Peering Into the Heart

I had a heart catheter procedure done this week. What an amazing experience to be awake and see a living picture of the inside of one's own heart in real time. I am especially grateful to be breathing freely and to share my life with you here. Here is a poem I wrote the next morning while recovering. To The Beloved, who is within everything:

Heart Catheter

Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh

I peered into your mystery,

the flesh cave where you live.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh

is your whispering song.

Your current, your flood called my true name.

I am spun in your eyes.

I am the fluttering wings of your tears.

I am at home inside you inside me.

Maybe this is the new day, Beloved?

Maybe this is the first day?

Maybe this is the last?

All I want is to be with you.

Circuits of dream are

depositing layer upon layer

of life enriching memory

within the walls of the secret labyrinth,

where we walk together,

where we fly in the morning light,

where we sing as the winged and the free.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

What am I searching for?

Who do I see in the darkness of my chest?

I found the place where you live.

In a dreamy haze I saw you!

With feather and fluttering mouth,

your dark secret revealed,

your longing alive in me,

beyond sense and convention.

Your song a flood within me.

The portal of our longing is

finally opened to the wide world.

Fly within me, Beloved.

Take me into your secret vows.

Love me in this sunny place.

Love me in the darkest place.

I faint.

I fall back.

I spin at your midnight touch.

I am lost in the veins.

I am red and salty.

I am found in living breath.

I am loved in the death of someday.

I am one wing of two,

arcing through the grace

of blood and bone.

I am this until the portal is open forever.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…

Then I am everything you are.

Love, 

Rick

(c) Copyright Richard Sievers, Image and Words, May 2016.

The Winds of Fate

THE WINDS OF FATE

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails,
And not the gales,
Which tell us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As we voyage along through life:
'Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I’ve been wondering what do and how to proceed ever since our farm and our once upon a time dreams sold in December. I’ve been thinking about how life moves through changes of the weather inside events and feelings. I wonder about what choices we have in addressing those changes, what choices we have when life throws some wild winds at us.

Yesterday, I came upon this poem by the late Ella Wheeler Wilcox. She was a woman who wrote in the early 1900s from a place of new thought and inspired choices. She may sound idealistic to some when it comes to addressing life’s challenges. But then again, complaining and even resisting reality rarely accomplish anything of note. What about co-creating my reality with the Universe?

Yes, I feel afraid and sad. Yes, I feel a little lost. Now what? Set the sails differently. And maybe just see where the winds can take me.

Ms. Wilcox’s poem really says it all. But I also added today’s entry from my journal. I offer this to you not as way to demean or diminish whatever real feelings and struggles you may have. I offer this with hope that there are many ways Through whatever storms come upon this life and this world. I offer this not with knowing that “positive thinking” will change anything outside. Instead I am just musing about the only real freedom we may have in life, the freedom to choose how to address whatever confronts us. 

 Today, I started my journal entry as feeling sad, and then ended in another place altogether. I began the journal entry with asking myself: “What if I could be happy now, anyway?” And this is what came:

What if I claimed a Joy that opens the way through the losses?
I’m not talking about the smile of the psychic manipulator,
or the shrug that passively resists the reality of losses.
I’m not talking about the one who murders his own feelings
in order to sabotage the real gift of losses.
What I’m wanting is lasting Joy, the idiot savant smile
which rises no matter the weather of e-motions
swirling around the losses.

I’m talking about the talk inside that says:
“What the hell, might as well be grateful.
Might as well feel all my feelings.
Might as well know the warmth of the sun within me.
Might as well be grateful.”

Last year our farm was lost to us in a gale of consequences.
And this year it seems like it is me who was lost in a storm.
The life I thought I’d live is trailing away in the wind.
The life I yearn to live is only a point on the compass of my craft.
Might as well be with what is and set my sails according to the winds.
Steer my way into new headings.
And besides, what’s so wrong about being lost for a while?

If the winds are howling at the bow I can tack or heave-to for a time.
There is nothing wrong with respecting the might of a storm.
I have my craft, after all, this body and mind
which sail on an ocean of a thousand wind whipped sun sparkled cares.
I can set the sheets how I want to.
I can pull in genny and reef the main.
And when the storm rises I can smile.
I can open my mouth to the wind and the lashing of the rain.
I can be the idiot who screams to the wind:
“I am alive! I Am Alive!”

The bow leaps through rollers and fetch,
diving into the breathing mountain of sea,
then rising in glittering spray.
Behind us, the land we tilled and loved recedes from view.
The clinging to what’s lost moves further and further behind,
I become smaller and brighter in the wide open ocean.
For a moment the illusions are gone.
It’s just the craft, the human and the sea.
Soon, even the horizon is hidden in the gale.

The sea anchor is set out to calm the headlong rush into the swell.
The hatches are sealed to protect the warmth of the hearth.
The boom is arching to the lee and pulling me like a siren into the new world.
The hand moves past sadness and
the pen splashes the words I never imagined until now:
“I am free and I am alive.”
Love,
Rick

© Copyright Richard Sievers, March 2016, All Rights Reserved

What Difference?

Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.
                                                                        Luke 22:42

It is Easter weekend, a time celebrating rebirth that sprung from the roots of suffering and death. I’m reminded that even Jesus experienced the suffering of a fate that was seemingly beyond endurance. Then he experienced death. Like all of us. Now the story about his resurrection is fantastic, but what I have been interested in is the life lived Before the inevitable demise.

I woke up this morning thinking on the meaning of this weekend. Then I fell into a half dream/half wake state. I dreamed that I died in agony and my last words were:

Oh God, I didn’t want to die this way…
Imagine those as your final sentence. One Hundred and Fifty Thousand people will die in our world on this very day. Accident, violence, debilitation, slow decimation… these are all possible for anyone’s death. What would we be like on the other side of that fateful sentence, of that life lost? What would a “good” death look like and what difference would it make? What about a decent, happy life? What difference? All could just end in annihilation. What if the person you called “yourself” continued on the other side of death in some form? Then, how would you live or die?

Two questions rise up over and over:

1. If there is only nothingness in store for me after death how would I live now?
2. If I continue in some form after death how would I live now?

Does the answer vary from either question?
I reply to this query: “NO, the answer is the same to either question.”
This is my vision statement for living at this moment, no matter the outcome after death:

• Live lovingly, creatively and aware.
• Treat others as you want to be treated.
• Swim in curiosity. 
• Be grateful in wonder.
• Cling to what and who is sacred.

The vision statement is the same reply to either question, because the consequences of choosing other ways seems to be sad and uselessly defeating. There is no doubt, this is a miracle of a planet. And whether annihilation or immortality (other something else unimaginable) this life, This moment is undeniably a wonder.

It appears that not many beings are bestowed with consciousness and choice of behavior like us. Whatever the end, I want to remember that simple truth for me: I’ll choose Loving kindness, replete with all the consequences that come with being sensitive and open in this hard world of humanity. And when I fail to reach the ideals of my vision statement I will turn towards hope rather than nihilism, cynicism, and craving. When life gets to be difficult and unfair I will pursue peace rather than railing against the unknown. What other real choices are there?

Perhaps the question is not how one would want to leave this world. 
Perhaps the question is how would one long to Live fully in this world, no matter the reality or absence of after-life?  
What is a vision statement for living that you could believe in? 
And what part of life’s difficulties could change into simple peace for being alive if you chose gratitude rather than despair?

Love,
Rick


© Copyright Words and Image, Richard Sievers, April 2015

Drifting Wide Open Upon the Sea

Cargo Vessel and Sailboat off Coronado Island, CA. 11/14

Two poems I found for you in last year's journal.  

They remind me that in a moment everything can change... a life may flicker out and fly away, a project may fail and become something more, a hope may become a rich and loving reality.  

The Sea Takes Both the Vessel and the Sailor

Soon or late,

It’s all the same.

You will let go of everything,

to become one with everything.

Offering one life of memories,

for all life of memory.

The little worn boat on the sea,

with sparkling rain water slowly filling it.

Soon it is too full to move in two dimensions,

and then dives into the third.

Deep, deep it will fall.

All that seemed precious,

all seemed to be other,

all that seemed real

will spill over the gunnels.

The Ocean will take both

the vessel and sailor. 

I’ll Drift Wide Open Upon the Sea 

God, I drift.

I sail upon your body.

What a journey!

When my boat is full and heavy

I will not grieve.

I will lay back in your rocking ocean.

Arms wide open.

Eyes wide open.

Heart wide open.

Blessings to You, Gentle Reader,
Rick

(c) Copyright on Words and Image, Rick Sievers, December 2014