Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

October 15, 2023

 

 

Walk beautifully, talk beautifully, live beautifully.

Let your heart speak to other hearts.

 

—wisdom from Yogi Tea bags

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Be joyful, though you have considered the facts.

 

—Wendell Berry

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Some excerpts from a recent letter (8/31/23) from Rocky:

 

Today was a good day for me here. Almost everything ran smoothly. My dog Nelly is programming well & so am I. I’m on my way to being one of the primary trainers. That means I will also be training another A.I.C. [Adult In Custody]! Real work! All of this is going well.

 

My mind has been wondering & thinking about what we have been talking about in the whole relationship department. I’m not sure how all of that will happen. “Organically” I hope. But you do not have to worry about me trying to save anyone! I might be the one that needs to be saved. LOL. I’m getting out to a whole new world, one that I do not know too much about.

 

Honestly, I want someone I can admire and appreciate and muse over. A simple, kind love that is fun & sweet. That would be really…nice. Hummm…we will see how it goes! It should be hard to find her I think. LOL. I would like to know & love someone completely & be known & loved by them. Kind & gently & with happiness. I don’t feel I am damaged any longer. I can only feel the scars, which is really good. It took a long time for them to heal.

 

When I was 22 or 23 years old, I was working as a “cedar maggot.” We did not cut down living trees, but cut up and cleaned up what the old time pioneers left on the forest floor. You see, bugs don’t like cedar wood too much & cedar does not really rot too fast. The old timers would cut only the “clear” wood, from the stump to where the branches started, and leave the rest to rot. That’s where we came in. We cut all that left over stuff and we turned it into cedar bolts for shakes & shingles.

 

One morning I climbed up on a tall cedar stump to sharpen my saw. There, stuck in the stump, was a rusted old wedge & the head of an axe with a splintered handle! There were also five pieces of yellow glass and an aluminum ring laying in a pile of rust—the remains of an old time lantern! All that stuff had been there for a long time.

 

All of these moments we all have in our lives are what we are made of—strands of our hearts, links in our minds, reflections in our souls. I, in my mind, have returned to that stump, the smell of the woods, many times over the many years I’ve been in prison. My place of peace & solace when the weight of correction becomes much too much.

 

The place in the woods, the stump, wedge, axe & lantern glass are all lost, as they should be. Magic does not just linger in one place. Maybe I took it in my soul & that is a good thought & it’s true? I go there often & I could have captured it that day so long ago all for myself & that is a good thought. It makes me smile to think it’s all mine, & now yours too.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson

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#363   Why Wait to be Happy?

“Many people in our society are not happy, even though the conditions for their happiness already exist. Their habit energy is always pushing them ahead, preventing them from being happy in the here and now. But with a little bit of training, we can all learn to recognize this energy every time it comes up. Why wait to be happy?” 

—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

What makes me happy? What brings me joy? I’ll tell you, for me, it’s opening to love. Letting love in.

 

I have to admit, sometimes I have episodes of resentment, judgment, selfishness, defensiveness…more often than not, though, these episodes are brief and they just—melt away. The other day we were discussing Thanksgiving. I’d already offered to have Thanksgiving at our house, for ‘my side’ of the family, and then in passing, I offered and invited David’s sister and others on ‘his side.’ When Mary called to confirm, she breezily, albeit apologetically, announced that ‘everyone’ wanted to come, like fourteen people!  ‘My side’ includes only five people. I had the distinct physical sensation of my heart balling up like a tight fist. ‘Fourteen,’  I kind of gasped. Did I gasp, or bellow? I’m not sure. I struggled for a bit with all those big negative feelings: resentment (pretty nervy to descend with fourteen people!), selfishness (‘my side’ will be engulfed!), judgment (they are not ‘my kind’ of people). But then the miracle happened: just as precipitously as my heart clenched into that hard fist, it spilled open and…love…poured out. I just relaxed into love and happiness. “Well, I think that will just be fine,” I said. And I meant it. To have all those people, young and old, want to come up to our home on the mountain all of a sudden was a wonderful thing. I felt such love and happiness and joy at the thought of twenty family—‘my side’ or ‘his side’—spending the day of Thanksgiving together in our warm, cozy home, fire in the fireplace, maybe even with a dazzling mountain view, or maybe with a few snowflakes drifting down…

 

This happens often; one moment I’m feeling a little ‘grrrr,’ the next moment I’ve dissolved into love, and happiness. Don’t ask me the formula, the key to unlocking—I don’t understand it myself. I sure recognize it every time it comes up, but don’t understand the radical nature of it. All I know is that I am in wonder of it myself and never fail to feel blessed.

 

—Jude Russell

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past parentage or gender

beyond sung vocables

the slipped-between

the so infinitesimal

fault line

a limitless

interiority

 

beyond the woven

unicorn   the maiden

(man-carved   worm-eaten)

God at her hip

incipient

the untransfigured

cottontail

bluebell and primrose

growing wild   a strawberry

chagrin   night terrors

past the earthlit

unearthly masquerade

 

(we shall be changed)

 

a silence opens

 

—excerpt from “Silence” by Amy Clampitt

 

May we be at peace

May all be healed

May we be a source of healing for all beings.

 

love, 

—Katie Radditz

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Last Thursday, when friends had gathered for coffee and conversation, Will Hornyak asked: “What do you do to feed your soul in difficult times?” I passed that question along to some friends, and here is what they sent me:

 

Three poems from Kim for Gaza and Israel:

 

     War for the Holy Land

 

You could say it’s Biblical, this fury

between the children of Yahweh and Allah,

this frenzy of rockets and bombs opening

the gates of hell for fire to take and take

where hungry Death stalks the streets.

 

Weak leaders need war, or else we would

require them to be wise and kind. Instead,

this fury allows them to say, “We wage war

because it’s the anniversary of war,” and

“We wage war because they wage war,”

 

and everyone else goes along with it,

an eye for an eye, a child for a child.

 

 

     Peacenik, War-nik

 

When there are two sides,

and one side starts shooting,

what are the rest of us to do?

Peace-mongers may run and hide,

 

while war gives warriors a certain

clarity: be the implement between

command and death. Hawks seek

prey, while doves sort seed.

 

Flower child, thistle child—when

we hear an angry leader speak

of vengeance, of human animals,

then it’s up to all of us.

 

 

     Armor

 

What armor can our hearts put on

when facts and photos find us, far war

hunting us from hiding? Now news

becomes an implement to pry us open

so we, too, carry children through smoke

and rubble. We bury victims of atrocity,

flee with only what we can carry. We find

our kinfolk heaped. We are the massacre.

We try to keep the beating drum from

giving in, giving up. We guard our capacity

for hurt, each wound proving we feel, proving

divisions are a lie, proving our complicity.

Old heart, let suffering prove we are kin.

 

—Kim Stafford

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Navigation

 

In early morning dark, I could meditate.

I have done. 40 mornings. Sa Ta Na Ma.

The fingers of both hands in rhythm.

Awkward, fumbly. Good for the brain

 

They say. Integration of the hemispheres.

Instead, I feed the cat. Fend off the worst

of the arthritis with small movements

until I can sit upright at a keyboard.

 

No, not music. That would be lovely,

a little Chopin. A laptop. Precious tool,

dictation. I close my eyes. And talk.

If I look, I want to edit, dangerous walk

 

This revision thing. More conversational

this way. The petty indignities, frets from

days before, get out all the surface stuff,

the annoyances, so the sweet stuff

 

Has room to grow into the day.

An unexpected bloom of affection

or engagement with something

absurd and wonderful.

 

Did you know that if you smell

The inside of your elbow

It clears the nasal palate for all

The aromas the next encounter will bring?

 

Elizabeth Domike

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In answer to Will’s question…

 

The times are always difficult. There is still the urgent question: How do you feed your soul? I try to nurture peace, love, happiness and understanding within myself. Without them, I don’t have much to offer my fellow mortals that might be helpful. And I enjoy them for their own sake. I try to live a life that is rich in meaning. Life is short. Each day, each moment, is precious. I try to pay attention. And not forget to say thank you thank you thank you.

 

—Johnny Stallings

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I write. That takes many forms. Novel, screenplay, song, essay, memoir. Just whatever I’m currently doing, that has a world I can dive into, and let everything else fall away. If I’m too brain-tired to do any of that, I’ll do a crossword puzzle, and if that’s too much, I’ll go for Wordle. I lose myself in words, and if I’m doing a song, the music is extra bonus points.

 

—J Kahn

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How to cope with a calamity, of which there seem to be a surfeit? I started to add “right now” but that is not true…there is always a surfeit of despair. One necessary action is to be involved in preventing or ameliorating the disaster. Often you can help others. It sustains all of us to mutually better situations and solve problems. 

 

How else do we come to terms with difficulties? For me both music and poetry are deep sources of consolation. I started to list poems and then realized the list is endless. Follow your own loves and you will find many poems that speak to the heart. A good starting one is Wendell Berry’s:

 

The Peace of Wild Things

 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

And, yes, being in the wild, whether a city park or untrammeled mountains, is a deep source of nurture. Not consolation. Nature can be wild and destructive but not cruel. It is a vital reminder of the nurture and persistence of the world. 

 

Oliver Sacks said that music is the one art that is both abstract and emotional, it can elevate and reassure us, deeply touch the place where we have no words. That is certainly true, and my music may be very different than yours but both are the endless world of sound and silence that envelop us.

 

But above all: find what you love, give yourself to it, work through reward and pain and frustration. Give yourself to it. Your immersion will carry you through so many griefs. Don’t do it all alone. We need one another, we need community and its irreplaceable links. As the poet June Jordan often reminded us, we are a community in fact and in aspiration.

 

—Deborah Buchanan

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Jill sent this poem:

 

The Red Wheelbarrow

 

so much depends

upon

 

a red wheel

barrow

 

glazed with rain

water

 

beside the white

chickens

 

—William Carlos Williams

 

—Jill Littlewood