Free Speech

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Jesus

Our family has been discussing the idea of free speech. Asking questions like: "What are the effects of our words? Are they injurious or muddled or untrue to our being? Is there a core of fierce compassion in our conversations?"

Recently, I discovered a blog I'd written in 2009 offended a distant family member. When I heard about this I went back to the words I'd written. At first I tried to find a defense for the post and my feelings at the time. I reasoned: "How could they find fault when I mentioned no name or heaped no blame?" Isn't our country built on the idea that I can say whatever I want as long as it is not slander or libel?

I worked myself up for moments and began to dig in my heels by claiming my words as My Right and My Property! Indignant. For moments.

Then I felt the distress of the young person who relayed this information to me. I saw her concern and caring for the benefits of family peace. I recalled my own history where words of perceived praise or blame became stuck in my hardening heart. I recalled how love and progress are so easily torn down on the back of words. And how difficult and skillful it is to be constructive and nourishing with our speech.

This morning I spent time with my wife in meditation. I listened to my own heart. I tried to imagine the feelings in the heart of the receiver of my words. How important was it that I spoke of another person, even if veiled, in a public manner?

It is sometimes correct to stand up and cause friction to let one's voice be heard. It is important to witness truth! Important to speak for the disenfranchised and unheard. Was this one of those times? Really?

Whose truth do I supposedly know?
Is that "truth" flexible and open to the grace?

Is free speech really free?
Or is there responsibility implicit with freedom?

While meditating, I remembered a Buddhist reflection that goes something like this:

Before you speak ask yourself these things
about your reactions and words:

Is it true?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?

Does this improve upon silence?

These questions are especially vital in this age of easy, push button mass communication. The universe was created by the word. Now we flood our space with words, many haphazard and even cruel.

How many words are based on truth and justice and love?

When pondering my old blog I wonder which side my words fall on? It's not clear to me. But in this case I will lean into the benefit of the doubt, and the benefit of peace.

The truth is a moving target. It is a target, not a weapon of war.

I deleted the section of the '09 blog in honor of my young friend, not from fear or being pleasing. I am more aware that people's feelings and lives are important, even the people we have called "other" and "shadow". We are all bound together in the heart of this world.

Being fierce for love is different from being aggressive. I apologize if I was the latter. Being human is sometimes heavy with discernment.

RSS

(c) Richard Sievers, 2011

Field of Stars

Letter to a reader in the future:

A hundred starlings, in their fine winter plumage of stars, move as one being out in the field. One bird stands alone on a strand of barbed wire. A sentry perhaps? Two robins hop along the periphery of the cloud of stars. The rye and vetch are bent with a rolling season of ice and thaw. I talk out loud, as if you can hear me: See the wanderers out amongst the grasses, grazing, gazing and galloping with claw and wing?

What's the point of describing this scene to you, my future friend? To remind you of holiness that breathes just outside of your little stories and dramas. To tell you of our world now.

We've experienced paradise without recognizing its divinity. Like flying animals in waves of one mind. And a field's open face of green, spread beneath the cerulean sky. A view enfolded by hushed sigh of a dark woodland.

How many generations neglected to see the singing verdant earth for who She is? Then told stories about "the good old days" of their childhood, when the world was purer, safer and happier. These are the good old days! Will a cloud of winged stars be-held by your gaze in the future? Or will the innocence be lost to you? Will this era on earth be only a wonder portrayed in the lines on your flickering screen... a place you cannot touch, cannot know?

What will we love while looking back into our sacred life?
Are we observing on the fence or from a window?

What is truly known is loved and protected.

Does the sky arc in blue white song for you dear reader?
Are the stars moving as if with one mind?

RSS


(c) Copyright Richard Sievers 2011

Through the Layers

Remembering Janine
December 16, 1950 - December 11, 2005

A torrential storm is forecast today. A river of tropical memories is headed for our coast. A surge of the sun's heavy lifting will be brought down to earth. Today's storm is a reminder to breathe between the long and silky streams of history.

Five years ago, heavy snow was tumbling past my city window. The world has melted since then. Five years now. And two hundred miles north your shining star was flickering, swirling in your final breaths, surrounded by your family... except me.

We shared the same
winter waves though.
A white crystal field awaited
your smoky eyes.
Now the smoke
of Pele's dreams rains
down on my field.

I feel you, Anam Cara,
between the raindrops,
here in the winter wandering.

Do you hear the same streaming
storm above your head too?
Or are you living somewhere else?

Here,
between these words,
the white and bleached opening
of a thousand memories,
of woodland and glade and
island songs, made into the vellum
in layers like snow.

I miss you.
I breathe deeper than before.
Life moves on through the layers.
I know deep love.
I still remember.

Thank you for teaching me how to find the poems that live everywhere.
Thank you for teaching me the joy, healing and finally the grief of love.

I will make my life a "YES!" today because of you.

RSS


(c) Rick Sievers 2010

Together in the Tunnel

The Tunnel to the Sea at Oceanside, Oregon

"Always from a child's hand the sword
should be removed."
Francis of Assisi

I just sat there.

I heard the hateful talk, the jokes about "the others", the generalizations about sexual orientation and even race. I heard how America is founded on free speech and that people should do and say as they please... as long as the topic is not outside the norm of the shopping mall and the flickering trance of the television. I sat stunned with a grimace in the fainting form of a grin on my face. A knot in my stomach. I just let the dark words pass into me. I had little external reaction that was fierce, contrary or even reflective.

I was a pacifist in the in worst manner of the term. Me, the man who claims to be for inclusion, peace and respect. I was mute to the strains of hate that are in the spirit of our society. The worst part is that this talk was in my own home, at my dinner table. I sat there with a plastic face.

This isn't just a confessional. It is an object lesson on just how easy it is to confuse resignation and being nice with a true fierce kindness. It's also a lesson about how unloving ideas live and breed behind the most passive of facades.

Besides disappointment with myself I am left with questions.

Where does kindness and respect come into
the privilege of free speech?

What is my role in the coarseness of our society?

How do I behave as a free person
when I feel afraid much of the time?

Afraid to be visible.
Afraid to rock the boat.
Afraid to be myself.

Can silence also be a form of violence?

I have a soul sister and friend, who listened to my confession and pondering today. She talked about how we are all moving as a river, together, ineffable, and whole to the sea of the Great Spirit. We talked about the challenges and the gifts and teachings of simply being alive in such a dynamic time.

There were no conclusions made. But talking with her allowed me to not be dispirited. I felt a companion's hand in my hand as we moved through the dark tunnel of grief together.

I have many friends, of many colors and stripes. And I will stand up again and try to remind my little world how beautiful and important they are to me.

A closing quote from St. Francis:

"Can true humility and compassion exist in our words and eyes
unless we know we too are capable of
any act?"

RSS


(c) Rick Sievers, 2010

Both quotes from Daniel Ladinsky's book:
Love Poems From God
Penguin Putnam, NY. 2002

Burning Leaves in a Wild Sky

Writing to you at my desk
while watching the field, and being loved by all that I see.

It's the leaves that hug the trunk closely that remain green for the longest time. The outer halo of the tree is exposed to burning frost and blazing sky. Our family tree smolders and quakes in the field.

I returned from my mother's home with more gray frosting my temples. Inside, right above my heart, I feel a fire, burning away illusions. My eyes watch all the mothers and fathers slowly change and fall. Life clings to the last sunny day of the season. A flicker of green remains for moments before becoming something more.

Above the woodland, Vs of geese are wheeling in an invisible roundabout. Then they veer toward an inner glimmering and disappear into the fog. Their wild cries echo on the way toward the wild blazing sun that they know waits for them.

An orange star falls. Yellow suns spin from the branches. Behind the bark, the sap oozes toward the dark center of the earth, chasing spring in slow motion. Liquid light is migrating inward as the rain begins to sweep across the field.

On this, the Day of the Dead, I feel the ones who have gone on before. I recall the fallen and the ones shimmering on the edges. They encircle me, watch me, nourish me. I am them. I am also leaning toward winter, blooming bright for the happy mists of Autumn before I become an ancestor too.

How do I want to live in this mist while blazing?
This one precious day is eternity.
How do I follow the winds that are
blowing in my eyes fluttering and bright?

I am circling the field of my being,
wild, happy and free, spiraling
toward home, circling all that ever was.

May the fire of the forest and
the bounty of the misty field be yours today.

May you rise, for moments,
within the sky that sings for you.

May you be wild and free today.

RSS


Copyright Richard Sievers, 11-2020, All Rights Reserved.

The Poet's House

Robert Sund was a poet that lived and breathed as part of the land around the Skagit River Delta and Anacortes Washington. I admire him because he was a poet that lived in outward poverty and inward opulence. Sometimes I think of what it means to be a poet. Many of the greatest heart scribes lived in obscurity and poverty, especially when they gave their whole life to their work. But that was just the outward appearance.

I think of Robert, how the riches and fame of the burning heart and whispering ink remade him day by day. His hall of light was a leaning shack on a finger loam river which scythed arm fulls of moonlight into his wrinkled window. He was like a monk but not a hermit. He was well known in his sleepy town. I remember when I first shared a dream with him of building a warm refuge for poets and artists. I still feel those dreams meandering in the sing-song tide of my heartbeat. I am here in my refuge. Here I watch the field melt down in the autumn rains. I listen as the trickle of life moving in the grasses, down into the rising stream and toward the faraway sea.

Last night I remembered him and clung to the mystery of our nearly intersecting life paths. I recalled the shack and the woodland and the mighty pen humming upon a burning thought. Suddenly I did not feel so poor or alone. All the riches in the universe opened up inside the hand that writes my life story.

If you feel alone, remember someone who came before and opened the way of longing and life within your heart. What magic is falling outside your window?

This is the life I live... the Great Song spinning all around me and tracing the patterns of belonging in my heart.

Information about Robert Sund (1929-2001) may be found by clicking here at: Poet's House Trust website

RSS

Copyright Rick Sievers, 10-2010

Grandmother

My Grandmother and Grandfather
off the Coast of Avalon,
Catalina Island, CA. Early 1930s.
This was her favorite place and time of her life.

Today would be my Grandmother's 98th birthday. She died while sequestering herself in a house for decades. Her husband abandoned her. She never recovered from the seven years of the "good life" with a smoothly arrogant man. I think of her son who took on the mantle of impatience and meanness in her final years on earth. Yet I finally have a measure of compassion for him now too. He found her hallway closet full of her razor's blood when he was only two years older than me.

This morning I hold my cat who was bloodied by an attack by the wayward tom in our neighborhood bushes. I've seen my feline friend here as elegant and strong. Now I see her as delicate too. Her nostrils are flaring and her eyes wide after the attack. I have loved her and cared for her ever since her owner and my friend died. Perhaps it sounds strange, but I feel my Grandmother's spirit in this little cat. I feel her inside of me too.

I have sequestered myself in memories of my own Avalon, often coasting on memories of a past era. What will I choose as to never enter the dark closet of my ancestors? And how will I choose to be loved and loving instead of feeling arrogant or dismissed?

I write this to you as the cat now purrs and finally relaxes in the sun on the rumpled bed. Wrapped around me is silence. My Grandmother's eyes are watching me, bent and concentrating at the desk.

Who lives in our veins?
We all walk the line between strength and delicacy.
How do we contain the grief and longings that flow there?

What kind of life is a proper memorial to those that have gone on before?

RSS

I dedicate this journal entry to Ann, who loved me and my Grandmother so deeply.

(c) Rick Sievers, October 2010