Posts made in March, 2008

High Fives

Just back from a three day business training & networking conference. You know the drill: the tea-breaks, the rush to the toilet to avoid the queue, the water, the mints, the workbooks, your partner, your group, the speaker, the exchange of business cards, the best friends made. There were lots of high fives, sharing with my partner, sharing with my group, and even chair-surfing.

I laughed alot – thinking wistfully about another speaker who made me laugh alot. Oh, and the food was good. Last day, afternoon exercise: “If you were told that you only had 2 months to live, what would be the single most important thing for you Share with your group.” I was grateful I had an answer for this one: ‘I would appreciate every breath.’  Seven pairs of eyes on me and seven open mouths.

It’s the one thing we all have in common – breathing. More though, it’s the small, small, doorway to a deep and expansive world within. So unrecognized and unacknowledged: the breath. Something we take for granted, but without which nothing happens: no-one’s successful or famous or super-wealthy.

Deepest thanks to the giver of the Key to the knowing of my breath, a Key to something more vast and beautiful within me.  Now, that deserves a High Five.

Everything

Suspended in the void
Timeless and empty
Yet not empty
Like a hole in the dream I call myself
All my knowing gone
Except one;
To be here is everything

Linda Sands
2002

One Voice

I live in Woodstock, NY. After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, my wife, Evelyne, organized a daylong gathering in our town – “ONE VOICE” – of all religious groups and spiritual paths. Everyone was in attendance: the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Rastas, Sufis, Atheists, Agnostics, the devotees of Gurumayi, and everyone else who felt the need to join together and acknowledge our common humanity.

What follows is the invocation I was asked to write and perform at this gathering. I hope you enjoy it. (Read it aloud for maximum value).

Today I speak with One Voice, here in this town known around the world for peace – a place now metaphor for the highest aspirations of the human race – Woodstock.

What I have to say existed long before speech, long before teachers and those who thought they needed to be taught. I speak of the time before time, before “us” and “them” before otherness, separation, and the need to make amends. Pure presence there was back then, isness. First light. What the wise ones among us call by many names according to their faith, but it has no name, this “impulse to be,” this pulsation of life – what poets feel before they pick up their pens, why dancers, quivering in their own skin, look around the room for space in which to move.

Create!

A star exploded deep within you years ago
and still the light has not yet reached your eyes,
not yet turned the night to day for birds to leave their nests
or monks their caves to play.

Blind to your own infusion, you insist there is nothing to see,
nothing to celebrate your reasonless being for,
and yet you feel it, you quake,
you quiver to begin.
An unseen trembling turns your head,
the way you stand, the wind,
the ground beneath your feet.
You think the shock of this bodily remembrance is fear
and do not sing,
do not burst into song,
do not wring the beauty of the sound
long buried in your bones.
You stop and throw a stone,
half hoping it will come back to you,
and wait…
as if there was time,
wait…
like a beggar ashamed to ask for a bowl to beg with.

How can this be?
The sky is bluer than the eyes of your own mother
on the day she first beheld you
and still you cast your gaze down.
Don’t you remember?
You were made in the image of God!
The creator!
The one who creates
river, eagle, ladybug, leaf.
If anyone else gave you the moon you’d call him a thief
or worse, refuse to look.
Give up the notion of stealing from God.
The only crime here is to hoard.
Prometheus?
Only bored of chilly nights
with no flame to write his poetry by.

Song For The Asking

Here is my Song For The Asking
Ask me and I will play
So Sweetly, I’ll make you smile

This is my tune for the taking
Take it, don’t turn away
I’ve been waiting all my life

Thinking it over, I’ve been sad
Thinking it over, I’d be more than glad
To change my ways, for the asking

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Ask me and I will play
All the Love that I hold inside.

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Paul Simon,
from “Bridge Over Troubled Water”
1970

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