The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We reflected on the resources that enable us to live through our troubled times: beloved family, humans and more-than-humans. We contemplated the goodness of the world and the wonder of our very existence. Love pulses through it all.
We drew inspiration from poet witness Muriel Rukeyser and her poem, Elegy in Joy. In essence, the poem call us to hold all of life – the joys and sorrows. It calls us to continue sowing seeds of beginnings even while we suffer loss. In her book, The Life of Poetry, Muriel reminds readers that “in time of struggle all people think about love.”
Maria Popova’s Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory inspired us to feel wonder at our very existence.
Guided Reflection
Welcome. In our last class we reflected on how sharing personal stories can tenderize our hearts. When we recognize our shared joys and sorrows compassion arises. In turbulent times, poet Jane Hirshfield suggests: “people turn to one another for shared witness, for shared restoration, for shared beauty.” I would also include for hope.
Last week my younger sister and brother-in-law visited for the first time in many years. I learned so much about how my sister experienced our early family life. I learned about the path of service she and her husband have walked together. We also shared deep sadness over what is currently happening in the world.
We shared our love of nature, reading, art, good food and drink. Amazingly these are joys that are still to be had. The elk foraging at the grassy edges of an oxbow pond is still here. Writers creating poetry and story are still here. Revolutionary artists like Ai Weiwei are still here – organizing citizen art projects across the world. Valley farms growing whole food for gracious dining are still here. I realize that not everyone has access to this goodness. I don’t know how much longer these gifts will last. We may be on the precipice of war. This awareness brings me back to hope – an all inclusive hope for ourselves, beloved humans and more-than-humans and future generations. It is also an active hope with which we continue to engage the world in loving presence.
This week I learned about Muriel Rukeyser, a poet of witness and social activism. During the ’30’s through the ’70’s she worked as a journalist, wrote poems, essays, biographies, novels and screen plays. Her work spoke to racial, gender and class justice, war and war crimes, Jewish culture and diaspora, American history, politics, and culture. In her book, The Life of Poetry, she reminds readers that “in time of struggle all people think about love.”
I think her poem, Elegy in Joy, reflects her years of witness and continues to speak to our times:
We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.
The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children:
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.
This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.
I wonder, what are the beginnings we dare to nourish today? If the seeds of all things are blest, what are we planting today? In our practice? Collectively?
How do we love the love that gives us ourselves? The love that yields new ways of healing the wounded world?
I don’t know. I have been drawn closer to family and friends. I have embodied and experienced insights that surface in practice. They seem to come subtly like the sudden click of puzzle pieces fitting together. These open awarenesses also surface in “this moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.”
Let us practice together around the seeds of Muriel’s reminder: “in times of struggle all people think about love.” I invite you to adjust your posture to support presence. Bring your attention to the body in an open way. Open to the body’s continuous expression of wonder. Wonder as the community of human and nonhuman cells. Each cell of 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes. Feel the life in your body. Sense how the life outside your body creates the conditions of your next breath.
Connect with the body that accompanies you from the first in-breath to the last out-breath. Our body. Our dear companion.
Tune into breath in the body. Feel the torso expand with the inhale; relax with the exhale. Each breath and exchange with life. Each breath a gift of life.
What supports you in being with this moment? You might sense into those places of contact with Earth’s body. Those places that feel grounding or supportive. Let these resources sustain you.
Our capacity to love is also an extraordinary resource. Love’s energy allows us to meet uncertainty and suffering. Love is the reason for being. Can you draw on love to help you to stay with whatever is happening in this moment?
Love allows us to be with the many, many experiences of loss that living brings. Love accepts, includes and opens. In love we venture beyond fixed beliefs and stories, to understanding born of compassion.
We are conscious. We feel. We are as a blade of grass in an ever changing field.
What arises is already in the process subsiding. There is nothing to hold onto. We can let go. And still we realize joy and wonder. May we open in love knowing we cannot control the course of life, suffering or death.
You might bring to mind someone you love. See them in your mind’s eye. Feel them in your heart. Can you see them as a wonder? A wonder that is impermanent and yet lives on as love.
Can you see yourself as a wonder? You are because of so many loving connections.
You might consider how you are meeting life – the humans and more-than-humans you hold dear. Can you meet them as a source of wonder? Wonder – profoundly unconditional – may be the purest form of love.
You might consider Maria Popova’s Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory
we are
the matter of tomorrow
pulsating in today
children of a billion explosions
alone together
in the swarm of change
each a system of mysteries
built to focus
the golden nebula of now
in the vast dark sky of never
our mission
to make our passing light
known to each other
comets of the possible
made from the dust of time