liz.777's Open Salon Blog

Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater

Sun, 2 Sep 2012 07:09:29 -0400

Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater

I think sometimes of the possible glamour of death…

that it might be wonderful to be

lost and happy inside the green grass…

or to be the green grass!...

or, maybe the pink rose, or the blue iris,

or the affable daisy, or the twirled vine

looping its way skyward…that it might be perfectly peaceful

to be the shining lake, or the hurrying, athletic river,

or the dark shoulders of the trees

where the thrush each evening weeps

himself into an ecstasy.

I lie down in the fields of goldenrod, and everlasting.

Who could find me?

My thoughts simplify. I have not done a thousand things

or a hundred things but, perhaps, a few.

As for wondering about answers that are not available except

in books, though all my childhood I was sent there

to find them, I have learned

to leave all that behind

as in summer I take of my shoes and my socks,

my jacket, my hat, and go on

happier, through the fields. The little sparrow

with the pink beak

calls out, over and over, so simply…not to me

but to the whole world. All afternoon

I grow wiser, listening to him,

soft, small, nameless fellow at the top of some weed,

enjoying his life. If you can sing, do it. If not,

even silence can feel, to the world, like happiness,

like praise,

from the pool of shade you have found

beneath the everlasting.

~ Mary Oliver ~ Blue Iris ~

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones…inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones…rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.

Attention is the beginning of devotion

~ Mary Oliver ~

For the Interim Time

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:08:41 -0400

For the Interim Time

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been or what might

come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;

The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;

The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;

In this place of dusk,

Your eyes blurred;

And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart

And you can see nowhere to put your trust;

You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might come free

From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new.

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

~ John O’Donohue ~

A Blessing

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 09:08:58 -0400

A Blessing

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

May you respond to the call of our gift and find the courage to follow its path.

May the flame of anger free you from falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

~ John O’Donohue ~ Eternal Echoes ~

Noninstruction

Tue, 7 Aug 2012 08:08:50 -0400

Noninstruction

“What does your master teach?” asked a visitor.

“Nothing,” said the disciple.

“Then why does he give discourses?”

“He only points the way…he teaches nothing.”

The visitor couldn’t make sense out of this, so the disciple made it clearer:

“If the Master were to teach, we would make beliefs out of his teachings. The Master is not concerned with what we believe…only with what we see.”

~ Anthony De Mello ~ One Minute Wisdom ~

All of us are watchers…of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway…but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.

~ Peter M. Leschak ~

Daisies - Mary Oliver

Fri, 3 Aug 2012 08:08:22 -0400

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this is as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing. Song being born of quest he know this: he must turn silent were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly unanswered. At my feet the white-petaled daisies display the small suns of their center-piece, their - if you don’t mind my saying so – their hearts. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and narrow and hidden in roots. What do I know. But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, To see what is plain; what the sun Lights up willingly; for example…I think this As I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch… The suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field.

~ Mary Oliver ~

He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world
with a passion for flowers in his soul.
~ Celia Thaxter ~