The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  On this beautiful Spring morning I witnessed two crows chasing an eagle down river.  It happened in an instant – wonder so fleeting.  Today we explored the vital beauty in our lives.

We considered how we are expressions and stewards of Earth’s beauty.  We inherit and bequeath precious life in a long river of time.

We drew inspiration from poet laureate, Joy Harjo’s writings in the anthology, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through and her poem, The Life of Beauty.  Joy edited the anthology of native nations’ poetry.  The collection is a beautiful compilation of traditional oral prose and the gifts of today’s emerging poets.

We also considered The Natural History of Our Senses,  Diane Ackerman’s writing about the way our senses emerge from genetic inheritance and express themselves in relationship to our human and more than human world.

We drew on the work of environmental activist and Buddhist Scholar, Joanna Macy.  You can learn more about the work by going to the Work That Reconnects Network.

We raised our voices in chant while in stillness and movement.  Here is our chanted appreciation of Earth, her incredible beauty:

May we breathe in beauty.
May we feel in beauty.
May we walk in beauty.
Maw we touch the world in beauty.

Relaxed Reflection

You can feel your breathing . . . as life streams in and back out again . . . Sharing breath . . . being and belonging . . . . We are always breathing together . . . in our circles of human experience and more than human experience.  . . . In slow time awareness makes itself known . . . You can meet this kinship with life as physical sensations . . . memories . . . thoughts . . . feelings . . . Reflecting on how your life is part of this greater life . . . how you are born of others . . . how you are sustained by others . . .

You can sense the presence of those in our circle . . . those who draw together to flourish and grow so that all may flourish and grow.  What is it to flourish and grow?  Let’s plant that question in the field of our time.  Let’s water the field with the easy exchange of breath and the gifts of our open senses . . . Together we let time grow . . . we let time grow and blossom. . . .  . . . How does it blossom for you?  What creative expressions emerge in the field of time that is your life?

In her introduction to, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, poet laureate Joy Harjo writes:

It is poetry that holds the songs of becoming, of change, of dreaming, and it is poetry we turn to when we travel those places of transformation, like birth, coming of age, marriage, accomplishments, and death. We sing our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren: our human experience in time, into and through existence.

In our practice we can learn what holds our songs of becoming and change . . . of dreaming . . . Our practice of awareness . . . compassion . . . openness and receptivity guides us through those places of transformation.  Our practice asks us living questions:  How are we singing our own creation into being?  How are we singing our human experience in time?

In Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman writes:

Our several senses which feel so personal . . .  and seem at times to divorce us from other people, reach far beyond us.  They’re an extension of the genetic chain that connects us to everyone who has ever lived; they bind us to other people and to animals across time and country and happenstance.  They bridge the personal and the impersonal the one private soul with its many relatives, the individual with the universe, all of life on Earth.  . . . 

Truly we are an expression of life beyond the edges of our skin . . . As we lose habitats and all manner of species we feel it on and within our skin. When the world is in pain we feel that pain.  When human life and more than human life suffers we suffer.  Our living questions take on new meaning – How are we singing creation into being?  How are we singing our human experience in time?  What is it to flourish and grow so that all may flourish and grow?

Environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy encourages us to have a “wild love of the world:”  to embrace its beauty and to feel the sorrow of losing more and more of that beauty. Joanna’s Work that Reconnects encourages us to feel gratitude, honor our pain for the world, see with new and ancient eyes and do what we can to act on Earth’s behalf – to save the life of beauty.

We are reminded and “rehearted” by Joy Harjo’s poem to save “The Life of Beauty:”

The sung blessing of creation
Led her into the human story.
That was the first beauty.
Next beauty was the sound of her mother’s voice
Rippling the waters beneath the drumming skin
Of her birthing cocoon.
Next beauty the father with kindness in his hands
As he held the newborn against his breathing.
Next beauty the moon through the dark window
It was a rocking horse, a wish.
There were many beauties in this age
For everything was immensely itself:
Green greener than the impossibility of green,
the taste of wind after its slide through dew grass at dawn,
Or language running through a tangle of wordlessness in her mouth.
She ate well of the next beauty.
Next beauty planted itself urgently beneath the warrior shrines.
Next was beauty beaded by her mother and pinned neatly
To hold back her hair.
Then how tendrils of fire longing grew into her, beautiful the flower
Between her legs as she became herself.
Do not forget this beauty she was told.
The story took her far away from beauty. In the tests of her living,
Beauty was often long from the reach of her mind and spirit.
When she forgot beauty, all was brutal.
But beauty always came to lift her up to stand again.
When it was beautiful all around and within,
She knew herself to be corn plant, moon, and sunrise.
Death is beautiful, she sang, as she left this story behind her.
Even her bones, said time.
Were tuned to beauty.
There are still many beauties of our age. When it is beautiful all around and within . . . how do you know yourself?
May we breathe in beauty . . . May we feel in beauty . . . May we walk in beauty . . . May we touch the world in beauty.

There are still many beauties of our age. When it is beautiful all around and within . . . how do you know yourself?