Camp

Raven cries, "Stop thinking!"
Mountain breezes
murmur in the hemlock,
"Stop trying not to think."
Down by glowing
campfire embers
evening is still and windless,
the valley of Wu Wei
lovely and green.
Here you must look
if you want to see.
Silt settles in a stream.
Problems vanish by themselves.
No need to touch
the surface or the depth.
This we call, "Stop thinking."
To rest on the bank
and listen to the music
of melting snow.
This we call, "Stop trying
not to think."
They are one and the same
practice.
There is no practice.
White waters of silence
tumble over 10,000 stones.

Photo: Took this on a hike at Mt. Tahoma (Rainier)

Kintsugi

You will be disappointed
in every teacher
until you meet the one
inside.
Then what shines
from your hollow core
will reflect from the face
of every stranger.
Sinners and shelter dogs
will grant you darshan,
as will the countenance
of the withered rose,
the broken moon in a rainbow
of spilt motor oil,
a mandala
of last night's untouched pizza,
the toothless woman
in a brown blanket
gazing into her empty
McDonald's coffee cup.
Now let the molten
gold of your disappointment
be the ineffable grace

that fills in the cracks 

of the world.

* Kintsugi: the ancient Japanese art of repairing
broken pottery by using seams of melted gold.

Like Mary

Be like Mary.

She had seventy seven lovers

and never sinned

because she was only rehearsing

for the One she would

meet in the garden

of her breast.

As the planter takes up the hoe,

an artist his brush,

as a grandmother rests

the infant on her lap

and a courtesan unfolds her fan,
as a moth hides her wings

beneath blue lupine petals,

and Govinda lifts 

to his lips the hollow flute 

already full of Radha's 

trembling silence,

so let Jesus take up

the instrument of your body.

Become the music

you yearn to hear,
and dance to yourself.


Image: Mary Magdalene by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Day After Christmas

I want to worship the next baby I see.

I don't care whether it’s a girl or a boy,

brought forth in a stable or a subway station, 

rich or poor, amber, peach, or burnt umber.

I don't care if it’s your child or mine,

human or divine, I just want to worship 

whoever is crying the first Word.

I am hungry for the bread of original 

innocence, the fallen star of her face

gazing up into my eyes, making them

equally wonderful this morning. 

Let me bow down and press her 

butterscotch soles to my forehead,

and give her the gift of golden laughter,

the frankincense of this breath,

myrrh that oozes from a broken heart.

I am thirsty to hear the suck of milk  

from a nipple this morning, the sound

of the tender generous bruise 

that makes any morning holy.

I won't wait for moons and planets 

to align, or for the Messiah.

How many evenings and dawns 

have I already missed her,  

looking for someone else?

Whether the child is yours or mine,

 human or divine, a citizen of this

nation or that nation, I don't care.

We are all natives of Christ's Kingdom.

Just let me worship the next baby 

I see.

__________________

You can listen to this poem HERE. 

Photo: my first daughter Abigail, whose name 

in Hebrew means, "My Father's Joy."

Christmas Eve Journal

 

Resting in the motherhood of silence, and giving birth to the light in the heart, is to breathe. On this holy night (which could be any night of the year) with this sacred breath (which is the Holy Spirit herself) I choose joy, I choose peace, I choose to receive the love of Christ, a gift that irradiates the world, a love that permeates every atom of matter, a grace that immolates this body in the fire of astonishment.

Mandala by St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th C.

Christmas Morning

‘God became human so that the human could become divine.’
-St. Athanasius

I await no Second Coming

because the One who is to come

has never departed.

I think there is no Divine Birth

but the radiance in these eyes,

wet with the nectar of this moment.

This morning, God is the spaciousness

who takes my breath away, then gives it back,

filled with the whisper of amazed stars.

I think they shine because they are bewildered

and God is the light of bewilderment.

The Child of Mary is cradled in my heartbeat,

conceived in the womb of a tear.

I think this day is the birthday of Seeing.

The suckling infant is a flame on the nipple,

her milk a stream of pearls.

Surely, we too are precious droplets

stranded on a thirst,
and galaxies throng in a photon of holly.

Surely the lips of the seraph

are two dark horizons, yearning to feel

what a leaf feels kissing the sidewalk.

This morning, my eyes are grails
that drink from themselves,

then pour out the rest for God.

I think that the lonesome Lord of Hosts

would like to pitch his tent in my cheeks.

I think that the Beloved’s tongue

must pucker for a smack of nog

and angels thirst to taste the green
of my planet.

They long to behold scattered ribbons
of dawn, crinkled blue tissue of sky,

viridescent tinsel of frozen grass.

Deeply this day I consider that the gift

is not other than its wrapping.

Let morning fall, an eschaton of snow,

into its glistening impermanence.

And wherever this melting leads me,

there I go and give thanks.

O Lord of little presences, just looking
is unbearably sweet today, each creature
a shimmer of innocence, bathed
in an infancy of light.

Clustered berries iced in cups
of transparency, kittens befuddled,
gazing at their crystal footprints,

wings of scattered cherubim at sunrise

flecked on a frozen pond.

Surely, just to be awake is Christ,
the only sin not noticing,
washed away this morning
by wonder. Surely, there is only
one commandment: Choose beauty.

Can't you see, little pilgrim,
resting in your bed of hay,

laying your face in the mute
holy warmth of an animal's fur,
that this breath encircles multitudes?
That Love is only divided
into I and Thou for a moment,
to behold itself in the manger
under your own breastbone,
the child who is born each morning
never one moment old!

 

Mural of Christ Child by Fra Angelic, San Marco, Milan

Here

You're not here

to save the world.

You're here to discover

that you are the world.

You are compassion.

You are healing.

In you the mountains

are lighter than the sky.

To you the bees return

to brew their golden 

honey.

Don't try to believe.

Just savor this breath

of newborn light,

then fall in love with

yourself in every

pair of eyes.

Painting by Fa. John Giuliani

Weariness

Now is the time to collapse, to be fallen, and dissolve like the snow. It's perfectly all right to sink down, to let go, to scatter like seed. Fall into Me. You are held. It was precisely your attempt to elevate yourself, to ascend, to triumph and surmount that exhausted you, and brought you to this trough in the light, this furrow of darkness in my loam. Here is your work now: surrender. Abandon the quest. Only when you drop like a withered seed will you be born like the new Sun from the very darkness you embrace. There is no other way to get through this miracle.

Art by Susun Sedon-Boulet

Dark Days

In the North we enter the darkest days. It feels like early evening all afternoon. For many these holidays are not bright with the Christall radiance of the newborn sun, but fraught with inward midnights.

Yet the mystics of all our wisdom traditions share one message about this fierce quiet onslaught of night. If we have the courage to embrace our unlit places, with absolutely no resistance, they deepen into boundless Being, softening like bruises, until they seep a mysterious glow. Grace chimes our bell-hollows. Night herself becomes the path.

Hindu devotees called Krishna "the dark Lord." His beloved Radha only found him after long nights of yearning. India's mystic poet Laladev cried, "Give me the daring to take hold of the dark!"

Islam patterns its mystical path after Mohammad's "night journey" (Isra), which leads to the mystical ascent (Miraj). According to the New Testament, Jesus did not become Christ by rising into light, but by descending until he "emptied himself." In Philippians, chapter 2, the Greek word for this experience is "kenosis," self-emptying.

"The divine darkness" was a common designation for God among Medieval Christian contemplatives. According to one of the least known but most important of them, Dionysius the Areopagite, true spiritual mysteries "are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of a secret silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their darkness." Wrote Blessed Jan Ruysbroeck in the 13th Century, "The unfathomable waylessness of God is so dark and wayless it encompasses within itself all ways."

"Even the darkness is not dark to thee," sings the Hebrew poet in Psalm 139, "for the light and the darkness are one." I have often said in my poems, "Darkness is not the opposite of light, darkness is the womb of light." Now I dedicate my prayer to all whose souls have been cast into this luminous night. When the darkness is most intense, the stars come out.

Painting by Toshiyuki Enoki

The Rest of Winter

 

With your softest breath,

polish all those dusty thoughts

from your heart mirror.

Are you looking for a quiet place?

Friend, you are already here.

Repose between pulsations

 in your own blood,

every vein in this body a grotto

for the pilgrim mind.

Find the secret chamber in your chest

where you have no enemies

and no one is to blame.

Make your heart an empty chalice

filled with the nectar of reflection,

where thirsty souls kneel down

to lap up moonlight just before dawn.

In this place where your journey

has no beginning,

prayers for peace need not be spoken

because they’ve already come true.

Here, even the word "love"

and all the names of God
disperse like smoke of sage in desert air.

You too evaporate

into the finer element you were

before you breathed.

You are the sparkling sky

in the lungs of a hummingbird,

the stunned stars’ silence,

an afterimage in the blackness

where a flame just blew out.

Remember that your flesh

is made of swirling suns

that vanished eons ago.

You are a threadbare remnant

of luminous entangled trails

leading to this moment of gratitude.

Distant constellations bow to you

like visiting kings bearing gifts

made of shadows.

Don’t try to understand.

Just stumble into your own rhythm,

which feels like not moving at all.

These weary bones need no 

discipline of stillness.

They merely want to heap themselves

in fur, under a hay mound

of last summer's dreams.

Be the nest inside the egg,

the womb that carries her own savior,

the wind that drops its milkweed silk

in a furrow between your breasts.

Whether you wander in loss

or abundance, this seed holds light

through the darkest season.

Whatever you meant when the fragrance

was so sweet you closed your eyes

and murmured, "Mmmmm,"

just smolder away into That.

Solstice Meditation

    

"Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day: for you, darkness is as light." ~Psalm 139

I feel darkness dissolve into photons of uncreated brilliance. Why could I not see this before? The void granulates into sparkling virtual particles, while light is woven from velvet threads of dark matter, mater, the Goddess. Darkness and light are not contraries, but the chiaroscuro of a single wondrous No-thing in whom opposites converge.

I feel silence dissolve into a carillon of infinitesimal bells. Why could I not hear this before? Silence is the chant of my ancestors, the harmony of angels, the sound of Mary humming praise songs in my body. She has forgotten the words. Yet every neutrino springs from her transcendental voice. So the second century Gnostic Valentinus wrote, "The true Virgin Mother is mystical eternal silence."

When I surrender to the glory of the Unknowable, lover and beloved dissolve into pure love. Why could I not feel this before? Love needs no story, needs not two lovers, not even one. Love only wants to dissolve. So the primordial sage Ashtavakra declared, as his first and last commandment: "Layam vraja: Dissolve now!"

How weightless all becomes when I stop grasping for an explanation, for a correct view, for a path. Embracing all by letting it all go, I fall into grace, because "I" dissolve, and grace wells up like a tear of emptiness...

This instant of surrender has no duration. Therefore it is the doorway to eternity. It happens at the end of my exhalation, just before the next inhalation is given - not taken. A dot glows in my chest, a spaceless Bindhu containing the wild unbounded ocean of Being. This point without dimension is a portal, a black hole at the center of my flowering hridaya chakra, giving birth to suns and whirling out galaxies, even before the Word can say, "Let there be light."

Here I Am. Yet this Am is prior to the beginning. It is perfect un-created joy. It is the unfathomable eternal silence of the Solstice pause between breaths. My mind cannot understand it, because there is nothing to stand on. Yet in this tiny pointless divine heart, my own heart bursts wide open, because there is no "I" who sees, only pure seeing. Seeing what? Seeing the radiant Gnosis of the Christ, whose face is unfathomable night.


Icon: Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

The Longest Night

Now listen to your broken heart.

Sink into the wound and bathe 

in the balm of midnight.

Don't follow a star.

Your destination is 

the gray stuff in cocoons, 

neither wing nor worm.

Let your root find sap in black loam

oozing the light of distant suns.

What are a thousand golden petals

or the fragrance of balsam and myrrh

compared to the yearning

of the shadow for its cause?

Faith is to fall

through the long Winter night

and witness the falling,
until you come to rest

in the groundless,

healed by your loss.

When you are truly still

you'll hear birthless seeds 

singing in the shadow, 

bursting sepulchers of ice,

already whispering,

"April, April..."

Winter is not an absence.
Spring is not a destination.
Lose your way between
the seasons and wake up
wherever you are.

Painting by Lori Sweet

Love It All

I love infant Jesus. Love the Pagan Solstice Christmas pine. Love Madonna Mushroom. Love Goddess Shakti. Love the 2nd Century Gnostic Valentinus who said, "The true Virgin Mother is mystical eternal silence." Love the wild vine of my Buddha nature, broken jar of Mary Magdalene, spilling juiciness over my crown, already fermented as it trickles down my vertebrae. Love the perfect consistency of my contradictions. Love luscious holly berries of fire and snow entangled on the cross of paradox. Love the tree of life in the garden of this body: I am the worm in the apple. Love the newborn sun, and what his gurgling baby bijas say: “Hum! Phwat! Bham! Zing!” which I translate to mean, "Every particle of me is made of Mother Mater Matter Dust, each atom a cathedral where pilgrim gamma rays arrive from the clustered salty rim of Margarita galaxies to celebrate the miracle of my flesh. O Christ, irradiate the world through these fingers and toes. I am your circle dance. Let there be no more talk of our separation." Here, after thousands of years of religious combat, body and soul Christalize into a single magnum mysterium, granulated in subnuclear particles of glory. And where does this alchemy occur? In a stable? A tavern perhaps? Or the nameless roadside shrine of my chest, the oat crunch of cows and the dander scent of dog fur, through the flame in the hay in the manger of my heart, that has ever been burning yet never lit til Now. Here I celebrate the birth of God, who is this Breath.

Painting: Sacred Bond by James Neafsey

Hug

 

Native Americans came here

from somewhere else,

just like Europeans.

So did Asians, Arabs, and Africans.

Were there pilgrims from another star

here too, before any of us?

They also came from somewhere else.

And where is "somewhere else"?

Maybe we all came

from the same place

just beneath your heartbeat,

where breath rises and returns.

Some day we'll all go home.

Our Mother will hug us

and we'll remember each other.

"Oh, its you, I forgot

that all of us come

from right here!"

Art by Jane Ray

The Practice Of Winter

 

A widowed bud bursts her icy veil.

Bitter joy of the flicker crying,

"I alone remain in the kingdom of silence."

Smell of fresh earth from your body. 

This is the practice of Winter.

 

No more mountain tops. 

Yearn for the valley.

Listen until you hear listening.

Mother your own heart.
Welcome the sky into your diaphragm, 

the moon into your belly, rising, setting, 

wolf-gray mist in the ancient cedars of your alveoli. 

a lady bug lands like a ruby kiss 

between your eyebrows.
This is the practice of Winter.
 

Through your blood, fatted salmon swim upstream

toward the waterfall of breathing.

Last night's rain snakes down

your switchback trail of vertebrae. 

Mud tastes sweet, the syrup of the sun.

Aloneness whispers, “Touch my fern,

my hemlock, the dripping jewel

of my quietness after the shriek

of the fox's desire.”

Hu, Hu... plaint of the snowy owl,

rugged mantra clapping one hand to keep warm,

no dreaming allowed.

 

This is the practice of Winter.

Wandering wayless off trail.

Take the path of the ordinary,

chosen by deer for its stillness.

Crystal attention, sound of snow,

your open palm so full of stars 

you have to find a better word

for emptiness.

Photo from our hike, Mt. Rainier.