belles lettres

Sitting by the inner or outer waterfall creates the feeling of timeless beauty and the sudden awareness that life is not just about business and accomplishment. Life is also about being and listening, sitting without doing. While this is an obvious truth to read, it is not an easy one to live. Sitting by the waterfall makes us suddenly aware of not paying attention to the other side of life. The “meaning” of the waterfall is slowing down, paying attention to the beauty around us, and listening to the sound of life that we almost always ignore. This meaning is not intellectual, but a feeling engendered by the experience itself. Combining the experiential meaning of the waterfall with the intellectual realization that waterfalls symbolize the transformation of energy, we come to the realization that taking the time to slow down and listen to nature can be transformative.
-from Jeffrey Raff’s book Jung and the Alchemical Imagination

A nature is delighted by another nature.

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
– John Muir

We are all brothers and sisters. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth. All of humanity is probably descended from a thousand people, who left Africa roughly 70,000 years ago.

But the corollary of that is that if we are all brothers and sisters and share the same genetic material, all human populations share the same raw human genius, the same intellectual acuity. And so whether that genius is placed into technological wizardry—which has been the great achievement of the West—or by contrast, into unravelling the complex threads of memory inherent in a myth—is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation.

There is no progression of affairs in human experience. There is no trajectory of progress. There’s no pyramid that conveniently places Victorian England at the apex and descends down the flanks to the so-called primitives of the world. All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life itself.
-from Wade Davis’ talk on the worldwide web of belief and ritual

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry

Forget your perfect offering
Ring the bells that still can ring
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
-adapted from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem

Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection. -Rabindranath Tagore

Welcome Morning
by Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. -Carl Jung

Are there sides?

Whatever life calls us to do; our wholehearted response is “yes” and “thank you.” -Cheri Huber

I am a part of your dream.
You are a part of my dream.

The cosmic we
The cosmic whee
The cosmic oui oui

Morning
Day
Evening
Night
Dream
Repeat

Or make a trip around the world
Keep one foot in night one foot in day
Definitions are fluid

United States of Being
Untied States of Freeing
Untied Gates of Seeing

I want Her to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.
-adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert

She’s Us
He’s Us
Trees Us
Breeze Us
Bees Us
Frees Us

the rhythmic tide
sleek silver fans of seawater
encircle us
glistening with secrets
of moonlight

and we walk together
silently exploring the sands

or lay upon our backs
surrendered
in the warm steady sunlight

and dive underwater
into the silence
the voice of love envelops

in the being:
a quiet togetherness

and love
anew and anew
again and again
like the rhythmic tide,
the underwater silence coalescing with
the infinite grains of sand,

celebrates and
sings odes of joy
for us and every moment of
you and you and
you and you and
you and you

co-written with Maura Fallon-McKnight

Weary?
So sleep, and sleep deeply.
Nap, sigh and yawn,
And delight in our dreams…

Awake, close our ears, hear our own breath, the round and round of the Universes. On the way in Universal colours, colours Universal on the way out. Breathe… marvelling at the peace of sleep, the bliss of rest, the quiet of closed eyes… Push off with the feet, all the way to the toes, and the body slowly rises up, ever so slowly, to be floating above the Earth, just the length of a caterpillar for now. Slowly flying forward, our bare toes skimming the tips of the green grass, softly acknowledging our connection.

And we sweep ourselves into the caterpillar’s outstretched existence pulsing with the need to transform completely. Eat. Be with eating. Time. Breathe. Be with breathing. Time.

We now crawl. We then fly. Within the same existence! And the butterfly remembers being a caterpillar. The butterfly looks at the reflection in the slow flowing river to admire the miracle of her own flight, her own reds, oranges, greens, blues, her spectacular, hued flight. Fly butterflies fly. Crawl caterpillars crawl. We each have our place and our place to go, our own colours and our colours to go.

We walked along the riverside, our long gowns trailing in the white grass. Up ahead a small blanket emerged from the water. Captured in its own warmth, red, dried herself off with herself. Presenting her corners stiff, protected, and yet, inside, pleading, she, the blanket, the little she, shyly bowed. We did bow in return. We bowed lower than the blanket. She wrapped herself around herself for she fell in love with her color, her color red. And we did, too. And we both reclined in the sun, feeling the deep warmth of white light. How gracious of the sun to share with us, with us and the encircling crystalline stained glass chrysanthemums.

When they look up at
Their night sky
Where are we in their myths?
Our sun is their Guiding Light?
Were we recently discovered?
Yesterday?

We forget how lucky we are
To bite into an orange

Lips rest resolutely
Small fraction
A break
An uninterrupted interruption
Eruption of white bliss
How to kiss teeth
Must transform
To opulent formation

Every moment is a collaboration.

Is there?
There is.
Is where?
Where is?
The bend of the insect’s leg
Definition

Rub the surface.
Go further.