The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We reflected on the tenderness that makes our lives possible. Offering and receiving tenderness requires openness and vulnerability. These are magical heart qualities are what the world needs now.
We drew inspiration from Trui Snyman featured in the short film Tenderness. The film is part of an excellent series produced by Green Renaissance.
We heard Julie Cadallader-Staub’s poem Blackbirds. Julie invokes the beautiful imagery of a murmuration: the synchronous flying patterns of birds. She reminds us that we, too, live and move in a curving and soaring world.
We heard Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Small Basket of Happiness. Naomi reminds us of how our loved ones’ loving lives in those moments when we tenderly bend and listen.
We closed with Yahia Lababidi’s poem, Breath. Underneath the busyness of our lives, nature pulses – ready to be felt, heard and seen. Life waits quietly for our attention and care.
Relaxed Reflection
Let’s start our practice by feeling our bodies and Earth’s support. You can take a few slow deep breaths You can roll your shoulders or stretch your neck a bit or rock your body from side to side finding your center. Notice your senses, how you breathe, think and feel. Feel your body. Let its weight and heaviness bring your awareness more fully into the present. Relax whatever you can: the muscles of your jaw, brow and lips. Allow breath or sensation to come to your awareness. Sense subtle movement, pulsation, coolness or warmth, firmness or softness. Follow how body expressions naturally arise.
You can let this awareness of your body be in the background. Begin to explore what surfaces in your heart: joy, sorrow, anger, contentment, sadness, delight, vulnerability. Perhaps an unnameable tone. Whatever you notice, allow it to simply be. Can you let yourself soften into a sense of tenderness in meeting your feeling? What is it like to hold yourself tenderly? Even if it’s just a seed of tenderness allow yourself to receive that feeling.
If you find it difficult to extend tenderness to yourself, you can trying calling to mind some human or more than human being for whom you do feel tenderness. Bring them into your heart, see them in your mind’s eye. Perhaps you can recall a particular time you gave them your tenderness. When we hold ourselves and others tenderly we offer our care and compassion. In tenderness we make ourselves available and vulnerable. In tending to ourselves or an other, we experience ourselves so intimately as part of Life’s great constellation.
In moments of difficulty we can respond with tenderness. As Trui Snyman says in the short film Tenderness: “People are hard on each other, people are hard on themselves.…We could all do with more tenderness.” We can begin by allowing, opening and meeting our circumstances. We stretch toward and from our hearts. Our very survival depends on so many mercies – great and small. In her poem Blackbirds Julie Cadallader-Staub recalls:
I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air
and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn’t know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings
just feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.
How do they do that?
Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be
but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,
we can think to ourselves:
ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.
How good to be reminded that “we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world . . . when . . . mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
. . . when . . . we manage to unite and move together toward a common good,
we can think to ourselves: ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.”
We can receive our practice like a gift. It’s a quiet, still gift we give ourselves when we bring our whole hearted presence to this moment. Like the poem, Small Basket of Happiness, gifted by Naomi Shihab Nye:
Listen
It would never call your name.
But it would be waiting somewhere close,
perhaps under a crushed leaf
turned from pale green to gold
with no fanfare.
You hadn’t noticed
the gathered hush
of a season’s tipping.
Shadows flowing past
before any light came up,
people whom only a few
might remember,
so much accompaniment
inside a single breeze.
All whom we loved.
In the quiet air lived
the happiness they had given.
And would still give, if only.
You would slow down a minute.
You would bend.
“All whom we loved. In the quiet air lived the happiness they had given. And would still give, if only. You would slow down a minute. You would bend.”
We can receive and offer our practice as a gift too. We bring open minds and listening hearts to this moment of being alive. And how magical it is to call forth memories of those we have loved and savor the gifts we shared together. 
You can feel yourself as a thread of a much larger living tapestry – of family, friends, communities – two leggeds, four footeds, winged ones and green beings and waterlings. How good it is to affirm and to savor the goodness of life – even during our difficult times. And how healing it is that we can send forth our love to those who continue to serve today and into the future. Those who are on the front lines of caring, healing, working for justice and Earth’s survival: the young ones and those who are yet to be born. We are part of what has come before, what is now and what is becoming even beyond our lifetimes.
In gratitude we savor who and what we care for – and it can be so nearly effortless. Naomi asks us to tenderly bend. When we make ourselves available to receive that which has been given we can deepen our relationships. And at times it can be a challenge to to keep our hearts open. In tender listening we become vulnerable. We offer our open hearted presence. Even in the face of difficulty, misunderstanding, pain and the unknown we can offer our curiosity and caring, our compassion. We can experience the magic – the gift – of being changed by another. We can experience connection and grow.
Right now we can reflect on the worldly voices that are calling us to care. What voices are calling you to learn? It could be friends, family, community members, activists – even the trees and the waters – the lands and wildlife. What is speaking to your heart? What helps you to listen to things that might be difficult to hear? Can you receive what you hear as a gift, a gift that might inspire you to move differently through the world?
We can lean in and tenderly listen with curiosity, care, and compassion. We can open to receive the grand and humble gifts that are so freely given just by living on Earth. The wisdom of the elephant and the hummingbird, indigenous wisdom, the knowledge of the farmer, the mystic, the scientist.. Ocean wisdom. Glacier wisdom. Tree wisdom. We need to bend and tenderly listen. Here is Yahia Lababidi’s poem Breath:
Beneath the intricate network of noise
there’s a still more persistent tapestry
woven of whispers, murmurs and chants
It’s the heaving breath of the very earth
carrying along the prayer of all things:
trees, ants, stones, creeks and mountains alike
All giving silent thanks and remembrance
each moment, as a tug on a rosary bead
while we hurry past, heedless of the mysteries
And, yet, every secret wants to be told
every shy creature to approach and trust us
if we patiently listen, with all our senses.