Love for the path that disappears into a field of stars.


Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright Image and Words, Richard Sievers,  July 2014, All Rights Reserved

Look! What Do You See?

This was a dialogue I had within myself as I sat at the cabin window this morning. I ask you, dear reader, who is it that dialogues within the body, within the soul?:

Out in the garden the untrained eye sees peace and tranquility. Is that all there is out there? The mind says Look! 

I see how the chard pushes out the kale. The Scrub jay hunts the Sparrow's chick. The black spot stains the tender green tomato leaf. The mole hollows out the new potato. The mind retorts: Peace, really? I speak with the thoughts. I say: Yes, there is some peace. But there is more fire raging out there than the morning mists show. Such is life. Right?

Now the mind says Look again!

I see the purple swallow pirouetting in a cloud of blue. A sunflower, taller than shed, redder than the sunset, is sheltering a weaving spider. The carrots are waving like sea grass above their treasure of golden swords. The earth wafts a perfume of loam and dew, heady with all the lives that live within its dark womb.

See the darkness ebb at dawn? See the daylight fall like leaves all around the rising full moon?

And I saw for moments: This world and its mysterious ways were no longer good or bad... only ruthless in its beauty. Mysterious and Wondrous. 

Then I looked one more time. Then, even the words and description fell away.

What do you see out your window today? And what stories do you weave about the little moments of time that filter through your view? What are we really experiencing here, gentle reader? And who is sharing this view with us?
 
Love,
Rick


(c) Richard Sievers, Words and Image, June 2014, All Rights Reserved.

Re-Membering

When I was seven I taught myself to consciously record my experiences within the cells of my body. I remember one time vividly. I was sitting at the dining room table with my whole family, all eight of us. I sat opposite of an old glass window. It had one of those panes that appears to be flowing over itself, like water. Solid glass which was ripply like a frozen river. I sat in my chair and put my fork down. Then I  pretended I was a camera and a cat at the same time. (Kids can easily be several things at once.) I let the image of the scene outside the window seep into my brain and then filter down into my whole body. When the image was in me I would close my eyes slowly like a camera shutter. And I'd blink with the pace and ease of a cat with lovey dovey eyes. Slow and easy.

I remember my step father catching me in my experiment of integrating the outer with the inner. He gave me one of those befuddled stares. Everyone was talking, and I was just sitting there slowly opening and closing my eyes. "What the hell are you doing?" he said to me. But I was dreamy. I just stayed quiet. How can a seven year old explain such advanced stuff to a mere adult?

Little did I know, that not only the image was steeped into me, but also all the other senses came alive inside too. The body-mind is such an exquisite instrument for memory and Re-Membering. What I saw became a part of me consciously. Unlike the trauma I'd stored in my body out of fear, I'd moved this experience in with intention and care. I just wanted the experience of being that tree and little house just outside our window. Then I became the whole scene. Just by being a cat and a camera. Just by being a kid in love with the sultry light of a Southern California evening. It's all still alive.

Try being a kid like this in your own space. I guarantee it works just a well as an adult. And it brings a smile up from the core of all the chakras. Be a cat slowly blinking and a camera of the spirit that longs to be one with an unsullied creation. And when the critical step-father (inner or outer) asks "What the hell....?" , just smile softly and enjoy being quiet in response.

All the places I've loved.

They are still there,

inhabiting their experience.

I can visit them all when I am still.

All the people I've loved,

they are still there, in this moment.

Some are transposed.

Some are lost within their sacred ordinariness,

experiencing their experience.

I can visit them all!

Time, place, circumstance are all a spiral of the spirit.

The way home to the beloved is close, very close.

It is just across the folds of the universe.

I bring the realities of all these into the basket of my heart.

Sweetness.

No death,

No time in a line.

Moments of forever and ever.

Love,
Rick

 (c) Copyright (Image and Text) Richard Sievers,  All Rights Reserved, 2014

The Thirteenth Door

I wanted to tell you about a dream I had about freedom and life.

I was in a great school with my father, step mother and brother. The school was a magical building with rooms that expanded and contracted as if space and time were just concepts. This was a place we went in-between waking life in dreams. This was a place we went in-between the dreaming of being alive on this planet.

Many scenes are murky now. But I remember the highlights. We had a kindly stern instructor with a face like a rotating mirror. We were learning and laughing together, experimenting with art, skills of storytelling and even magic. The dream was ending. We all knew it was time to time to return to our waking lives.

Our teacher pointed to twelve doors. "You can go anywhere you want now." S/he said. the doors had labels on them, fantastic labels like "Byzantium" and "The Milky Way", and ordinary like "San Diego" and "Portland". My family members stepped toward the doors that called to each of them.

And I paused for a moment.

In that moment the teacher smiled at me. And within a kaleidoscope of mirrors of her face I saw a door I'd never seen before. I stepped through that door, the thirteenth door. This is a door that is always open, with an ocean breeze wafting through. On the other side was a small deck and a thin rail. On the other side of the rail was a great ocean. I felt the warm salt air lifting my hair. I smelled the warm briny tides. I heard the whoosh and moan of the sand being pushed in and out like a drawer. These feeling were visceral and as real as this breath, this connecting with you.

I looked over the rail. I knew I could go no further, unless I jumped into the sea. I also knew how free I really was, really am. I could stay right here on the edge of wonder. I could leap. I could turn and walk back into the room. I could re-inhabit any of the twelve other doors that I'd bypassed earlier. It did not really matter what I chose. I was free. FREE! And that's the reality that was as sweetly pungent and vibrant as the sea.

I just rested with that knowledge and then woke up here, now. 

~~~~

The reason I share this dream with you is partly a mystery to me. It's a personal dream, sure. But it may also be a dream that is universal. My experience with big dreams is that if I do not inhabit them in some way then their reality falters. Sometimes inhabiting a new reality means to share it and then see what returns from the offering.

My wisdom is often young and sometimes off key from the universal song. Like all of us in the Great school, we need each other's face of God to realize more of what our lives truly are. This dream told me that there is a bigger picture than what my everyday fears and efforts and possessions have been offering. That sense of freedom to choose any door, or to wait, or to decide to leap into another reality is heady with salt air. Real. Perhaps that sense can be shared and multiplied like the loaves and fishes.

Are you feeling trapped? Like there are only limited ways to move, if any? I have been feeling that way lately. Maybe there is another way through all of this? Maybe that way is in the mirror of a teacher's loving gaze? Perhaps there is door you've never witnessed before.  Perhaps the choices are more wild and open than you've ever imagined.

Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright (Text and Images) Richard Sievers, April 2014, All Rights Reserved.

Disappearing and Being Born

Sunrise on the Art Farm

Letter to One in the Near Future:

If I had a time capsule I'd send you the sky. If I could include you in this moment, I'd send you the heady spring sky. I'd send you the air spiraling with bird song and sweet pollen and wild whispery clouds. I'd send you the cool exhale of the garden lifting flowers in the orchard. I'd send you the blue borne breeze as it swirled and spun the new born grasses in the pasture. I'd send you the hint of loss and life, death and desire, wrapped in an aging man's hands lifting up the sun.

Can you stay awhile with me, friend? I'm not so far away now. Feel the wind where you are. Know the thoughts of the dirt. Catch the flickering magic of a black spun wing in the periphery of your dreaming. Be here.

How good it is to breathe, to be alive! Painful, agonizing even, but all gold. All, love of the trinity: Sun, Moon and Earth. Holy, the Triple Spiral, the vortex of wonder, the funneling passion of passing tides in the field that sings your true name.

You are alive if you are reading this. Dive into your experience. Unplug. Be still. It only takes a moment to be real. And in a moment more, you will be gone.

I see you. I hear you. I dance you.

Today I walk with the dearly departed on one side and dearly living on the other. With me, in-between worlds. I am disappearing and being born at the same time. Would you like to walk with me awhile, friend?

Love,
Rick

(c) Copyright (Image and Text) Richard Sievers, March 2014, All Rights Reserved

Who I Am Now

Our reality has lost the presence of some fine people recently. 

To the friends and family, to the Ancestors who have passed:

Who I am Now

 Cloud strewn body of memory.

Sun filled space of heart.

Song of eternity’s spirit.

Flesh of Earth.

Mind of God.

Till we meet again..........

Love,

Rick

(c) Rick Sievers, March 2014, All Rights Reserved.

Offering of the Shadow

A man who has lost his dream has lost his way.

                                                                                         Aboriginal Saying *

Last night the wind whistled through the crevices of the half opened window. Ghostly dreams came to me. A frantic quality spun my slumbering.  I woke up this morning and realized I did it again. I stuffed the shadow so deep that it exploded out as the light of morning rain began to fill our room. There it was, my shadow, falling upon my head.

So I did what I do to hear the voice of God within me: I wrote. Above the journal was a fire of my breath. I asked the empty page: What is the truth that my body has given me?

And a whisper rises from the dusty corner beneath our bed: You forgot me. But I am here, always have been. Do you want me to come out and play within your waking dreams? Or must I manifest myself in some dark spot on your skin or soul?

I answered the shadow: I gave up everything for love. Sold the land, turned from the career, weeded instead of painted, all for the family, this home. But what have I really offered you, shadow in the half opened box? Do I offer up my life to serve what is crying deep in the darkness of my chest?

I wonder where the longings go when a person is nice and open and a servant to the whims of working hard? I'm reminded of an old Star Trek episode (The Enemy Within) where Captain Kirk is split into two bodies. The soul in one body is the good, kind, sweet version of Kirk. The second soul is one that is reckless and rash and emotional. The nice Kirk wanted to do away with the shadowed half of himself. But he found that he could feel little joy, make no big decisions or follow his rightful longings without the power that the shadow Kirk possessed. In the end both halves were joined again. And Kirk lived a fuller life knowing the powers of both goodness and passion.

I committed myself to write and pray every morning. But over time the "necessities" of the farm and family and finances have eroded the practice. But even worse, I began to write as nice and poetic as I could. Trying hard to make it right and good. I had forgotten that some of the best poetry, prayers and praises come from the messy, inarticulate scribblings. Just write whatever comes. Don't corral the wild mustang, at least not yet. Let the wild words be themselves. Then gentle some of them with the bridle of editing... but do that later.

Today I'm reminded of the blessing of the wild shadow within. I'm also reminded of my plaintive statement to the shadow: "I gave up everything for love of these people and land." That sounds good and noble on the surface. And it is these things. But the statement also carries the waft of resentment and sacrifice, all at the expense of what longs to sing the soul free. Resentment is a soul crusher to everyone in the family.

A Spirit that lives between the passion and goodness speaks now with simple insight: When offering something, the giver is as blessed as the receiver. And I interpret to also mean something in reverse: When sacrificing one's joy for a cause, the result is most often a harm to the creative passion that longs to come forward in the world. So, this is my litmus test: Do my acts of service come from a place of offering and joy, or from sacrifice and suffering? Am I blessed while I bless?

Which gets me back to that dusty dark voice from beneath the bed. What does s/he have to offer? How do we feed and nurture the creative exuberance that longs to be visible in the world?

There is a place in our chest that never sees the light of day. The heart lives there, flooding our body with living love, all inside the dark cave of the body. What does your heart say? Has your head instituted sacrifice as a penance for the heart? Or, on the reverse, have hidden emotions run about the house screaming, breaking boundaries that hurt others.

What are the choices of freedom? Is freedom just about going back and forth between the shadow and the light in our soul?  What would a co-creative marriage of the heart and the head mean to your life? How would that marriage change your daily practices?  Late at night, when all the house is asleep, what does the wind whistling through the widow say to you?

Love,
Rick
* PS The image is a full size self-portrait, based on a shadow projected on the wall. This was done in a wonderful dance class through: ecstaticdancers.com in Portland, OR.

What you resist, persists, as the old saying goes. 

(c) Copyright words and image,  Richard Sievers, March 2014, All Rights Reserved