Seemingly Flawed Works of Love

Have you worked on a personal project with diligence and idealism? What about a way of life or a love affair or a work of art? Did that process turn out the way you dreamed? What if it failed? What then?

Our little farm produced hundreds of pounds of the most beautiful grapes you ever smelled or touched. Succulent to the eyes. Honey to the heart... These grapes were jewels. So, I decided to make a project out of canning them. The process and the result brought forth introspection and a surprising touch of grief over other projects I've participated in.

Canning at the End of a Long Growing Season

When you work the vines,
when you cut and fertilize,
when you water and wait,
then the harvest,
then storage in a cool dark room.

When you steam and juice,
when you infuse the skin with sugar,
when you boil and add pectin,

when you sterilize, fill and seal,
then you process in a rattling old kettle.

When you wait for the set,
and the grapes dream liquid dreams,
then you awaken the next day,
and you arrive at 48 gleaming mason jars.
You smile.
All your hard work is right here,
contained and steeping.

Then you open the first jar
with a pop and a whoosh
of inward rushing sky.
You dip in the spoon.
What do you find?
What does the process
bring forward in this world?

You find the jelly
you labored over for six months
is only very sweet syrup.
The pectin you applied failed.
The long work of your hands has not set.
Can it be that your taste buds still celebrate
despite the shift in expectations?

What do you do now with 48
expensive jars of useless syrup?
What now?

Just dip the spoon in again.
Taste all of the long journey
that you expected jelly.
you got syrup instead.

Is the taste of the explosive sun
worth the lacking texture?
Only you can answer.
Do you taste disappointment or possibility?

Perhaps the single spoon of wonder is worth
the past push of growth and harvest
through a season of sprinkler songs.
You must decide how to process
the difference between
what you dreamed and what is.

Disappointment or possibility?

Your answer will create your true experience of these fruits.

Your answer will honor or degrade you inner labor.

How will you label your seemingly stunningly flawed long won work?

Just sit for a moment and view what's here.
Distilled and preserved is all the sun and sweat and soil of summer.
A spoonful of bright earth!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I write to you wondering what to do with many things I've made and co-created that seemingly went awry. Such is the experience of life. A poetry book that sits in a tall pile of wrapped bundles. A family member who will not talk on the phone. A roof that leaks. A lover who has left after years of laughter and long winter talks. The grapes are just another choice point of how to label the process.

How will I deal with my seemingly flawed long won work? How will I name it?

I could just sit and view what's here. Or really, I mean Really, taste that one spoonful of distilled sunlight. I could re process the whole batch. Would I process again with gratitude or regret? I could possibly make gifts of syrup, a sweet offering to a Sunday morning stack of pancakes. I could even shuffle the rejects away into the root cellar, in shame, with the purple fruit dreaming of the vine and the man who forgot to pray.

What do you do with the flawed? 

Reject or love? 

What will I...what will you...choose?

Rick

(c) Copyright on text and images, Rick Sievers, October 2014.

Done is Better than Good

Banquet Room at the Hotel Del Coronado

"If you get stuck, lower your standards and keep going."

                                                            William Stafford

We saw Elizabeth Gilbert at the Portland Literary Arts 30th Anniversary gathering last night. Imagine nearly 3,000 people gathering to see an author speak for 40 minutes on her creative process. Astounding and wonderful. She's not only a famous author, she is widely read. Selling over 10 million copies of just one of her books. 

I'm going to paraphrase what I heard her say. Her focus was not only about the creative process it was about Will and even that ephemeral word: Calling. Stubbornness and curiosity are key to the creative in their work. Show up. Do the art that you are here to do. The ideas of following interest and being open to curiosity trump the trite advice to "Just follow your passion". 

She also addressed the idea of perfectionism in one's initial output of writing or art. Perfectionism is just another word for fear. This reminds me of what William Stafford said about becoming blocked as a writer. When you just can't meet your own standards, then lower your standards. Perhaps he was talking about the process when a creation of art was being birthed.  

Just get it out as you begin. The fits and starts of editing while creating are bindings that constrict the passionate, resonant voice of the artist. There is time for editing after the work is out on the paper. And there is a time of discernment in the editing when an artist says "That's good enough." 

When one sits down to journey into the creative process, fear seems to come along for the ride. Ms. Gilbert spoke of writing a book as going on a cross country trip with her creative soul. And knowing that fear will be riding in the back seat the whole time. Shouting. Crying that "It's not good enough", that "People will not even care about what is created" etc. She said that before she sits down to write she will have an active dialogue with Fear. She says "I hear you're going along on the trip too. OK, let's make one thing clear. You are not making any decision on where we go and what we see."

She mentioned how the world does not owe the creative recognition, or money or even the purchase of a single book/painting etc. The clinging to those results are all the creator's issues. There comes a point when the work is really done, not perfect, but done. The knack of knowing when this occurs is a wonder of maturity. 

The question I have for myself as I work on another book is to know "When is it done?" Yes, fear is there yammering. "You are still a novice poet." "You will not be recognized anyway. So why write." I answer "Yeah, I am a novice poet, a little dark, a little ephemeral, a lot sensitive. Yes, that is what I am right now in the world. AND I am going to do the art that my commitment requires of me."

If I do not complete this work, even if imperfect, I will experience a new companion that will join fear. And that new companion will be Regret. Is that who I also want in my back seat as I travel back home to my comforts?

The idea of not doing what we are here to do, even if unseen, unskillful, somewhat amateur, is akin to preparing and not arriving.  Ms. Gilbert said that this is like the young man who has taken all the necessary steps to attend a great ball. He takes dance lessons, makes a beautiful costume, saves his money, gentrifies his rough sensibilities. He gets prepared, shows up to the grand entrance of the gala gathering and then turns around at the door. He returns to his old life because fear told him small truth that his fear made into a holy injunction. 

Yes, most of us are amateur. Most will not be recognized like Elizabeth Gilbert. Most will write or sing to themselves and a few friends. And like me, most will periodically shy away from the grand dance, turning away on the threshold. Denying the world my costume and dance and presence.

Will I believe the little reflections of fear today? Or will I create just because that's what I do? 

Perhaps creation is what it may mean to be human. 

Created in the divine image...Creating in the divine image.

Ms. Gilbert said how art has been made by humanity for at least 30,000 years. In contrast, agriculture has only been around for about 10,000 years. Even "primitive" people knew that the creative life was on a par with the comforts of even the most basic of needs like eating. What will we believe about our callings and the need to put what's languishing inside out in the world? 

This blog, this farm, my books, your project, our community, are all in a state of seeming imperfection. Yet things need to come out and be said, or painted or built. Imperfections and all. 

Will it be Fear and Regret, or Calling and Discernment? These are themes I will contemplate today. Thank you for contemplating them with me. May your day be blessed with the creativity that only you can bring to the world.

Love,

Rick

(c) Copyright Rick Sievers, Image and Words, September 2014, All Rights Reserved

What the Garden Has Taught Me

 What the Garden Has Taught Me:

The chard, 

in the wrinkled burning of green and red, 

speaks to me this morning.

Each plant pulls hidden nutrients up from the Earth. Each soaks in the celestial light of the sun. Each strengthens its stalks in the wind. Each is a reflective product of where it sprouted, lived, bloomed and died. If seeds do not come, progeny occurs in other ways: Then they will feed the “gods” of the garden, the ones who talk with them and walk within their rows. They will also feed the small ones (Bugs and such), their still plant cells becoming bodies that walk and fly.

Then it will be time to die in the cutting or the frost or the blight, or if they are fortunate in old age. They will wilt into the soil, becoming yet more in the coming spring, all the while feeding the secret ones (bacteria and nematodes and worms) beneath the surface.

Is our life any different from the chard’s life? We see and feel in a different way. We reason. Yet at our essence we are the same. This moment, that feeling on the flesh. This kiss of the sun, that stroke of wind. This deep drink of water, that falling with the knife… All our experiences being stored in the body and anchored deep in the mystery of earth.

Perhaps we take in all we experience, akin with the chard. The flesh is actually stored sunlight and rain. Perhaps our beauty is ultimately meant for the distribution back into the living and the firmament.

Being a farmer has introduced ideas from the plants into the souls of my bare feet. The plants have offered me theories of the universe. This is one theory they present, so simple and resolute:
 

THIS IS IT!

This life, all our experiences, thoughts and dreams, this is all there is. What we take in and what we give out, what brushes by in the wind is All that we’ll know in the end. And here’s the warp and woof of mystery:

There is no end, only change in the changeless.

And tapping sprinkler sings its rain upon the leaves. I hear a song, an elaboration of the chard’s theory of life:

EACH EXPERIENCE IS FOREVER.

  

Isn’t it amazing, a little chard can sing its theory on the universe in such poignant terms. Just think what we can sing, dear friend.

So I muse a little while longer within the waving rows of green: Though our minds are fixed on the forward progression of time, there is more. Time, as we know it, is illusion. It all happens at once. Unlike the chard, we just don’t have the physical equipment to understand this concept yet. Yet being human has it’s supreme benefits. This human experience is our chance to sequentially move in a body with the focus of moment by moment.

It does not require religion or spirituality or mysticism to subscribe to the chard’s view of the universe. Only physics. You can add the filigree of the other metaphors if you like. I pray that what I contrive about this life ads beauty and love to the whole garden, and not the burning cynicism of drought.

As for me today, I grow to the tender and ruthless touch of the Gardner. I dance in rhythm to the raven circling above. I bend to the children’s feet running in circles above my roots.

This… THIS… is heaven and hell right now, right here

.

What will I make of this life? Will my inner life be one of wonder or torment, gratitude or torment, connectivity or disregard, seriousness or ecstasy? Or will I be a mix of all life has to offer with no judgment? How about you, dear reader? As Rumi says in the Wandering Shepherd: “It is all good. It is all right.”

I think that beings who wish to awaken will be offered a choice: Either to keep all their experiences within the container of “self” or to offer all they know and wonder to world. The latter would be a choice to lose an identity of one in billions for folding into oneness.

Perhaps these ideas are true in part? Perhaps the chard is just a dumb mute plant. Perhaps these musings are delusion. For me and the chard it’s a win-win delusion. If I live as if This Is It and forever is here so be it.  If I live as if everything is a miracle, so be it.

Today I chose to live, the best I can, with the idea that my experiences are an offering and a melding into something so much greater, becoming less and more. I revel in the being of a garden green and swaying in the wind. Will you walk with me a while longer in the garden?

Love,

RS

(c) Copyright Richard Sievers,  July 2014, All Rights Reserved.

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.