The earth takes a deep breath...

Dear Ones,

This week my post has come late. It has been hard to catch a significant enough breath to write or record.

But my expression, although late, is even closer to my heart this week. It is a song that has emerged from this time of intimacy with our inextricably shared lives and deaths. A song that, unlike my sharing of two weeks ago, is entirely from me… words and music.

I have been increasingly compelled by the larger way that this time inspires if not requires a deep pause, within each and every one of us, as well as for our communities, for teams, choirs and crews, for whole nations, and industries, and thus for our earth. And although it means uncertainty and even ruin for some who are close to destitute already, it also means that some among us can remember our deep and ancient belonging to earth, our profound interbeing with her, our essential shared ecological identity.

This continues to move me and reorganize me, and it seems part of a more wrenching invitation at times, to stand in the deep work this time holds for me… Part of my answer is always in a song: so here is a first take, no effects, raw version of the song, for which last week I posted the words…

Take a deep breath, thanks for listening…

Speaking our hopes and questions...

This week I have another song to share, but I think I will just send out the lyrics first... I’ve spent a great deal of time on them, letting them ripen over the last 4-6 weeks, and letting this time continue its work in me- and it has, and it still does…

As we continue in the same way, mostly separated, yearning for contact in ways that might even surprise or catch us off guard, there are hints now of a softening of the measures we have observed. I wonder what you are now aware of as we imagine reaching for each other again in more tangible ways?

In a great conversation with a few dear friends online, an old friend of mine posed a question to the gathering, as is our custom when we talk together… but his question was somehow more vulnerable, it went something like this: “what parts of your socially constructed self have you found relieving or even nourishing to relinquish during this time? and do you hope that you might leave these aspects behind for good? or conversely, have you struggled as you are not able to be the self you have become, and the self with which you are deeply indentified, during this time of isolation? or is it both?” He invited us to share about how this has looked for each of us…

I love his question, and I also loved the vulnerability in his asking, because I could tell that it came from his experience of this time in a more heart-centered way than an intellectual one... He went on soon after as he responded to his own question, to speak of his hope during this time, and he asked if any of us still hoped that we each, or the world, might emerge from this self-reckoning moment, more deeply transformed… It is a vulnerable question, (not only because my dear friend is often very cerebral, and this went deeper,) but because we each did feel and respond differently to it. One said they weren’t hopeful, another said they were hopeful but not optimistic, and as we listened deeply and openly to the differences among us, we got closer to each other.

So friends, do not keep your hope to yourselves… or your questions. Risk speaking them. Even though they may not be shared by those listening, it is both powerful and vulnerable to hope, and we need more of that kind of thing…

Here is my song, the lyrics only… I will post a recording soon… maybe next week.

And the earth takes a deep breath;
and someone takes their last.
And we’re all here together;
And this dye has been cast.
Now I burn for a future…
where we learn from our past.
For this birth asks a deep death…
And this pain will not last.

Running through the trees…
And in the end we’re all just falling on our knees…
Longing now for ease…
And in this time we’re all just terrified to breathe;
Trying not to freeze.
With hopes whispered in the breeze,
How can I still believe?

And the earth takes a deep breath;
and someone takes their last.
And we’re all here together;
And this dye has been cast.
Now I burn for a future…
where we learn from our past.
For this birth asks a deep death…
And this pain will not last.

In all these many ways…
I find my mind has forced me deep inside a maze…
Emerging from a daze…
I find the house I’ve built is going up in flames;
I’m welcoming the blaze.
As grief billows from the haze,
My strength now sings and prays…

Let this birth bring its deep death;
Let the earth hold us fast!
If we’re all bound together.
Let no spell now be cast.
May we yearn for our future,
As we rise from our past.
Now let earth take a deep breath,
Let it not be Her last.

What we cannot hold...

This blog page is called Expressions… for a reason.

My intention has been to post the expressive movements that come from my heart/mind/voice/body, be they written or not. This week I offer a song that I have just recorded and published to the web. I sing this for myself, for all those with whom I work, for all those who find such an immensity of feeling welling up in them at this time. These words have for a long time comforted me and many to whom I have read them. I have already written and recorded many songs based on Rilke’s poems, but this is the first Sonnet. Just before recording it, I finally realized what the poet was saying at the end of the poem, and how it takes the reader back to the beginning stanza… maybe you will hear it right away, but it has taken me years.

I will post the words here, along with the video…

Part One, Sonnet IV

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.
Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.
Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

from In Praise of  Mortality–Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, Riverhead Books, 2005.

Wounds out...

I shaved my head today. Sure… there are no hairdressers working, but that is not why. I am drawn to do it almost annually. I just get the urge to strip away the layers in a tangible way, and it feels ceremonial each time I do.
There are a few things I love about it: how some people don’t recognize me, its as though we notice the frame more than the content of a face, or maybe we fail to look at each other with enough depth, curiosity, patience, courage, reverence? …to really know the face of another (or ourselves, as I surprise myself in the mirror for days even weeks each time I do this). Or maybe its just that how adults actually perceive each other is in a more ‘wholly beheld’ kind of way… our unique gestures, our presence, our familiar form in soft focus. Whatever it is, I love coming in closer contact with my world by removing my hair, by being shorn. I feel a bit more naked, a bit more known, a bit more exposed. I feel more too, more sensations, more self awareness, and the wounds on my scalp all show themselves…

I have many patches of psoriasis that are in full view now. And people can see my flaking inflamed skin, my bodies language for something I can’t express in words? But here it is now in plain view, this way maybe I can be present to it, tend to it. I have sometimes put liquid sunshine (vitamin D) on my scalp and I have had some real relief from the most entrenched and intensely irritated patches. I think about how only when I bring my wounds, my pain, into the open, can this treatment begin, or can the gentle caring and attention be offered. It is once again through a kind of vulnerability that healing is possible.

I have felt more vulnerable this weekend. I have found myself in deeper, more painful and more truthful contact with my family, and this time of isolation has felt harder on a weekend when community gathering and celebration might have abounded. Shared food, singing, and hunts for chocolate might have happened up and down the blocks. But instead we continue a kind of vigil for each other, and we receive further encouragement to be apart. Further reminders of our deep vulnerability…

It has been Passover and Easter weekend: the former, a holy day in remembrance of a people’s deliverance from slavery, cruelty and oppression against all odds; and the latter a Christo-Pagan allegory for overcoming suffering and death by going into and through them. I am more than ever with the reality that this time can, and possibly must, be a time to deeply reflect on what world we want to go on to… after this deepest vulnerability. We can’t wait for normal to resume… our wounds are showing now, can we tend to them?

the space left for us...

A few short weeks ago, business as usual lurched to a halt.

Bars sat empty and their tenders could not pour their soothing elixirs and do their unofficial therapy with the lonely ones.

Little ones approached the playgrounds encircled by yellow tape that read “CAUTION”, and they made their stand- the forest, the original playground would have to do.

What absence, or change was it that most pained or shocked you? An American in Wuhan, China wrote on the 48th day of quarantine:

“I used to think there weren’t really birds in Wuhan, because you rarely saw them and never heard them. I now know they were just muted and crowded out by the traffic and people. All day long now I hear birds singing. It stops me in my tracks to hear the sound of their wings.”

In these days the poets beckon, their words somehow emerging with eviscerating clarity in the blessed space left by the fleeting cessation of endless commerce. Rilke wrote this poem 98 years ago, as he watched the steady march of the industrial and technological growth society around him… and it is one of my favourites.

The Machine endangers all we have made.
We allow it to rule instead of obey.
To build the house, cut the stone sharp and fast:
the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way.

The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape
and its factories subside into silence.
It thinks it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys.

But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places
we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers
that—when you feel it—brings you to your knees.

There are yet words that come near to the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 10 Transl. Macy & Barrows

Now in this moment when some of our factories, businesses, and busywork has subsided into silence: what, or whose sounds and songs are you hearing again? Or for the first time? How can you sense your source? What will bring you to your knees?

I know that the reality is some machines are still working hard, maybe overtime… These devices which once separated us, and kept us fixated or distracted, safe from truer, fuller contact, are now for some the only way to seek it. May this time birth in us a deeper power to guide these technologies in our life together, toward connection, not alienation; awareness, not excuse.

Keeping (Each Other) Safe...

In these sometimes scary times, in this pandemic, one thing we are hearing so much about is staying safe… safe distances from each other; safe practices for washing and handling anything and everything that we come in contact with; staying home- which is presumed to be a safe place to be; and staying healthy- which presupposes safety- how can we be healthy if we are not safe?

This morning I heard someone, a respected mentor and colleague of mine, ask her community to keep each other safe but in another way. It was an online invitation, as everything is now, but it got me reflecting on “Keeping Safe”…

I’ve been considering how we stay safe when we are not with each other… this is because we actually rely on certain real connections with one another to have safety within ourselves. We each need a secure (safe) caregiver to grow into a feeling of safety, and then to be able to trust ourselves in the between spaces, when loneliness can grow. We can each learn not to berate punish or judge ourselves, and not to starving ourselves of love. We can grow into a safe relationship with ourselves when we experience a safe and strong love from another.

Different but related to this, I’ve noticed how even though we are being told to stay safe, we are simultaneously being convinced daily or hourly (by multiple sources of varying credibility) that we are not really safe at all, and can’t be, and thus we stay afraid, or grow more fearful- thinking, “certainly we are not safe and maybe we never will be”, and thus we often try more frantically to protect ourselves. Personal safety IS a slippery slope. We can slide down it into the possessed frenzy of compulsive security seeking. I think it’s when we lean toward keeping each other safe that much more becomes possible.

I love how when I ask “how I can keep you safe?”, I am still keeping myself safe, but I am also already expanding the definition and power of safety… What do we need to feel safe? Well, different things for different people, but we all need do need to know someone is thinking about us, caring about us, and wanting to know how we are doing. In this time of physical distance we can still embody these gestures of love in our reaching out… I find myself thinking of letter writing before the digital age, how close we could feel to another through holding the tactile page in our hands, running over them with our fingertips, such comfort even though the sender was likely very far away.

The reality now, too, is that some of us are not at all “safe at home”. Whether it be the deep vulnerability we feel to our own shadows or demons, or the deepening dread of painful conflict with those who share our homes or buildings with us, or the real horror of being trapped at home with an abusive partner or parent, we each need to know that we are not alone. To see or hear from someone outside of our small self, someone who has shown us they care, IS an unimaginable support and reminder of a web of connection that is much stronger than any one of us.

And this then takes us out into the bigger wider meaning of safety… because we can’t know what this all will hold for us, or what it will mean for our communities… because there are so many trying to predict or give their best guesses and this still doesn’t quell our worried minds, …and because right now there are already poor, marginalized, and vulnerable people whose safety was a fiction or a fantasy in our deeply unequal world before any of this began… because we know that this time brings more fear, more suffering and hardship, and more insecurity as the economic reality gets real for these forgotten ones.

So this is the time, the time when we keep each other safe, when we show up for each other’s well being, financial, spiritual, biological, emotional, and in so doing WE are safe, not you or me, but WE. Because all along being SAFE has always really been about creating it with each other, and this virus is just reminding us of that… May I help to keep you safe, and may you do the same for your friends and strangers…