Suddenly...

In the Cabin above the field...

After a while you don't notice the diamond shine in the window you set with so much care. The new desk you made is suddenly ten years worn. You've lived free of a cubicle job for a decade and a half on the edge of living your dreams. Suddenly you're fifty, not thirty when you smoked, drank and did all sorts of things that makes one blush. Now you contemplate the garden and pray for the dog that that is aiming for your gratitude with his plaintiff barking.

All the hard work to lay up this knotty pine wall, all the to-do lists and plywood scrabble, that is all just the jetsam of living now. Your memory is suddenly the shining sea. Your attention is the sky shattered with diamonds.

Suddenly your mother is old and your own mornings are achy. The dreams of a wild wood island are dusted off and then set in a frame by your window.

You step out into this morning, into this field, into this moment and breathe deeply.

Where did the time go?
And how has the love of your gaze changed in this one precious, fleeting life?

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Song of the Stones

"'I tell you,' he replied, 'if they keep quiet,
the stones will cry out.'"

Jesus in the Gospel of Luke 19:40

I have the part-time privilege of working on the land of my community: People of the Heart. I stay busy pulling weeds, coaxing gravel onto the trails, digging in the rock strewn clay and trimming the waves of grasses. I also help with revealing the sacred altars that already are singing beneath the forest duff.

My friends, J & J, are the legal and spiritual stewards of this land. They asked me to move a great stone a hundred yards into a meditation grove above their labyrinth.

A great basaltic hulk stood to the top of my knees. It must have weighed 400+ pounds. So I devised a way to muscle it up onto a dolly and strain my way down to the grove. I tackled the stone with will and force, the way many humans are inclined to do when reshaping nature.

After an hour of sweat and mud and pushing flattened wheels through the woodland I paused. I remembered the vision of this place: a co-created community including all beings... including the stone people.

So I sat and prayed to the essence of the stone. I journeyed to its mysterious dark heart. I did not hear the literal voice of the stone, or spirit's wisdom or an angel's advice. Instead, my prayer became a circle of gratitude. I began to really see the stone. It was no longer viewed as a resource or something to be subdued. I saw it as a part of the Earth's living heart, and as part of me.

Then I became partners with the stone.

It yielded its secrets, like how every stone has tipping points. These are the soft edges that are fulcrums of movement. If I could move the stone up on one of these edges then its own weight would move itself with its own momentum. No clever maul of a mechanical device was required. I rolled this behemoth the last 80 feet with relative ease and absolute respect.

Before rolling the stone into the slot that I'd prepared in the side of the mountain I prayed again:

"Please move within my hands,
so I may be your friend,
so I may be pleasing to the spirits of this place,
so your beauty may be revealed."

The great stone slid into the nook of earth, and is now a seat for meditation. Its beauty fills the grove.

I'm reminded of the ways of creation. Many people live as if we are to subdue and tame the Earth. Yet the strains and tragedies of that mindset are breaking our world into separate squabbling pieces.

A small, soft edge can be the fulcrum from which a seemingly impossible weight can move. I'm reminded how we are at home when we pause, sit still and see the creation... then we hear its song.

The stones sing
for you when you listen.
Our very bones are made
from their long melodious dreams.

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(c) Rick Sievers, June 2010

The Weight of Beauty

An amazing wave of storms has come this Spring.

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

"... As the man works

the weather moves

upon his mind, it's dreariness

a kind of comfort."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wendell Berry
From his book: Window Poems
Excerpt from Poem #6

It's like the rain will never cease. Steady, silver threads are winding up in a whip of wind and mist. The snap of the storms anchoring persistence seemingly drowns the light in the eyes.

Yet outside the cabin window clover reaches from its green bed, uncurling scarlet fists of crimson flowers. The maple tree is pink and burdened with tender growth. The stream song soars up through the woodland in her crystalline concert of drip and whoosh. Outside, the garden tosses in a sleep of mud. Eager shoots from the seed of last years sunflowers break the surface. The soil is heavy and verdant from a winter that is obstinate in its passing.

On the rusted barbed wire of the pasture rest pairs of swallows. Fed by their hunger, they attempt sorties between the pregnant drops. Then they land, with heads bent, surrendering to the draping blanket of rain.

The world is an ocean
of imagination. It is dreaming
a cleansing storm
as we watch
for signs of summer,
as we wait for the sun
to pull the grey
curtains aside.

Let the rain come!

Open the door
of your shelter.
Step out into
the storm's tidal
truths.

The world was meant
to be experienced,
even the rain.

The elements are singing in their deluge.
Do you hear their song?
The weight of their beauty is not too much to bear.

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(c) Rick Sievers, May 2010, All Rights Reserved

Where Shall I Flee?

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

or wither shall I go from thy presence?
If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art there;
if I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take on the wings of the morning and
dwell in the innermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me."
From Psalm 139

I flew to Maui on a last minute impulse. I had been feeling my soul slip into an agitated despair that concerned me. So I did something rare for me. I did something unplanned. At the last minute, I flew 2500 miles and landed here at the Mana Kai in Kehei.

I came here with the idea to get away from my difficulties. In an external sense this has worked. But the truth is that most of my difficulties are internal. I came here also so I can integrate and learn the lesson of the last few years better and deeper.

One truth that rises up is that I am 100% responsible for what I do with my feelings and how I react to life's lessons.

So far I have found an empty place where feelings once sang. I have found my own grief as I hang on the song of the sea from eight stories up.

Only a month ago I still owned my own island "paradise". I grew up as a child in Eden there. After ten years I took on a god's voice and exiled myself into reality.

I am here, now, sitting with myself and praying. Mostly what has happened is that I just soak in the sun and float in the ocean. I float in the salt until my skin is on fire. Yet my heart remains buried deep in the jade and amber well of the surf.

When the sun begins to burn I dive deep and listen to the whale song in the stillness below.

There is no place to run to that is too far from the Beloved's spirit. That's what I tell myself. And that's what I want to believe with a grateful heart.

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*
(Mana Kai roughly translated means Great Spirit of the Sea
This is a wonderful unpretentious place to recollect oneself. Link)

Writing on the Glass

We spent the weekend in downtown Portland for our one year wedding anniversary. Saturday had been prom night.We spent a night punctuated with the laughter of a thousand young people dressed in tuxes and pink dresses. The darkness had been filled with the drunken freedom of teenagers. We were high above the pulse of the streets in the Westin Tower.

All Sunday morning I sat on the window sill of our room and watched and listened from my perch. Below, the street car rumbled in concert with the racket of shopping carts and BMWs. Sounds rose and fell in the dewy morning sun. The whisper of a train. The shuffle of feet. The flap of an empty flag pole. Last night's prom revelers were inspecting their car crooked wedged against the curb. Tenacious maples swayed in their sixteen square feet of earth.

As I was writing all this into my journal a woman that looked twice her age was rising up from her bed on the sidewalk below me. The sun was falling on her silver hair. Her torn backpack jangled with a tin cup. Her long skirt was faded purple and gold with a patina of grey grime from the street. Perhaps it was an old prom dress? Perhaps she'd laughed with her friends once?

The woman stood facing a jewelry store window. Her reflection in the glass was her only visible companion. She raised her arms and bowed her head. Then she stretched out her right hand which was covered with a fingerless glove. She began to write with her index finger in the shiny glass of the store front. She made one sentence finished with the flourish of a big exclamation point. Then she stopped, stepped back and looked at her invisible words. She contemplated in silence, then laughed. She began to write more words, this time with the sway of a measured dance. Her left arm stretched out wide as if in prayer.

She had no pen and no paper.
She had no status in our society.
Yet she had something to say... something from the heart.

When she was done writing on the window she stepped backward as if in awe or fear of her work. She studied the pane of glass. Her throat hummed with a rough sweet cackle. Then she ambled off.

What did the woman write?
And what is her story?
How different is she from us,
the ones that sit behind the glass and looked down?
Are her words seen or treasured
by any spirit or ancestor
or living human being?

I sat five stories up and contemplated my fellow human being... yet it was at a distance. And above me was the watchful heart of an angel, adoring and amused as she tasted the world through my skin.

May an angel watch over this old-young woman
in the ruined prom dress.
May the spirits of the earth read her words.
May Creator enfold her with wings of love.
May her story rise in the book of a thousand poets.

Blessings to you, dear reader.
Blessings to you, whether you are on the outside
or the inside of the glass.
May we remember the story
that is invisible to all but the heart.



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Seeing You Through The Window

There is a delicacy in the grandeur.

A sun-shaft sweeps across the green face of the meadow.

It is brilliant gold and then is gone.

A smile rises behind the tear.

~~~

After the morning broke I rushed into the rain to tend to the straining crop of beauty that is embracing our home. After the work outside I walked into the cabin muddy and cold. I sit now at my desk with pink flowers blooming just outside.

The memory of last night trickles in rivulets off the glass. Suddenly I am not present. I remember our dinner together. Real for a moment is the anger sitting as a milky skim on the eyes of a child. The soup my wife lovingly prepared steams as it is pushed away by a child. A light of grief pulls my beloved’s gaze into her bowl. I watch, bent over and small, my trembling spoon sending ripples across my broth.

The wonder of her meal is salted with betrayals of gratitude. A dark seasoning came from many miles away to mist our food. I see it spread onto a young boys face. Sometimes I think he looks toward a future of being eternally right…and unhappy. Then he laughs with a face as bright as any star… and as sweet as any spring day. A shaft of sun comes for a moment. What do I know?

~~~

How do we breathe through this tension of life?

Beauty---pain----comfort---karma.

We take our stands, blocking the deflating punches of warfare kicked at each other beneath our beautiful table.

Blessed wife, there is your creation. I see your gift in the bowl of my soup. Here beside the meadow view…Field so fertile, I hear your roots reach deep and your leaves open wide even as the tractor is humming a song of destruction on the fence line. The barbed wire is taught and the boundaries of posts are strong. But I still am afraid.

~~~

Outside, our cat stalks the chickens as she dangles from the hell bent wire of their coop chattering with fanged teeth. I rush out of my mixed reverie to the aid of the perpetrator and the victims. The chickens peck blithely at their food not knowing that their death is only spared by the intervention of stones thrown and fences bent straight again. I am fierce and open as the sky at the same time.

The boy who bullies our house at night is at school now being bullied himself by ones he calls “friend”. For now this particular field is safe. In the distance I hear the clank of a tether-ball chain swinging back and forth on the play ground. The swell of children's voices rise and fall in the cool breeze. For now the world right here is safe. For now the world here is soft.

It is only morning.

The day is stretched out beyond the window pane, through the rolling cloud banks.

The sun is really not so far away at all.

My love, I wait for you at this window.

I see you.

I am here

~~~

Blessings to you in the places of refuge and grief.
Blessings to you in the places between.
Blessings to you in the sun and the rain.

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Memorial of the Heart

"...The things you brought from home look back at you; out of place here
They take on a lonely power...
Slowly, a new world will open for you
The eyes of your heart, refined
By this desert time, will be free

To see and celebrate the new life
For which you sacrificed everything."

John O' Donohue
Excerpt from the Book
To Bless The Space Between Us pp. 109 -111

We were carrying the memorial stone for my Soul Friend J on the bow of the speeding boat. It was my last crossing from what was my sacred land. Half way across I asked my friend to stop the boat. We drifted in 70 feet of water. I reached for the fairy statue that held my grief for a love that was lost in the ordinary world. I reached to the winged girl and lifted her gently over the edge of the boat. I released her into the ocean. I watched her upward gaze and her wings swirling deep into the crystalline green of Burrows Bay.

In the past I would have clung to the statue as an emblem and touchstone... something "real", a symbol of a beautiful life that had now passed from this world. My heart now decided to let this concrete image of the spirit go. A gift now rests in a sandy meadow within of a kelp forest at the bottom of the sea.

I swear I heard the vibration of a hundred singing ancestors rise in the emerald shafts of sun. And the song sank right into my chest, where I hear it now. What lived surrounded by a hedge of salal and juniper and granite now is something more.

I think of the statue at rest on the ocean drawer. I smile and feel sad and happy all at once.

Blessed sister, thank you for your life that gave so much light in this world. You still sing. I hear you! The great ocean holds you dearly as it will hold us all. Thank you for joining the chorus in my heart. For now I say goodbye beloved friend.

I miss you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dear reader:

May you meet the wonder of love and compassion behind all the solid forms of this world.

May you hear the song of the universe in your heart.

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(c) Rick Sievers, 2010.