Leaning Through My Wall

 

 I frequently find myself struggling with the chasm between how things are and how I want them to be. Right now it’s appearing in relationships, waiting for the perfect job, wanting more security in finances, and the little gnome on my shoulder incessantly whispering self-doubts. Sound familiar?  But this letter is about struggling with a relationship, and the insanity of continually banging my head.

A few nights ago this poem came in my dreams.  It’s a work in progress, but this is what crept in, at 5:14.

“This is a brick wall.

Though highly useful

in segmenting

what’s mine from yours,

it’s not a soft feather

nor a sandy beach.

Physics says

it’s mostly space.

And ever useful

as a slate

to write the future.

It’s effect is

solid.

I’ll save my head the pain”

I think it was a prologue to another early morning missive from two years ago.

“straight lines

rarely show

in a natural land.

Bend your mind”

This morning I was taken back to teachings from my childhood, the Bible’s book of Matthew, chapters 5 through 7, known as the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus asks that we love our enemies. That we judge not, that we remove the sliver from our own eye, and I think most importantly, that when struck, we turn the other cheek. Basically the sermon is the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have done unto you.

            It finally dawned, through personal test, that these truths are not for the benefit of others per se but as a way to experience first hand the transformative power of compassion in action.  Removing the brick walls as a form of Maitri. An unconditional love and friendship, starting from within, and from there opening to the world.

            As I resist the nature of a situation, I am a mason, laying row after row of brick on which to hang mirrors for projection. If ones’ intent is to “push against”, then walls are a must. But when I respond to that anxious space, that pain, by turning the other cheek, I remove myself altogether from the karmic dance. It’s a way to “lean in”, as Pema Chodron would say. With the wall gone, there is nothing left to push against, and space opens up for something new. A new space for myself.

            Today I know that trying to live the golden rule is like yoga for my heart, bending and stretching me beyond comfort, beyond myself. It takes my love to the edge, where we meet, and smile.

02/10/13 c

    

A Delicate Flower

There is a delicate flower
residing on a hill not far from the stars
puzzled by the twinkles
it asks "why don't I sparkle as well?"
silly beautiful flower

An Easter Meditation

     Standing in the shower today my thoughts were on wildness, wilderness and my relation to both.
Needing extended time to be one, in the other, my thoughts turned to Christ.
     Forty days in the wilderness when he needed guidance.  The important thing to note is the difference in meaning and perception between our common understanding of wilderness as the media hype of beauty, happy, hippie, flowers full of peace and godly things.  That's a conceptual notion based the "other", from our cities and our lives.  Christ's wilderness was not the "other" but a place to BE wild.   Free from the strictures of the time.  A place to understand ones self apart from the rules, regulations and norms of society.  A place to truly gain IN-sight.
     My epiphany for the day then, in theme with Easter;  we have spent the last 2000 years (at least) re-creating the Old Testament, not living the New-Testament.  Re-creating the laws of Moses and dressing the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the garb of our lawyers and politicians.
     Christ was a wild man!  Think about the message.  Live free from the strictures of this world, gain your motive, your reason for being from something higher than this greedy "civil" society.
     With brief outings to wildness we grasp at flitting images, vague feelings of larger truths.  Like dreams on the edge of memory after waking.  The wisdom is there but hard to grasp, hard to remember.  So we go about our daily existence with the same foreboding.  Something is amiss, something is off kilter.  Something grand and shattering lurks in the shadowed corners of our crowded daily minds.
     Those corners are only searched when we have the time or will to neglect the clutter and clack of our useless thoughts, hourly schedules and dimformation.
     Forty days and forty nights is a good number, a starting place at least.  Time to rid the mind of external clucking and move at the pace of larger systems, with larger reasons.  It creates the place within where, standing on the hill, looking out over Jerusalem the other son of God tempted " Look-all this can be yours to control, all you need to do is believe in it, forsake all else".
     Yet Jesus replied "No".
A response that comes from a recognition, a cognition of the true value.  What is life in chains?  Especially those chains forged and hammered by our own hands.  Day in and day out.  Tempered Soul Chains, molded from the dying fire of our passions.

Live, Today!, Love, Today!, BE Compassion, Today!

"But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love."


adapted from a journal entry of 4-16-06