Arriving mid-August, they occupy the high places
their droning cacophony an energetic mating competition.
Like last-call at the bar, they hurry to consummate their one crucial moment.
(4 Minutes)
Meanwhile
The Zen Wedding last Monday was Wonderful, but I posted the few photographs on Face book and have no other access since I then, foolishly, deleted them from the camera. However I did make two sets of hard copy and left them at the Zendo Wednesday while some of us stayed after meditation to accomplish a mailing for the Annual Gala, so might be able to rephotograph them.
This was read:
Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
~*~
Fulfillment and Harvest
August is saturated by Joy and sadness, Injustice and the struggle for justice, Wild fires and floods. Some of it due to the horrendous decisions of the current Administration, the myriad tragedies of many nations, the horror of children ripped from desperate families and our nations brutal response to the needs of others. It is beyond painful to witness the systematic dismantling of all the progressive, human values decades in the making.
Hazy, hot and another storm gathering steam. I am
overwhelmed by Trump news, Catholic news, World news and the chaos of unrelenting change.
Chaos has invaded my mind. I walk along
the rivers East and West, watching every sunset and moon rise as though
it were the last.
~*~
Yet life goes on in the new growth from a rescued Orchid.
A baby pigeon waits for mother on the tip of thls roof.
Rudbeckia bloom profusely.
A Yogi friend sent her beautiful two disk Album of chants.
~*~
Horse
I've recently returned to another abandoned old
drawing,
attaching images and adding marks.
*
A long time friend sent this card recently.
It is by Franz Marc (1880 to 1916)
Today
More marks to come and I'm writing a text I'll
print in the open spaces. I seek this imagined companion-horse that
first appeared in childhood, returned reincarnated as real events many
times through adolescence and into my adult years to the present
representing freedom.
~*~
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