Compassion

I'm reading The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker Palmer.


He speaks to me in many ways, but most acutely, I am drawn to his comments on how to show compassion and care.

"there is no "fix" for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side...we learn that being there is the best we can do, being there not as cure but as companion to the person who suffers...There is no arm's length "solution" for suffering, and people who offer such only add to the pain. But there is comfort and even healing in the presence of people who know how to be with others, how to be fully there...I have experienced deep depression. Both times various friends tried to resuce me with well-intended encouragement and advice: "Get outside and enjoy the sunshine," or "You have such a good life -why be depressed?" or "I know a book that might really help you." For all their good intentions, these friends made me even more depressed...Their advice served only to distance them from me, leaving me even more isolated. In fact, distancing ourselves from each other's pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to "fix" each other with advice. If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice...I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than simply suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain."


Com-passion,

sit with me

hold my hand

and do not

wipe away my tears.

For Bev

Our friend Bev Melum passed away early Monday morning, October 19th.  A mutual friend said that felt she never really found her spiritual center, but what so many of us have learned is that our contemplative selves are expressed in motion, in action, in our living.  Some are called to sit and meditate, Bev was called to live vitally in her spirit, in the delicate motion of her hula hands, in the joyous click of her tap shoes, in her attentive listening that made everyone feel like s/he was her best friend.  To our friend, Bev:

Mystic in Motion
I am the dance
the light of devotion
and the life of joy.
With my body,
I set in motion
a revolution
that reshapes the world.

I am the simple rise
of Isodora’s hand
to greet a curtain of sky,
an indispensable pale blue
cyclorama of mystery.
For 69 years
I have endeavored to fly.

I am the dance
the soul of the soil,
stirred by indigenous feet.
Once callously earth bound
with acorns, sticks and all the unseen
that conceive precarious landings,
I am now unshod and free.

I am the dance
costumed in rainbow hues,
both contrast and harmony
to gray grief and parched-brown Lamentations.
I am a light-haired Phoenix rising.
I billow and swirl in hula skirts,
launched only by merest accident.

I am an apparition
of butterflies, orchids, flames,
or what on earth imagination fancies.
I am a fleeting illusion,
painting the world as I see it,
still,
here and now.
Follow me,
for to dance is human
and to die is to have lived
fully in the dance.
I am the dance
still
here and now.

Autumn again

by Barbara Aglaia & Wendy Thompson


Beneath a tacit
moon, disquieting hours
amidst oblique rain -

last yellow leaves fade to brown
last of summer heat dies down.

The final labors
in gardens before school bells
crisply chime morning.

Hopes and dreams of endless fun
sound against work left undone.

Further north, lonely loons
cry against a Matisse blue
the unacknowledged -

traversing the great unknown
always and never alone.

This is the cycle
of love, spectrums of unknown,
twilight mystery.

Rhythms knock against old fear,
soul sighs, be still and listen.

Still as a snowflake
before landing on your tongue ~
a winter allegro.

Rise, soar to sunflower high,
summer glories full, replete.

Shadow self

I am reading A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. "I deny my inner darkness, giving it more power over me, or I project it onto other people, creating "enemies" where none exist." I'm really struggling with that right now...not projecting my darkness on to others. I dreamt that someone, a friend, and I were on a trip in France, having a great time until I said, "Oh, what time does my flight leave?" and the friend said, "You have to be at the airport in 15 min." I went into a panic trying to pack my bags in the tidy, organized fashion I was accustomed to while the "friend" sat off in the shadows laughing at my panic and compulsions and I got angrier and angrier that she wasn't helping me get my baggage in order.

Well, if everyone in our dreams is a representation of self...then I am must really be pissed at my shadow self for not helping me get my baggage together, to help me get home. It is not my friends' responsibility to help me clean up my act, carry my baggage, or even keep track of time for me. Need to find a way to stop that sabotaging shadow self keep seducing me away from self care.

Any suggestions anyone?

fall is coming and then winter

This poem is only about apples

and bucolic memories of autumn gold
during a Pennsylvania childhood,
where in early fall I would
climb craggy apple tree limbs to load
the skirt front of my tee shirt
with Braeburns and tangy Crispins for sweet desserts.
This poem is about a bushel basket between my knees
and mother teaching me how to pare Fujis
in a spiral toward my thumb leaving, in the end,
tiny rough pectin-brown cuts like on her thumbs.
I always wondered if my fingerprint would change,
if I could alter my identity by paring McIntosh,
leaving, in the end, a bowl of orange-red swirls
like the ringlets I tried to create every night
in my own thin hair with pink foam rollers.
I didn’t like myself then. I wanted to be beautiful.
I wasn't, but this poem is about apples.
I am tired of writing about a pending winter,
darkness, and love. I have had too much, bruised,
I roam through memories from the east,
where everything began.
I write about apples and fall and recall
the Amish apple-head dolls
with their shriveled faces set
above black aprons in miniature rocking chairs.
Would I ever live to be that old?
How many winters until then?
How many freezers full of applesauce, apple cider,
and apple pie with lattice top?
My mother taught me how to bake,
pick the fleshy pink, bruised or not,
they all have worth, but I don't bake much anymore,
not for one, living in the west, where everything ends.
Blossoms pass, Golden Delicious fades.
I have an apple tree waiting for me before winter’s sleep,
confident that I will step out of my darkness
soon enough to pluck the last fruit from its branch,
blushed on the sun side, I dip a slice in caramel sauce
and remember who I am, where I came from,
and I delight again in the inner sweetness of my life —
a great harvest —
the only life in front of me.

Full Moon

Reflections on sharing the one moon.

Under the Same Moon

midnight moon
the neighbor on his deck
I, on mine
he retreats to shadows
we share solitude


two moons tonight
one pocked with craters
one reflects
illusions off the lake
a slim, white trail to you


inconstant globe
mid this summer night
lust and shadow
the moon is in the man
impossibility rains


splinter moon
white and veiled like a bride
split at last
solitude at last
is yours. I sleep near by.

Only one day in time

A dancer understands that time is a product of space. Time is ungraspable. Carpe Diem

Will You Dance with Me?

In a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we spin with silken integrity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

Two alarm fire of boldness.
Will you, will you dance with me
in a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness?

Tangos unveil a budding newness.
Away from center, we defy gravity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

You know, that lush velvet twinning to oneness.
We swelter in salty humidity
a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness.

Tend and trust the waltz of opposites
coupled in concrete fragility ~
a green chili greening into fullness

This biting salsa resists all dominance
through a supercilious depth of spontaneity
and a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we dance a green chili greening into fullness.

Time as a tide

Defined by the moon, we paddle against or drift along with, thinking that by falling back or springing forward we can be aligned with nature or even control time.

Daylight Savings

What are we saving?
forcing this spring
three weeks earlier
like a hot-house experiment
while another mother dies
like winter, still
a young father, too
barely thirty-two
and yet
the air is thick
with hyacinth
suburban sidewalks
team with scooters
and bicycles
and walkers
and all ages
of activity
the man next door
and his invisible companion
re-seed the lawn
from dawn until
afternoon,
a 3x3 patch
of golf course grass
he aerates and oh so tenderly
brushes over the new seed
like covering an aging father’s bald spot