BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//The Open Road:  a learning community - ECPv6.15.3//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://openroadpdx.com
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for The Open Road:  a learning community
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20240310T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20241103T090000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240404
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240502
DTSTAMP:20260425T084705
CREATED:20240405T042533Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250718T135754Z
UID:4569-1712188800-1714607999@openroadpdx.com
SUMMARY:peace\, love\, happiness & understanding  4/4/24
DESCRIPTION:  \n  \nTHE OPEN ROAD \npeace\, love\, happiness & understanding \n  \nApril 4\, 2024 \n  \nCreativity! \n  \nKim sent some helpful words on the subject of creativity by Martha Graham\, a couple of poems\, and an essay: \n  \nLetter from Martha Graham to Agnes deMille \n  \nThere is a vitality\, a life force\, a quickening that is translated through you into action\, and because there is only one of you in all time\, this expression is unique. \nAnd if you block it\, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.  \nIt is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly\, to keep the channel open. \nYou do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. \nKeep the channel open… \nNo artist is pleased… \nThere is no satisfaction whatever at any time.\nThere is only a queer\, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest. \n  \n(Martha Graham was a revolutionary dancer and choreographer in New York in the mid-twentieth century\, here writing a letter to her friend Agnes deMille) \n* \n  \n                       Wild Visioning \n  \nThey say her name is Susan\, and she holds these  \n“Why not?” sessions somewhere east\, up the Gorge.  \nShe’ll ask\, Why should we believe only one can say\,  \n“I have a dream…”? She says\, “Why have freedom  \nif we don’t sing out loud the best we could ever say?” \n  \nSo they practice wild imagining. People get fierce  \nand joyful\, saying\, “What if I…What if we…?”  \nThey start with dark news\, and turn it inside out.  \nThey vision\, then they plan\, and then they act.  \nOnce they shake things up\, they’re hard to stop. \nThey summon mayors. Then city councils catch \nthe fever. Then voters start to see things otherwise. \nSome friends went to learn what it’s all about. They  \nnever came back. Now they’re comets\, lighting  \nour way across the sky. —And you? And I? \n  \n* \n  \n           How to Make a Poem \n  \nLet it open like a flower—but you won’t  \nneed the bud\, blossom\, scent\, or petals. \n  \nLet it beat like a heart—without naming \nanatomy\, blood\, valves\, counting the pulse. \n  \nLet it be warm as sunlight fingering  \nthrough storms to find you shivering. \n  \nAnd may it address the world of silences\,  \nof kinship short a few right words. \n  \nNow take down the scaffold. Let it grow  \nby brevity: Open hearts warm the world. \n  \n* \n  \nKim does a good deed every day. He writes a poem. In addition to being a writer\, Kim has been a teacher of writing for many years. He is a treasure trove of ideas on this subject. He even sent an essay on someone else’s essay!: \n  \nCreativity \nHow Naomi Shihab Nye does it…for example in her essay “Maintenance” \n  \nShe likes eccentrics and she remembers details about them. She looks at her subject—housework\, order\, maintenance—sideways\, while looking directly at people. The essay begins as a catalog of people\, with each including observation\, location\, dialog\, and now and then an oblique observation on maintenance\, and the deeper meaning of maintenance: keeping a place for the life of the spirit. \n  \nOne trick is to keep changing categories as a way of keeping the range of interest broad\, the opportunity to include rich details wide\, the essay in the realm of daily life: “Barbara has the best taste of any person I’ve ever known—the best khaki-colored linen clothing\, the best books\, the name of the best masseuse.” \n  \nThe narrative voice can move from one topic to another—maintenance\, feminism: “I never felt women were more doomed to do housework than men; I thought women were lucky. Men had to maintain questionably pleasurable associations with less tangible elements—mortgage payments\, fan belts and alternators\, the IRS. I preferred songs\, and the way people who washed dishes immediately became exempt from after-dinner conversation.” \n  \nShe takes every opportunity to bring detail to her sentences: on Thoreau\, “A wealthy woman with a floral breakfast nook once told me I would ‘get over him\,’ but I have not—documented here\, I have not.” \n  \nAnd she lets Marta Alejandro have the last word. “Is your house still as big as it used to be?” \n  \n—Kim Stafford \n  \n(If you want a copy of Naomi Shihab Nye’s essay “Maintenance\,” let me know and I can mail or email it to you.)—JS \n* \n  \nActor\, writer and director Keith Scales sent a couple of quotes and a poem on the subject of creativity: \n  \nHere’s from William Faulkner’s Nobel prize acceptance speech: \n  \n(His output was the result of) “a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit\, not for glory and least of all for profit\, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something that did not exist before.”   \n  \nThe Choice \n  \nThe intellect of man is forced to choose \nperfection of the life\, or of the work\, \nAnd if it take the second must refuse \nA heavenly mansion\, raging in the dark. \nWhen all that story’s finished\, what’s the news? \nIn luck or out the toil has left its mark: \nThat old perplexity an empty purse\, \nOr the day’s vanity\, the night’s remorse. \n  \n—W.B. Yeats \n  \nAnd: \n  \n“Don’t talk about it or you’ll lose it:” \n  \n—Ernest Hemingway\, from The Sun Also Rises \n  \n—Keith Scales \n  \n* \n  \nDeborah Buchanan wrote about her creative process: \n  \nMy Process of Creativity \n  \nI waste a lot of time. I do the laundry. I cook something. I procrastinate—I’m a champion at waiting for another hour\, another day\, maybe another lifetime. All the while I am pondering\, turning ideas and phrases over in my head. Or maybe I turn my attention aside and let whatever the idea is gestate in darkness. Many\, many slips of paper with little notes on them. Look at my kitchen counter right now—phrases\, words\, topics\, the beginnings of poems. Some I come back to and a flash happens. Other times I wonder\, What could I have been thinking? I listen for a dream. In fact\, some of my best poems began as a dream\, a voice that spoke to me. In all this\, time doesn’t matter. Some poems wait for years\, others die on the vine. All of that is okay. I remind myself that Stanley Kunitz wasn’t particularly prolific—he said he only wrote a poem that spoke to him\, he didn’t force things. There is also a quote from Theodore Roethke that I have repeated to myself countless times. It goes something like this: “A poet spends his life standing outside in the rain\, waiting for the lightning to strike.” A perfect image in the Northwest.  \n  \nHere is one poem I wrote about the process. \n  \nHer Gaze Never Drops \n  \nThe muse is angry\, \nher words sting\, \nshe wants to be inside you\,  \na deep place you rarely find. \nIt is like a seed\, the shell broken. \nThrough the cracks\, words. \nHere\, this is yours\,  \nsee the clear tunnel. \nWhere have you been? \n  \nThe fist can be hot\, the sound hard. \nWe stand in the open\,  \ncrackling vibrations around us\, \nlistening our only option. \n  \nAnother poem\, which comes with a story. Many years ago I was at the Gurukula Botanical Reserve in India’s Western Ghats. Wolfgang was showing me around\, plant lover to plant lover. When we were in the orchid area he pointed to some dirt and said\, “This is where the underground white orchid flower blooms.” Well\, as an earth sign I went wild. I tried and tried to write a poem about that. Only nine years later as I was at a workshop and learning about the fungus on plant roots did an idea come. This is the result. \n  \nwhite orchid \n  \nwaxy petals unfurl slowly against the tropical earth pale insects burrow in \ndrawn by fragrance escaping molecule by molecule through soft loam \nsurrounding the tendril of whitened stem piercing soil branching off \na flower then another creeping underground this life unseen unheeded \nabove ground our life drawing sustenance from the dark explosion \n  \nAnd a final story and poem. One summer I spent a week camping out on the Zumwalt Prairie as part of Fishtrap’s annual workshop. In a discussion I used the phrase retroactive prayers. A friend said\, What a great poem idea. Again\, many years passed and I couldn’t think of any way to use those two words. Then this last winter I wrote the following poem as part of a song cycle. \n  \nSo my advice: Pay attention to suggestions\, forget time\, let the world offer itself to you.  And delete\, delete\, delete. \n  \nRetroactive Prayers \n  \nMoist pads on frog feet turn leathery\,  \nstreams and ponds evaporate\, \nwater’s flow drains\, then vanishes. \n  \n     We didn’t think of them\, we turn trying to see \n  \nAnts and beetles\, roaches and worms too numerous  \nto count\, all refugees from untallied worlds\, wander this \ndamaged landscape—habitats scorched\, flooded—buried. \n  \n     We turn\, we turn trying to see \n  \nFlocks of birds drawn to the sky\, called by season’s  \nchange\, by earth’s magnetic lines— overcome  \nby heat and ash countless bodies drop to earth. \n  \n    We didn’t think of them\, we didn’t think \n  \nWanting what is lost\, our prayers reach out  \nto these abandoned lives\, reach to recover and embrace\,  \nto become each other’s prayer of remembrance. \n  \n—Deborah Buchanan \n* \n  \nAndy Larkin shared some thoughts about creativity from the ancient Mexicans: \n  \nHere through art I shall live forever…\nA singer\, from my heart I strew my songs\nI carve a great stone\, I paint thick wood\nMy song is in them…\nI shall leave my song-image on earth  \n  \nToltecayootl a ycaya ninemiz ye nicã ayyo.\nAc ya nechcuiliz ac ye nohuan oyaz onicas a anniihcuihuana ayayyan cuica-nitl y yehetl y noxochiuh nõcuicayhuitequi on teixpã ayyo.\nHueyn tetl nictequin Tomahuac quahuitl nic ycuiloa yã cuicatl ytech aya oncan no mitoz in quemanõ in can niyaz nocuicamachio nicyacauhtiaz in tlpc \n  \n–Nahuatl poem (circa 1570)\nCantares Mexicanos\, fol. 27r-27v \n  \nThe Cantares Mexicanos is a collection of lyrical poetry from the courts of the Triple Alliance (Aztec). I think the poet was the philosopher-king of Texcoco\, Nezahualcoyotl (Fasting Coyote). He’s the tough-looking guy on the Mexican 100 peso note. \n  \nAlso: \n  \nThe Artist \n  \nThe artist: disciple\, abundant\, multiple\, restless.\nThe true artist\, capable\, practicing\, skillful; \nmaintains dialogue with his heart\, meets things with his mind. \n  \nThe true artist: draws out all from his heart;\nworks with delight\, makes things with calm\, with sagacity\,\nworks like a true Toltec\, composes his objects\, works dexterously\, invents; arranges material\, adorns them\, makes them adjust. \n  \nThe carrion artist: works at random\, sneers at the people\,\nmakes things opaque\, brushes across the surface of the face of things\, works without care\, defrauds people\, is a thief. \n  \n-Nahuatl poem from the Codex Matritensis\,\nfol. 115 v. (208)\, ca. 1540—1585 \n  \n—Andy Larkin \n* \n  \nElizabeth Domike is a poet and yoga teacher: \n  \nSisters \n  \nWe’ve talked about boundaries as sisters to creativity. These days I lean on them heavily. Not teaching yoga for an institution\, but for the specific students who have been drawn to the material I share\, some of the boundaries I have are defined. Say for time. \n  \nEvery week I send a reminder with a theme for the next five days. And I head that with a photograph\, one I have (most often) taken during the previous week. This is something I hold close when out and about it the world. What would work\, what would set the tone\, represent the world here and now in this place. \n  \nEvery weekday morning I choose a poem to read at the end of class. I’ve tried doing this in advance and it doesn’t work as well as those spontaneous moments reading poems in the early dark. It is a kind of meditative practice after writing 750 Words and exploring the nature of my thoughts and emotions there so close to the dream state. For the poem I choose a key word or words\, like relief\, or old trees\, or hyacinth. And then I read what comes up and choose one that has the length and tone that I think might work and might inspire an image or thoughtfulness to carry us all through the day… a tiny bit richer. \n  \nThen during the class\, although I do prepare\, (sometimes for hours\, depending on the material)\, I let go\, responding to who is there and what their needs might be. Each practice\, an all-consuming creative act. This took years for me to be confident enough to do. It is a kind of free fall\, with the invisible ropes being the structure I have spent time revisiting again and again.   \n  \nThese practices have taught me that everything I do\, can in some way\, be expressed creatively. And most times is\, without me even trying. Any experience of connecting to the sources we carry within and translating them into the language of the present moment is\, in my opinion\, an offering\, a gift\, a blessing for us all.   \n  \n—Elizabeth Domike \n* \n  \nHere are a few of my poems that might relate to the subject of creativity in some way: \n  \nThe trick of a poem is: \nDon’t say too much. \nIf you do \n* \n  \ni want to go to the place where poems come from \n* \n  \nthe unwritten poem \nis completely useless \n* \n  \nif i could put into words what i see out this window \ni would do with language what no one has yet done \nif i could say what this bean plant means \neveryone would fall down and worship my poem \nwell\, probably not \nbecause\, as it is\, we don’t kneel before the bean plant \nand water its roots with our tears \n  \nholy holy holy is the bean plant \nthe cup of coffee \nthe stuffed animals on the window sill  \nthat have been loved unto baldness \nthe song sparrow \nthe sunlight \nand even the man sitting with his laptop \nfailing once again to say the unsayable \n* \n  \nLike all good topics\, the subject of “creativity” is endless. Many creative people have written about what they do\, but most of the inspiration we get from them comes directly from the poems they’ve written\, the paintings they’ve painted\, the music they’ve played\, the dances they’ve danced\, the meals they’ve cooked\, the gardens they’ve grown\, the films they’ve made. A couple inspiring documentaries about artists at work are “Rivers and Tides” (2001) and “Shangri-La” (2019). \n  \nOn Saturday\, March 23rd\, there was a wonderful book launch for my first book\, The Nonstop Love-In: poems\, stories\, essays & other writings. It was a Love-In! The Multnomah County Library has ordered some copies. Check it out! You can get a copy at Belmont Books in Portland. You can order a copy by emailing me at: stallingsjohnny@gmail.com. It’s also available from the websites of Powell’s\, Barnes & Noble\, Amazon & IngramSpark. Coming soon to Powell’s Books on Hawthorne! \n  \n  \npeace\, love & happiness \n—Johnny Stallings
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-4-4-24/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240415
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240515
DTSTAMP:20260425T084705
CREATED:20240415T184245Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240415T185109Z
UID:4615-1713139200-1715731199@openroadpdx.com
SUMMARY:Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue  4/15/24
DESCRIPTION:photo by Abe Green \n  \n  \nOpen Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue \n  \nApril 15\, 2024 \n  \nJude wrote this for the March issue: \n  \nTOUCH THE EARTH \n  \n“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 \n  \nI 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.  \n  \nBut 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. \n  \nAnd 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! \n  \n—Jude Russell \n* \n3/18/24 \n5:30 a.m. \nHAPPY SPRING TIME \n\nDear Johnny \n  \nHello 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. \n  \nI’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. \n  \nFor 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…. \n  \nIn 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. \n  \nAll 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. \n  \nThe 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! \n  \nLove\, \n  \nRocky Hutchinson \n* \n  \nKen Margolis shared this poem by Billy Collins: \n  \nAimless Love \n  \nThis morning as I walked along the lake shore\, \nI fell in love with a wren \nand later in the day with a mouse \nthe cat had dropped under the dining room table. \n  \nIn the shadows of an autumn evening\, \nI fell for a seamstress \nstill at her machine in the tailor’s window\, \nand later for a bowl of broth\, \nsteam rising like smoke from a naval battle. \n  \nThis is the best kind of love\, I thought\, \nwithout recompense\, without gifts\, \nor unkind words\, without suspicion\, \nor silence on the telephone. \n  \nThe love of the chestnut\, \nthe jazz cap and one hand on the wheel. \n  \nNo lust\, no slam of the door— \nthe love of the miniature orange tree\, \nthe clean white shirt\, the hot evening shower\, \nthe highway that cuts across Florida. \n  \nNo waiting\, no huffiness\, or rancor— \njust a twinge every now and then \nfor the wren who had built her nest \non a low branch overhanging the water \nand for the dead mouse\, \nstill dressed in its light brown suit. \n  \nBut my heart is always propped up \nin a field on its tripod\, \nready for the next arrow. \n  \nAfter I carried the mouse by the tail \nto a pile of leaves in the woods\, \nI found myself standing at the bathroom sink \ngazing affectionately down at the soap\, \n  \nso patient and soluble\, \nso at home in its pale green soap dish. \nI could feel myself falling again \nas I felt its turning in my wet hands \nand caught the scent of lavender and stone. \n  \n—Billy Collins \n* \n  \nJill Littlewood sent a quote and a poem: \n  \nThere’s no money in poetry but then there’s no poetry in money either. \n—Robert Graves \n* \n  \nBecause These Failures Are My Job \n  \nThis morning I failed to notice the pearl-gray moment  \njust before sunrise when everything lightens; \nfailed also to find bird song under the grinding of garbage trucks\, \nand later\, walking through woods\, to stop thinking\, thinking\, \nfor even five consecutive steps. Then there was the failure to name \nthe exact shade of blue overhead\, not sapphire\, not azure\, not delft\, \nto savor the soft squelch of pine needles underfoot. \nLater I found the fork raised halfway to my mouth \nwhile I was still chewing the last untasted bite\, \nand so it went\, until finally\, wading into sleep’s thick undertow\, \nI felt myself drift from dream to dream\, \nforever failing to comprehend where I am falling from or to: \nthis blurred life with only moments caught \nin attention’s loose sieve — \ntiny pearls fished out of oblivion’s sea\, \nlaid out here as offering or apology or thank you \n  \n—Alison Luterman \n* \n  \nThoughts on presence and absence \n  \nAs 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! \n  \n—Jeffrey Sher \n* \n  \nOn Friday\, Johnny and I spent a Day of Mindfulness\, in dialogue and meditation practice on keeping our hearts open. \n  \nWe read this poem together in our group of 24 people:    \n  \nKindness \n  \nBefore you know what kindness really is\nyou must lose things\,\nfeel the future dissolve in a moment\nlike salt in a weakened broth.\nWhat you held in your hand\,\nwhat you counted and carefully saved\,\nall this must go so you know\nhow desolate the landscape can be\nbetween the regions of kindness.\nHow you ride and ride\nthinking the bus will never stop\,\nthe passengers eating maize and chicken\nwill stare out the window forever. \n  \nBefore you learn the tender gravity of kindness\nyou must travel where the Indian in a white poncho\nlies dead by the side of the road.\nYou must see how this could be you\,\nhow he too was someone\nwho journeyed through the night with plans\nand the simple breath that kept him alive. \n  \nBefore you know kindness as the deepest thing inside\,\nyou must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.\nYou must wake up with sorrow.\nYou must speak to it till your voice\ncatches the thread of all sorrows\nand you see the size of the cloth.\nThen it is only kindness that makes sense anymore\,\nonly kindness that ties your shoes\nand sends you out into the day to gaze at bread\,\nonly kindness that raises its head\nfrom the crowd of the world to say\nIt is I you have been looking for\,\nand then goes with you everywhere\nlike a shadow or a friend. \n  \n— Naomi Shihab Nye \n* \nI 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. \n  \nSome excerpts from My Wisdom: \n  \nWhen people have a lot \nthey want more \n  \nWhen people have nothing \nthey will happily share it \n  \nNo bird builds a wall \n  \nOpen palms \nhold more \n* \n  \n In Some Countries \n  \nThere were people who had a hundred handbags \nPeople who hired maids to take care of their maids. \n  \nYou could float down the Rhine and see castles. \nDogs wore coats for daily walks in Central Park.  \n  \nA dog’s diamond collar glistened.  \nWe were not dreaming of these things for ourselves.  \n  \nWe needed basics\, starting small. \nHello\, you look like a human being to me. \n  \nIt’s hard to know what open roads mean \nif you’ve always had them.  \n  \nWe can’t imagine  \nthe luxury of open reads. \n  \n—Naomi Shihab Nye \n  \n—Katie Radditz \n* \n  \nAfter Hours \n  \nLately I have been too cold by furnace\, \nwarm as I shoulder the bag of ice \n  \nin the aisle of ignored announcement: \nit is closing time\, and no clerk \n  \ncan I convince that I have already gone\, \nam home\, removing every bulb \n  \nwith ceremony\, with a touch like hers\, how \nwhen something is removed it is itself \n  \nagain\, holy in the original sense \nof being set aside\, and always when I wake \n  \nit is like this\, my bed more public a place \nthan I should like it\, a bird or bothered person \n  \nin conversation I cannot parse\, machines \nare being fixed all around me\, and I like it: \n  \nto be broken and unreachable\, to be a camera \nwithout film and yet recording. \n  \n—Alex Tretbar  \n(first published in Colorado Review) \n* \n  \nKatie 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.  \nHere are some things from my “Translating Traherne” project: \n  \n26 \nAll 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. \n  \n27 \nYou 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. \n  \n28 \nYour 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. \n  \n29  \nYou 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. \n  \n—Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) from Centuries of Meditations\, versions by Johnny Stallings \n  \n  \npeace & love\, y’all \nJohnny
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/meditation-mindfulness-dialogue-4-15-24/
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR