Category: Edited

It is the poetry that seems to be calling me in this early part of 2012. It reminds me of something Michael Jones shared with me once when working together. “Wherever science goes, poetry was there a hundred years ago.”

The poem below is from friend Tesa Silvestre, whom I met in work at the Essex Conference and Retreat Center. In the way that I know Tesa, she offers much about expanding hearts and the depth of knowing and companioning that is a kin to soul tribe.

Spacious love

Can you feel
this electricity
in the air

between us?

these clouds of electrons
swirling and dancing
in the sparkling emptiness
that fills and connects us?

Oh, don’t be fooled
by this visual illusion
of separation!

When we look
into each other’s eyes,
and stretch into the space
between our hearts,
our whole bodies start tingling,
as we let ourselves feel
the currents of energy
always flowing within
and between
everything.

Friends,
If you ever get
to witness others
quietly enjoying
each other’s presence
like that,
don’t stand by
and feel left out.

Join
and drink in
this spacious loving.

Sooner or later,
we’ll all receive
buzzing evidence
that we’re
always
atomically
and intimately
connected
to each other.

This is a favorite for me that I’ve used often, from American poet, Adrienne Rich. I like the way that this points to the openings and the essentialness of choice and awareness. “…there is always the risk of remembering your name…” — yes, that is beautiful. I’ve heard this poem referenced as The Door Frame, and, as it is referenced below.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
By Adrienne Rich

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

I appreciate these words, caught and offered by Maureen Parker, a friend, colleague who works with Ottawa Family Services. Maureen was a participant in an event in November that I co-hosted, Developing Partnerships in the Workplace. Deeply insightful in her listening.

Partnership Possibilities

Re-activating a pattern of learning and partnership
WE create a context where purpose and presence
Show up joyfully, to co-cook and simmer
A stirring and emerging field

Letting go of silo machines of productivity
To engage with people
WE re-humanize  work and
Make fantastic our collaboration

Dancing the vertical-horizontal shift
WE build bridges and tame our tempers
Transforming the ripple of unhappiness
Into powerful soul connections

And re-membering these life affirming ways
WE wake up, to nourish gentle processes
Which invite wise action

Removing masks, we see creativity shining through
Aware of what is already here, bubbling to the surface
WE invite ourselves into our work, authentically
‘Being into’ that which moves and dances

Emergent joy in storytelling, we connect
And invite a ground swelling shift toward each other
All jazzed up, WE are now ready to protect
The language of what is working

One of the things I continue to learn is kindness. Offering. Receiving. As practice. As invitation. With my teenagers. With my former spouse. With myself. Practice kindness — it is a kind of mantra for myself and many.

I appreciate this poem from American / Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye. With thanks to Teresa for sending it.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.