A Year to Live

Me, before the towers fell.

I've been rereading a book by Steven Levine: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last. He quotes his friend who said that: "Survival is overrated." That was a shocking quote when I first read it. Then it made me laugh at the fussing I create over the details of daily survival.

What would life look like if it was not centered around fear and survival?
What destiny do you want to commit to in this embodied life?

Clinging to control and smallness is a way of living that is not serving compassion in this world. Mr. Levine suggests that there are important aspects of becoming aware in this process of living and ultimately dying. One is a non judgmental review and healing of one's psychological and spiritual past. The other is being present in the here and now. For me that comes through simply noticing what is.

Right now I feel more life energy leaving me than is generated within me. That leads back to the question: What would you do if this year were your last? What would I do? For one thing I'd be here talking with you. I'd also write and paint the story that only I can tell. And I'd make changes in how I view myself and my destiny.

How's your life, right now? Is there something important or seemingly small that you've put off for someday soon? What are the consequences and insights gained from the putting off? What would your life look like if you said "Yes!" to something that calls to you from a deep and loving place?

This is a photo of my brother, so happy, on the eve before his death.

I love you Robbie.
I miss you my sweetheart brother... beloved.
How do you feel about my life?
What can you tell me about living from your place of wisdom?

Dear reader, what are your ancestors saying about living life more fully? What would happen if you named and expressed the song in your heart?

R


(c) Rick Sievers, July 2010

Garden Prayer

Garden Prayer

Walk with me Beloved.

Make this garden like the first.

Let me hold your hand and kiss your face.

Let the animals lay beside us as we ponder rain drops.

Let us share the sweet fruits of the happily laden tree.

Let us laugh with a joyous joke that only we understand.

Be with me in the garden Beloved.

Let us be lovers unashamed.

Let me wipe your tears away.

Let me name the deer you have raised in the woodland.

Let me sow in the same clay from which you made me.

Let us worship love as we look into each other's eyes.

Walk with me in the sunlit garden…

this innocence like the first.

(c) Rick Sievers, July 2010

Summer Snow

I've been in a creative funk this past month. I show up to my desk nearly every day only to stare out the window. Finally I breathe in and remember that the Great Creator is my source. Then I accept that my soul is working on other things that are deeper than the jumble of scribbles left on the page. I wrote a poem about the process:

Here I am again,

staring out the window,

sitting at this tattered desk.

The coffee cup is empty.

A soft cloud is hovering over the field.

Mist is mourning the sun.

The day is spread out before me.

I have a calling to create something beautiful.

Yet here I am, waiting, again,

creating only a jumble of thoughts,

catching empty space after

the memories and schemes have fled skyward.

Mist rises eventually.

The sun is coming, someday,

out there, in here.

The blazing sun will burn into Autumn.

Then comes the end of thought.

Then comes winter.

How can I make beauty

from the shrugging silence?

I have become the ghost writer,

the one who sits here behind the glass,

day after day wanting to be seen.

It feels like it’s only me

seeing the world rise and fall,

day after day, season after season.

I’m still here.

All the good people are working out there,

making contact with impermanence

and thinking that their solid lives are real.

Me, here, an idiot watching the mist

rise and fall in the middle of July,

feeling winter drifting all around me.

It’s the same pattern here

as in the whole of my life:

Be the a nature boy who dreams a world

back into orbit while the busy people rush by

so importantly on their errands,

while I am lost in the silence

of a rare summer mist shimmering

with the beautiful impossibilities of snow.

(c) Rick Sievers, July 2010