The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Many are gathering to celebrate independence. In meditation we gather together to honor our inter-dependence. Today is also a day when many families come together to share delicious food, to play, to enjoy each other. Over the years our circle has come to feel like a family of caring and cheer. I am so grateful.
We drew on inspiration from poets Jane Hirshfield, Alla Bozarth and Mary Oliver. These poets have lived a deep spirituality rooted in the natural world – including us, humans. Their works offer praise, wonder and affirm our inter-dependence. They create “word-paintings” that spring to life in our imagination.
Naturalist and writer Terry Tempest Williams speaks on behalf the natural world and future generations. In her book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, she recounts her mother’s struggle with breast cancer. She describes the environmental insults which are linked to illness among people, plants, animals and Earth. She calls on us to “see beyond our time” and to act on behalf of Earth’s all.
Flowing and breathing . . . sensing whatever surfaces . . . Allowing your awareness to ease through your body . . . perhaps landing in an area . . . feeling and sensing there . . . . . . Sometimes an emotional quality surfaces . . . Can you be curious and open to the feeling? . . . . . . Thoughts may me threading their way through your experience . . . Can you hold them lightly without adding anything? . . . We can take sanctuary in these moments of awareness . . . breathing . . . feeling . . . thinking . . . Here in the sacred space of our practice we have room for it all even what poet Jane H. describes as:
A joy, a depression,. . . some momentary awareness com[ing] as an unexpected visitor. Even the anxious hardening of resistance . . . or the tenderness of unrequited longing . . . .
We pause our efforts to survive long enough to reflect on the meaning of our lives . . . Our search for meaning is something so essential to being human, knowing that in being born we are destined to die. In the moments of life that we have, we search for beauty, for truth and for love. We touch these qualities and are touched by them. May all beings know this freedom.
How good it is to know that we are part of a great web. Right now we can reflect on our constellation of relationships . . . family members and friends . . . even people we don’t know . . . people we touch with our being – through kinship, friendship or through our work . . . art . . . music . . . writing. What we do and who we become is always in relationship. And of course – our constellation is embedded in the greater web which sustains us . . . Earth and all creation. What and who touches you deeply?
In her book, Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams writes:
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.
In our practice we listen and are reminded of what we love, what matters most. We feel our part in everything and find our Belonging. As poet Alla Bozarth writes:
The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home
becomes different
places.
You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one
place.
To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more.
You have stars
in your bones
and oceans
in blood.
You have opposing
terrain in each eye.
You belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.
We have stars in our bones and oceans in our blood. . . We belong to the land and sky . . . We can pray and listen to the birds. We are free to care, conserve and protect that which we belong to.
As we rest on Earth’s body in this moment we can feel our aliveness . . . We can sense the constellation of relationships we hold with the living world. All has been given to us. From the basics of survival – food and water, fire and shelter to the alchemical mysteries of culture – creativity and language, medicines and even flight. The natural world inspires our dreams and transformation. Terry reminds us that:
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
In our willingness to remain present, we can enter that silent space that says we live only by grace. When we are awake to the wild mercy in our hands we are awake to the life we’ve been given. We can see and care beyond our own time. We awaken to the wonder of being. We can appreciate the amazing living web we’re a part of. We are relational beings.
Here, together, we give ourselves the time to set our own internal compass. We can intentionally choose how we will navigate our lives. We can walk slowly and bow often. We – like Mary Oliver – will choose whether to take ourselves to the forest, the mountain, the ocean – to that singular place of healing sanctuary.
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,”
they say, “and you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine.”