photo by Abe Green

 

 

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

 

April 15, 2024

 

Jude wrote this for the March issue:

 

TOUCH THE EARTH

 

“Walking is a form of touching the earth. We touch the earth with our feet, and we heal the earth, we heal ourselves, and we heal humankind. Whenever you have an extra five, ten, or fifteen minutes, enjoy walking. With every step it’s possible to bring healing and nourishment to our body and to our mind. Every step taken in mindfulness and freedom can help heal and transform, and the world will be healed and transformed together with us.”  —Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home  #232

 

I am so, so lucky to live where I do. Every morning, rain or shine—or snow—I take my dog, Lolo, and we walk up to the irrigation canal (or the ditch, as most ingloriously call it) and walk for at least a half hour, usually more. Most mornings the mountain is accompanying us. Some mornings her cloudy cloak is covering her shoulders; if so the cloak is tinged with pink and peach with the rising sun. I hear an owl, a red-winged blackbird. I smell the red-flowering currant and the heady mock-orange draping the path. 

 

But it’s what’s at my feet that settles my heart: moss and grasses, ferns, frilly lichens, maybe the golden newts wriggling to escape my footsteps. The path itself is made up of pine needles, fir needles, smushed oak leaves, aspen leaves—all of which exhale their delicious scents at each step. There’s the earth itself, the dirt: moist and crumbly in the spring, dry and powdery in the summer, muddy after a fall rain.

 

And winter? I try to celebrate winter up here in the snowy woods. It is beautiful—for awhile. The sculpting snow transforms and heightens and softens every branch, every shrub, every leaf. The ‘for awhile’ part last…for awhile; but come early March, when crusty, pockmarked snow still covers my trail, I long for all those delectable senses of the earth uncovered. I am more than ready now! C’mon SPRING!

 

—Jude Russell

*

3/18/24

5:30 a.m.

HAPPY SPRING TIME

Dear Johnny

 

Hello and good day to you my friend, it’s a beautiful morning here so far. I’m in the day room now and the TV is still off! So nice and peaceful. I really don’t like the TV very much…most of the time.

 

I’ve been thinking…the day I get out—if I release from here or Columbia River [prison]—I need to stop at Multnomah Falls, “or any waterfall,” & stand under it and let it wash over me. I just have this overwhelming feeling that I need to stand under a waterfall, let it cleanse my soul.

 

For almost a year now I’ve been having these subtle changes take place in me. All of the prison “things” that seem to plague everyone, stress, anger, frustrations, turmoil, etc., for me most of them have slipped away. All of those things just don’t matter as much & it’s sad to see others stuck in this frame of mind in here when you really don’t have to be at all, anytime. It’s really only a choice of a state of mind….

 

In two years from now I will be starting my new chance at life, a re-birth, the spots & stains from my past remain as a reminder of where I came from, never will go back to.

 

All of the things in the world that used to call on me have become mute and they have no appeal to me at all. I can feel the calling of a beautiful path, full of simple joys, filled with friends and a family, like I’ve never had in my life before. For the first time in my life good things await me.

 

The sun is just now filling the sky with its colors…the beauty we witness and have is a universal gift to everyone. Life can be so beautiful…if we look. Coming from a dark place in life, the beauty of it all for me always seems to be a gift from within the veil, wrapping me in itself. Thank you for giving my heart eyes to see the things only few can see, my friends!

 

Love,

 

Rocky Hutchinson

*

 

Ken Margolis shared this poem by Billy Collins:

 

Aimless Love

 

This morning as I walked along the lake shore,

I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse

the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

 

In the shadows of an autumn evening,

I fell for a seamstress

still at her machine in the tailor’s window,

and later for a bowl of broth,

steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

 

This is the best kind of love, I thought,

without recompense, without gifts,

or unkind words, without suspicion,

or silence on the telephone.

 

The love of the chestnut,

the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

 

No lust, no slam of the door—

the love of the miniature orange tree,

the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,

the highway that cuts across Florida.

 

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—

just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest

on a low branch overhanging the water

and for the dead mouse,

still dressed in its light brown suit.

 

But my heart is always propped up

in a field on its tripod,

ready for the next arrow.

 

After I carried the mouse by the tail

to a pile of leaves in the woods,

I found myself standing at the bathroom sink

gazing affectionately down at the soap,

 

so patient and soluble,

so at home in its pale green soap dish.

I could feel myself falling again

as I felt its turning in my wet hands

and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 

—Billy Collins

*

 

Jill Littlewood sent a quote and a poem:

 

There’s no money in poetry but then there’s no poetry in money either.

—Robert Graves

*

 

Because These Failures Are My Job

 

This morning I failed to notice the pearl-gray moment 

just before sunrise when everything lightens;

failed also to find bird song under the grinding of garbage trucks,

and later, walking through woods, to stop thinking, thinking,

for even five consecutive steps. Then there was the failure to name

the exact shade of blue overhead, not sapphire, not azure, not delft,

to savor the soft squelch of pine needles underfoot.

Later I found the fork raised halfway to my mouth

while I was still chewing the last untasted bite,

and so it went, until finally, wading into sleep’s thick undertow,

I felt myself drift from dream to dream,

forever failing to comprehend where I am falling from or to:

this blurred life with only moments caught

in attention’s loose sieve —

tiny pearls fished out of oblivion’s sea,

laid out here as offering or apology or thank you

 

—Alison Luterman

*

 

Thoughts on presence and absence

 

As I age and find that this appears to be a time of perpetual loss—of friends, loved ones, abilities—and all of the minor affronts and assaults that living a fairly long life brings, I have spent some time in reflection about the importance of remaining aware and grateful for what remains present in my life. I believe it is all too easy to reflect on the unavoidable losses and become consumed with what is absent. And of course this is not merely an affliction of the aging and aged. In my years as a psychotherapist, I often noticed how people often focused upon what was absent in their lives: the job lost, the fractured friendship ended, the fantasy trip not taken, etc. And with this focus on what was absent, what was both actually or potentially present and the vitality and affirmation of the potential current richness always still available was lost. Yes, I can no longer run a marathon, but I can walk along the river and be grateful for that opportunity. Shall I mourn and obsess over the loss of a friendship for reasons that I never understood, or shall I rejoice in the meaningful friendships that I do have? I think there is always a choice to put one’s emotional energy and focus on what is missing— Absence—or what is available right now—Presence. And in attending to what is present a deep sense of Gratitude often emerges. While I am not a formal meditator, this is my practice. Give it a try sometime!

 

—Jeffrey Sher

*

 

On Friday, Johnny and I spent a Day of Mindfulness, in dialogue and meditation practice on keeping our hearts open.

 

We read this poem together in our group of 24 people:   

 

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 sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at 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.

 

— Naomi Shihab Nye

*

I have been thinking of Naomi—how her heart is aching for her Palestinian friends and family, her  loved-ones. I feel her warmth and hear her voice, reading the poems in her 2019 book, The Tiny Journalist.

 

Some excerpts from My Wisdom:

 

When people have a lot

they want more

 

When people have nothing

they will happily share it

 

No bird builds a wall

 

Open palms

hold more

*

 

 In Some Countries

 

There were people who had a hundred handbags

People who hired maids to take care of their maids.

 

You could float down the Rhine and see castles.

Dogs wore coats for daily walks in Central Park. 

 

A dog’s diamond collar glistened. 

We were not dreaming of these things for ourselves. 

 

We needed basics, starting small.

Hello, you look like a human being to me.

 

It’s hard to know what open roads mean

if you’ve always had them. 

 

We can’t imagine 

the luxury of open reads.

 

—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

—Katie Radditz

*

 

After Hours

 

Lately I have been too cold by furnace,

warm as I shoulder the bag of ice

 

in the aisle of ignored announcement:

it is closing time, and no clerk

 

can I convince that I have already gone,

am home, removing every bulb

 

with ceremony, with a touch like hers, how

when something is removed it is itself

 

again, holy in the original sense

of being set aside, and always when I wake

 

it is like this, my bed more public a place

than I should like it, a bird or bothered person

 

in conversation I cannot parse, machines

are being fixed all around me, and I like it:

 

to be broken and unreachable, to be a camera

without film and yet recording.

 

—Alex Tretbar 

(first published in Colorado Review)

*

 

Katie Radditz and Pat Malone led “A Day of Mindfulness” at First Unitarian Church last Friday. It was a lovely way to spend a day. Several people said they “needed it,” because they felt overwhelmed—mostly by the daily news. Katie and I started this monthly Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue in September of 2020 as a way of reaching in to friends in prison with support and encouragement for their spiritual practice. (“Spiritual practice” can be anything that gives our lives meaning.) Since then, a lot of our prison friends have “graduated.” This currently goes to 10 men in prison and about 70 people “on the outside.” It comes out on the 15th of every month. If you get this, feel free to contribute. 

Here are some things from my “Translating Traherne” project:

 

26

All things are spiritual—being objects not just of the eye, but of the mind. The more you value each thing, the happier you will be. Pigs eat acorns, but don’t consider the sun and rain and soil that nourished the tree from which the acorns came. We can appreciate the endless miracles of life and live in joy, or live in ignorance and be miserable.

 

27

You never enjoy the world aright, till you see that a grain of sand is a perfect miracle. Everything is here for your delight—not just because things are beautiful, or useful, but because our life is woven into the tapestry of all that is. Wine quenches more than our thirst when we feel it to be one of the countless miracles which are ours to enjoy, and give thanks. When the happiness of others makes us happy, life is good. To be grateful for all our blessings is to be blessed, to live in Paradise.

 

28

Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Paradise—until you look upon the earth and sky with boundless joy. If you are grateful for everything, no one who ever lived has more reason to be happy than you.

 

29 

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars—till you perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because people are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in all of creation, as misers do in gold, you never enjoy the world.

 

—Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) from Centuries of Meditations, versions by Johnny Stallings

 

 

peace & love, y’all

Johnny