Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. 

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Crushed.

Instinct can be so irreverent. There’s no room for gentleness in the gut. No compassionate consideration for a carefree cat under the hard and heavy hoof of a disturbed donkey. How our heart begs for exception for the things that we love. But the great mother loves all her children equally, and father time stands back. Eventually all things submit to him, and return to her. The tender things are trampled, and the wild things are laid waste.

Your sweet sweet tears, salty. Your broken broken heart, full. Your short short days, long in sorrow, long in the sun.

Peace, my love, cannot even be found in your pastoral paradise. It can only be found in perspective.

Consistently, God uses death for His ultimate glory. It is a glaring light, truly, like the unfathomable inferno of the stars, but it shines through the seams of senselessness, seeps out of the suffering soul, consecrates the chaos and redeems what seems reprehensible.

Each creature, precious, and purposed beyond our understanding. Loved beyond its lifetime.

Cry, certainly, but patiently persevere in praise.

Our first summer on the farm.

Her hands grew rough within a week.

She would come back to the cabin, her face shining and speckled with dirt, like God is Jackson Pollack and our countenance His canvas.

I’d be waiting in the door for our first kiss, gritty and glorious. The sun still sweeping across the farm, spilling over the creek, dipping behind the barn. Donkeys, demure, in the distance.

She’d stand under a scalding shower, relaying the day’s plantings and prunings, happenings and harvest.

I’d cook dinner, something simple and satisfying, something we’d pray over, something she’d already prayed over, while she watered and watched it.

Night would slip into the sky and we’d slip into bed, trading massages and musings, with intermittent kisses and interspersed candles.

The mouse we were too tender to trap would wait under the loom, or the organ, or the oven, until he was sure we’d surrendered to the evening’s embrace, embracing. He’d scurry and scrounge.

She separates the weeds from the carrots, feeling the weighty responsibility of having to choose what lives and what will be tossed out or turned under. 

Each life is a prayer, a praise.

The warm body of the mouse, soft and precious, is free to live here.

We feel so blessed to live here freely.

We feel so blessed.

Tucked into this valley like a love note in a pocket, or a picture in a wallet.

This is how we began.

Pondering paradise. Is it a place or a perspective? Will death be removed altogether or reconciled as harmonious, beautiful, part of perfection? The brightness of springtime is born out of winter’s darkness, it’s fecundity facilitated by fall. If heaven is wholeness, the cycle should be complete, right? Not forever frozen in one fraction of the circle. Will Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all be guests at the banquet table? “God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all;” yet it appears that dark matter is where all the true creative energy in the universe lies. Can we integrate both ends of the spectrum into our concept of what light and life is, to include darkness and death? Hmmm… I’m going to give it a good go. I’ll let you know what I come up with…

“when streams turn pink in the setting sun, and a slight shudder rises through the wheat fields, a plea for happiness seems to rise out of all things, and it climbs up toward the troubled heart… Relish the charm of life while there is youth and the evening is fair, for we pass away… as the wave to the sea, we to the grave.” Beau Soir, Claude-Achille Debussy (from the program tonight, at “Universal Blessings: a song journey for the soul”, with Gioacchino Longobardi and Christine Powers, in Albany at The Linda. March 30, 2012)

Ten miles on the rail trail this morning. I started before the sun, and watched and walked as the gunks began to glow. Along the way I saw barns and bunnies, rivers and runners, ponies and puppies, hawks and hogs, blue jays and blue skies. Thanks to Henry David Thoreau for inspiring my walk, and Jupiter and Tzu for accompanying me. #Glorious

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country. -Thoreau

my alarm is not jarring, doesn’t jangle, doesn’t send me into a panic. it is soft, and sweet. a hushed hello from a harp. i press snooze anyway. so that i have time to pray before starting my day. i reach into my surfacing consciousness, trying to remember what my day will hold. oh yes, the hospital this morning. the patients pop into my mind. metastasized cancer to the brain, bowel obstruction with a new colostomy, yes, i remember. so my prayers are for strength, wisdom, focus, compassion, insight, peace. i give thanks for my own health, thanks for my sweet family, thanks for another day. then i swing my legs over the side of the bed, pull the cord to lift the blinds, and head to the shower. i hum a hymn, i brew some coffee, i snuggle all the dogs. then, i go. with god. good morning.

Coffee goes down as the sun comes up. I’m driving and thinking. About tar sands in canada, about toxic pesticides that can cross the placenta. I’m wondering how to live simply, sustainably, with integrity and intentionality. Gotta get out of this car, and out of a few bad habits. Got to cleanse my pampered palette. This is a slow motion crisis. I could take my own family, and run and hide, stockpile, sequestered. But I’ve got too much love to let it go down like that. What do I do? Write a book, stamp my feet, join a picket line or sign petitions? Some days I can feel overwhelmed or even discouraged. But I have a list longer than the proposed pipeline of things I’m grateful for. And that are worth protecting. So I’m going to keep living with joy, patience, and hope, teaching respect for ourselves, each other, and the earth. And maybe we’ll all get cancer anyway. And species will become extinct. And our forests turned to fumes. Yeah, my heart might break. But my spirit never will. I believe we can do something. Please think about the repercussions of your actions, your votes, your purchases. Let’s all keep reminding each other. The global market is driven by consumer demand. Start demanding peace instead of poisonous profits, fairness instead of fuel, wisdom instead of wastefulness. Educate yourself. We all live downstream of something.

like sailing down the seam of god’s skirt

or sliding down a lock of his hair

the snow is a million crystals

the sky is an endless cloud

we are gliding down the groomers

fantastically free in the forever of intense focus

the now, here

in balanced bodies

so alive, so incredible, so wild

it is a thursday in heaven  

Fireplace in a farmhouse.
Fruit and wine.
French horns and flutes, some sweeping sonata.
Venison, taken from this land, working its way into my blood, the gentleness and grace of the deer renewed in my body, harbored in my heart.
I lean back into an overstuffed chair. My grandfather sinks into his own, cigar in hand.
Sunday afternoon and the dogs are free, following my parents through the woods, leaping logs on the twisting trails.
Time is marked in measures, dancing, disappearing, elegant, like the fervid flame.

stepping out onto this stone, we are amazed by the gifts of the earth, the sun, the air. abundant life surrounds us, sustains us. we are humbled, and appreciative.

stepping out onto this stone, we find that the clearly complex is simple.

for all our brains and bones and beating hearts, we are merely minutia here.

our dramas and deliberations disappear.

stepping out onto this stone, we find that the seemingly simple is complex. 

ages of tumultuous tectonics, gargantuan glaciers, planetary pressures.

the history here is hard and heavy.

stepping out onto this stone, we know that this cliff is a conglomeration of countless adherent atoms. and yes, each with electrons whose energies equal the speed of light. for nothing is as quite as it appears. this solid rock, like the wholeness of this moment, is fractured even in its fullness. we are perfectly present here, intuitively in tune, still our minds are full of memories and meaning and the madness of multiplicity. 

let the sustaining singularity be our gratitude. let the many voices of the past and of the planet and of our persons be unified in praise. let now be enough. let the rest remain. grant us the great peace of perspective, the tranquility that accompanies time, the sagacious serenity of absolute awareness. 

hush our hearts. quiet our query. silence our suffering. alleviate our anxiety. 

guide us gently into the wisdom of wonder. create in us the courage of faith. 

as we step out onto this stone, we step into the light. let each of our steps be filled with light.

so “the left foot says, glory! the right foot, amen!”

tiny angels tug on my eyelashes. i can see their feathery bodies in the fringes of my vision.

i have the moon over my shoulder, and god whispering in my ear. 

i have a full belly and peace in my heart.

a little lamp light, a poet’s verse, the faint ticking of my watch.

my prayer is praise.

cooking. dancing really.

fresh herbs, choice roast, wine and fire.

the table set, shimmering in candlelight. 

this, the most elegant eon.

such abundance we have available to us. 

the tree, tastefully trimmed. 

the smiling nutcracker soldiers.

the nativity creches, all over, in glass and wood and ceramic. 

the madonna, in glass and gold, glowing, having given god life.

a humble babe, poor peasantry, part of a discriminated demographic. 

in juxtaposition, i was born into luxury’s lap.

here, a world-renowned composer and performer strikes up the piano.

i follow on the flute. 

the songs of the season fill the room and our happy hearts.

we sing, we speak, we share gifts and glad tidings. 

later, i will gather with girls i once knew, and feel grateful that we are poised and passionate and full of promise. 

the girl i have promised my heart to will arrive tomorrow, and again, there will be candles and wine and music. again we will revel in joy. and again.

i know it all may end. indeed, one day, will. 

but tonight, it is perfect. 

beyond.

eyes open.

the first thing i hear is, “you are beautiful”.

next: “i love you”.

i smile.

this was today, waking up

this was twenty seven years ago, entering the world.

i have found love.

but first, i was given love.

i am so excited to start a life with someone i am committed to, doing something i am committed to, being a way that i am committed to being. i feel young and strong and vibrant and full of joy.

but am also, deeply, filled with gratitude. and awesome appreciation. there is not room enough in my heart for the way i feel about my parents, my family. 

i am in a moment of real transition.

and as my life continues, so does everyone else’s. 

or doesn’t. 

my grandmother is gone now. 

my sweet, sweet mother is feeling the shifting current of her own journey through the seasons. 

time, time, time.

we can mark it, memorialize it, remember it. but we cannot stop it.

and the flow of the future brings untold treasures. already, such astonishing abundance.

incredible friends have flown into my life. some have nested into the branching of my being. others have just touched down for a moment in their own migration. some squabble and squawk. 

this movement manifests the moment.

new makes old.

even as i learn all about the body, i am not attached to it. 

i stare disease and death, tumors and trauma, in the face all day. 

i know this passing.

i know this is passing.

that this too shall pass.

yet my reference of self is this vessel, this skin and smile and story.

i feel very light and very high, and still full of heavy slowness.

tears tremble in the tension of my wonder and my worry. my peace and my impermanence.

i feel free and whole and huge, satisfied, triumphant. 

but i am also vulnerable and quiet, bewildered, fragile, tender. 

nonetheless, celebratory. 

this life is a gift. 

thank you.