The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Today we explored two precious gifts of mindfulness:  the experience of wholeness and the ability to hold grief and joy at the same time.  On this Juneteenth day we listened to poet J. Drew Lantham’s beautiful poem,

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves.  May his spirit of generosity touch every heart.

We heard from hospice carer, teacher and author Frank Ostaseski’s book The Five Invitations.  The passage encourages us to let go of our striving and to embrace our full humanity.

We heard Jennifer Williamson’s  beautiful poem, I Am Enough. Jennifer, a suicide loss survivor, offers grief support through her website, Healing Brave.

We heard from philosopher writer Terry Patten’s essay, A New Republic of the Heart.  You can learn more about Terry and his book of the same name at his web-site.

You can learn more about poet, professor and writer J. Drew Lantham by listening to his On Being interview with Krista Tippett:  Pathfinding Through the Improbable.  Check out his memoir The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature at your local library.

Guided Reflection

This is a special day for many reasons.  Many of us are remembering our fathers.  Others are honoring Juneteenth, the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when Union Army troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the freedom of enslaved people.  Still others are anticipating the summer solstice.  All these remembrances are opportunities for mindfulness and reflection.  I invite you to consider what holds meaning for you.  If you like, you can dedicate your practice to those who make your memories meaningful for you.  

Together we can practice mindfulness as a way of affirming what we value.  We start where we are.  Here, now, this moment, this breath, feel all of yourself arriving.  I invite you to sense the energetic current between your body and mind.  You might sense a pulsation or warmth, movement of breathing.  Can you rest awareness with an inner rhythm that is calming?  Can you receive the present moment just as it is?  Thoughts may wander.  Emotions may surface.  What is it like to let them be, to let yourself rest in the spaciousness of choiceness awareness?

You can also explore the subtle shift from choiceness awareness to a chosen focus.  You might gather your attention on the experience of breathing or feeling body sensation, hearing sound.  Can you stay with your subject and observe how it changes?  You can explore relationship with experience as you cultivate resilience and stability of mindfulness.  Can you allow experience to reveal itself to you?  Perhaps the energies underlying thoughts, feelings and emotions begin to surface.  Can you cultivate a steady, kind attention?  You might connect with your inner wisdom, that part of yourself that helps you find a helpful response to experience.  

We can appreciate these inner resources, these gifts of mind.  We can draw on these inner resources that help us to remain calm and grounded even as we relate to challenging feelings, thoughts, persons or situations.  Hospice carer and teacher Frank Ostaseski writes:

. . . [M]indfulness is older than religion, it is older than magic.

. . . [M]indfulness isn’t just about mental fitness, productivity or achieving a specific outcome.  It can . . . lead to healthy and positive changes in our lives.  Yet the solitary pursuit of those ends can eclipse our appreciation of the deeper beauty of  being fully human. . . . [Return] . . . to the true intention of meditation, which is to let go of striving, to embrace things as they are with equanimity, to discover freedom.  

Poet  Jennifer Williamson writes:

I Am Enough
There is a wholeness that’s already mine.
It’s already ours.
I am not just the seed,
Iam the rain that waters the flower.
It’s a reality that’s already there,
That I am enough.
I take on faith
That wholeness is already mine,
That I need do nothing to deserve,
That my worthiness is based only on my being.
I am wise enough to let go,
And I am strong enough to remember the truth
Of who I really am.
I can encounter the world
in such a way
That I remember who I am.
I am the rest inside the unrest.
I am the depth of the sky,
And the light piercing the sea.
I am the crest of a wave.
ll that I need to be,
I am.

May we have faith in our wholeness.  May we know ourselves as the seed and the rain.  May we find the rest inside the unrest.

I invite you to relax. Perhaps you’ll find the rest inside the unrest.  Or your mind might wander to your troubles, our troubles.  That’s o.k.  Philosopher, author Terry Patten writes:  

We can practice letting go into radical gratitude for this day, for every day. And we can sometimes, on the same day, alternately open our hearts to everything we fear to feel. We can feel and see what we fear with eyes that are wet with gratitude. We can evolve our practice of grieving; it doesn’t have to collapse our hearts; it can expand them.

This day is given to you, to me, today, and it is the only day we are given today. We can notice the gift of this day, this moment, the infinite depth and brightness that are the very nature of our own consciousness, the beauty and uniqueness of the dawn and dusk of this day, of the weather, the sky, the people we meet. We can remember that today we can be a gift to each person we meet, just by looking at them with eyes of love.

In invite you to let Terry’s words to land and perhaps grow in your heart.  

May we have the faith to hold the grief and the joy of life.  On this day so many are affirming and still calling for justice I invite you to rest your heart in J. Drew Lantham’s poem, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves.

Joy is the justice
we give ourselves.
It is Maya’s caged bird
sung free past the prison bars,
holding spirits bound—
without due process,
without just cause.

Joy is the steady run stream,
rights sprung up
through moss-soft ground—
water seeping sweet,
equality made clear
from sea
to shining sea,
north to south,
west to east.

Joy is the truth,
crooked lies hammered straight,
whitewashed myths
wiped away.
Stone Mountain
—just stone.
Rushmore
—no more.
Give the eagles
their mountains back.

Joy is the paradise
we can claim
right here,
right now.
No vengeful gods
craving prayer,
no tenth in tithes to pay,
no repenter’s cover charge—
no dying required to get in.

Joy is the sunrise
breaking through night’s remains,
bright shone new
on a shell-wracked shore;
a fresh tide-scrubbed world
redeems what was,
to is.

Joy is on whimbrel’s wings;
the wedge in fast flight,
wandering curlews,
curved-beaks’ cries
stitching top of the world
to bottom.

Joy is the soul stirred
underneath the journey,
gaze snagged on wonder,
not knowing final destination,
blessed as a witness,
moored to ground,
worshipful tears
dripped into grateful smile.

Joy is the silent spring,
unquiet.
Rachel’s world not come to pass.
The season
dripping ripe full
of wood thrush song.

Joy is all the Black birds,
flocked together,
too many to count,
too many to name,
every one different
from the next,
swirling in singularity
across amber-purpled sky.

Joy is being loved
up close
for who we are.

Joy is the last song,
drifting in
as dark curtains fall;
the sparrow’s vesper offering,
whistle lain down
in pine-templed woods,
requiem in me-minor—
church in a cathedral time built.
No stained glass.
No pulpit.
Altars everywhere.
Just listen.
Just look.

Joy is the return,
the wandering warbler
landed in the backyard again,
from who knows where,
to rest,
to uplift lagging spirit.

broken dreams restored—
soaring.
Langston’s words
kettling higher
on hopes,
drifting ever upwards
on ragged-mid-lined rhyme,
dancing to syncopated verse.

Joy is our lives mattering,
Blackness respected.
It is seeing my color,
hue not blinded by privilege,
the pious privilege
of claiming you don’t.

Joy is the proper name,
with no “n” in the beginning
or “i” or double “g” or “e”
in the middle,
with an “r” rolled hateful
hard at the end.

Joy is your truth
being the same behind my back
as to my face.

Joy is the sharp eye
watching little brown sparrows,
and the kind one,
focused
on little brown children too.

Joy is the ancestors
come before,
surviving the struggle,
staying strong
in the midst of withering storm;
from shackled ancestors
through Jim Crowed back doors
to gerrymandered chokehold now.
Still here in spite of it all.

Joy is the payoff,
for those often down
but never out.

Joy is the thriving,
a people who won’t die
in the midst of all this
dying;
the breaths,
ins followed by outs,
easy—
without begging for air
or asking your Mama’s ghost
to help.

Joy is the drive
with no traffic stops,
with no taillights out,
with no tint technically too dark,
with no speed traps,
with no “yes sir, Officer sir.”
No hands at two and ten.
No wondering
where the registration is.

Joy is the flashing blue light
passing by,
not meant for me.

Joy is the good news,
without new dead names,
no chokeholds or murdering knees.
A night of sleep
in your very own bed
without shots in the dark
—no more not waking up,
full of lead.

Joy is the morning jog
without being hunted down.

Joy is the loss
we take to gain,
monuments to traitors
torn down,
lost causes finally buried,
never to be found again.

Joy is the prairie,
where billowed cloud
and wild grass meet;
where the hawks glide
from there to here—
wherever;
its own choice to make,
no border crossing checks.

Joy is the surrender,
to faith of push,
to trust in lift,
giving over to Toni’s command
to ride the air.
To float above
the trouble of this world
In a wish.

Joy is my grandma’s hands,
grits through gnarled fingers tossed
on cold ground
to snowbirds she pitied—
a love for others
that became my own.

Joy is the wild not tamed,
the rarest beast
with talons sharp,
or long teeth bared,
in the faraway place.

Joy is the wayward weed
in the midtown sidewalk seam,
the one I choose to call
“wildflower”
because it dared
to not be planted,
to not be controlled.

Joy is at the end,
a bruised purpling sky
when the night
comes again,
when luck is metered
by stars winking bright.

Joy is the frogs calling,
amplexus orgying delights.

Joy is the close call
that wasn’t close enough.
Death past by you.
Life stopping by.

Joy is a heart still beating
even though
what could have been—
wasn’t.

Joy is the knowing
that what this world
did not give—
it cannot take away.

Joy is the moment
we grab in sweat-soaked
trembling hands,
that slides from possession,
stolen legally in bits and pieces
between yawning cracks
of despair.

Joy is tears,
drops of salt water
fallen in the creases
of an upturned smile.

Joy is the necessity
that must be lain by,
what’s kept hoarded in a sturdy cache
ever ready to apply.

Joy is the gift,
just desserts,
what we deserve
without asking
or constant demands—
the comfort that comes
when no one else
really cares.

Joy is the reward,
the salary already earned—
back pay
with four centuries’ interest
compounded daily.
At least eighty acres—
and two mules.

Joy is the day off,
just because.

Joy is the kiss of that one,
or the just verdict
delivered by twelve.

Joy is the everything,
the nothing.
The simple,
the complex.
Joy is the silly,
the serious,
the trivial.
The whale enormous,
the shrew’s small.

Joy is the murmuration,
then the stillness.

Joy is the inexplicable coincidence.
Joy is what was meant to be.
The mystery of impossibility happening.
The assurance of uncertainty.

Joy is my seeking.
Your being.
It is mine for the taking.
Ours to share.
More than enough to go around,
when it seems nowhere to be found.

Have yourself a heapin’ serving.
Have seconds. Or thirds.
‘Cause
joy is the justice
we must give ourselves.