The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored loving and witnessing. We can offer our open hearted presence to ourselves, each other and more than human beings. We come home to the world when we can gently remind ourselves: “You Are Here.”
We heard Mark Nero’s words on love from Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living. Mark gently reminds us that there is no end to love.
We heard part of Andrea Mathieson’s essay, Listening for the Long Song, from her work Dark Matter: Women Witnessing. You can find the entire essay at Kosmos Journal: Listening for the Long Song: The Art of Earth Communion. Andrea ends the essay with step by step instruction for “yin-listening.”
We heard Dane Anthony’s poem, Right Here.
We heard poet laureate Ada Limon’s poem Sanctuary. Ada read this poem in her Tricycle Magazine interview, Returning to Wonder.
Guided Reflection
Welcome. Last week we explored the relationship between our need for meaning and our capacities for love and wonder. Love and wonder can help us to meet life just as it is. Love and wonder can be practices that help us to bear suffering and perhaps, one day, be free.
This week I felt the glimmer of love and the glow of wonder in relationship. I felt it in the moments I paused to feel appreciation and tenderness for my beloved. In this space I could appreciate our eccentricities, laugh at our foolish desires for wanting things to be different. Share our recognition that we are growing old, more vulnerable to sickness and nearing death. I could wonder at the amazing constellation of being of which we are both a part – jewels in the net of inter-being.
I came across Mark Nepo’s beautiful prose about love:
There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away, or fall off the cliff we thought sacred, or return one day to find the home we dreamt of burning. But when the rain slows to a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you – that place opens, like a fist no longer strong enough to stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know I am alive. The rain keeps misting my face. What majesty of cells assembles around this luminous presence that moves around as me? How is it I’m still here? Each thing touched, each breath, each glint of light, each pain in my gut is cause for praise. I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet, with every child’s eye, with every fallen being getting up. Like a worm cut in two, the heat only grows another heart. When the cut in my mind heals, I grow another mind. Birds migrate and caribou circle the cold top of the world. Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering, making our wounded joyous cries: alone, then together, alone, then together. Oh praise the soul’s migration. I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you. I am again in love with the world.
There is no end to love. Love’s ache and elation lets us know we are alive. Each of us a majesty of cells assembled as luminous presence wear our cloaks of personality. We migrate between love and suffering, alone, then together. We fall again and again in love with the world.
This week I fell in love with the world plodding up a mountain’s shoulder – she, the mountain, didn’t even shrug. She bears my weight together with the rocks and trees, the plants, lichens and mosses. She welcomes me along with deer, elk, cougar, bobcats, coyote and black bear, osprey, owls, and pileated woodpeckers among many others. In the slow time of forest walking I realized that I am at home after many years of feeling like a visitor.
I read Andrea Mathieson’s beautiful essay, Listening for the Long Song. She writes:
It is my belief that Nature yearns for . . . communion. Rather than coming with expectations to heal the earth, we are most available to life when we bring our completely open-hearted presence. Listening to the heart of Nature has been a long and compelling love affair; each encounter stretched my capacity to be an attentive witness and to receive Nature’s varied frequencies of love. As I communed with the natural world, I learned a profound truth: Whatever is not witnessed with love tends to wither. To me, this is the crux of the environmental crisis. Because we have forgotten how to witness the world with love, the Soul of the World is dying. Whenever I feel heart-broken about the state of the world, I try to remember the wisdom . . . : The web may be broken, but the Long Song continues. . .
We – as Nature – yearn for communion. Listening whole heartedly we love – we are stretched to witness and to receive the varied frequencies of love. We can see how in our troubled world whatever is not witnessed with love tends to wither. We all want loving witness to our lives. We sing the Long Song when we choose to witness. And remember: “We are most available to life when we bring our completely open-hearted presence.”
You are here. This is the message I read on the map at every trailhead. You are here – the place from which you navigate up the shoulders of mountains or through the joys and sorrows of your life.
Right Here As poet Dane Anthony writes:
Stop moving. Stand in
one place – this place.
Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat.
Repeat again. Let your
shoulders sink and relax. Unclench
your jaw; slowly close your eyes.
Listen for your heartbeat; really
listen. Feel it pulse in
your fingertips.
Lessen expectations. Under-do all your
efforts. Requisition the time
for your soul
to catch up. Lean
into the wind; feel it
like a tree and test the ground.
Learn to trust the resilience.
It would be treason
to move quickly – left or right –
from this place. It is alright to be exactly
what you are, who you are, where you are.
Right here, right now.
Right here, right now. Alone and together we can lean in. Trust our resilience. How is it to be what you are, who you are, where you are? Right here, Right now. Return yourself from the poet’s breath to your own breath.
This is a space in which we can listen wholeheartedly and sense what is happening in our bodies as we are listening. You might let any excitement settle down. You can feel it in the body as you breathe and gradually let it go. Perhaps letting it go into the Earth. You might soften edges of tension or holding. Feel the gentle hug of gravity around you. The breath nourishing you. Earth supporting you.
You are here. Explore the place of here. Tune into the body. Notice where awareness lands. In the chest or the belly. The sit bones or the spine. Arms and hands or legs and feet. Across the brow or behind the eyes. Stop moving. Be in one place – this place. Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat. Repeat again. Let your shoulders relax. Soften your jaw. Rest your eyes. Listen. Really listen. Feel the pulse of where you are.
As you’re ready you can tune into emotion. Notice where awareness lands. You might sense happiness or sadness. Anxiety or calm. Anger or fear. Stay with what is true for you. Be with this feeling, this place. Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat. Repeat again. Relax what you can. Listen. Really listen. Feel the pulse of your heart.
As you’re ready you can tune into your thoughts. Notice where awareness lands. You might recognize habitual thought. Memories or plans. Imagining. Understanding. Judging. Explore the nature of your thought. Witness this place. Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat. Repeat again. Relax what you can. Listen. Really listen. Sense the experience of this thinking place.
Reflect on how you meet your experience of being. How available are you to this one precious life? Can you bring your completely open-hearted presence? Can you listen to your heart’s many frequencies of love? What has withered without witness? What is blossoming in your open hearted presence?
We emerge from Mother Earth and we return to her. We arrive with an in-breath and depart with an out-breath. How is it to know that we are not separate? Together we can remember like a tree standing in a forest we are not alone. We breathe in relationship with the world – breathing in what is breathed out. We witness and are witnessed as we walk the planet – our Sanctuary – as poet laureate Ada Limon wonders:
Suppose it’s easy to slip
into another’s green skin,
bury yourself in leaves
and wait for a breaking,
a breaking open, a breaking
out. I have, before, been
tricked into believing
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye
of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.
To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.
We are here. We witness and are witnessed. Alone and together. Again and again we can choose to love and wonder.