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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250306
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SUMMARY:peace\, love\, happiness & understanding  3/6/25
DESCRIPTION:angel sighted in Plaza La Paz\, Guanajuato\, Mexico \n  \n  \nTHE OPEN ROAD \npeace\, love\, happiness & understanding \n  \nMarch 6\, 2025 \n  \nWe are loved by trees. \n  \n—Thich Nhat Hanh\, Teachings on Love\, p. 5 \n* \n  \nThe mind is its own place\, and in it self \nCan make a Heav’n of Hell\, a Hell of Heav’n. \n  \n—John Milton\, from “Paradise Lost” \n* \n  \nParadise\, and groves \nElysian\, Fortunate Fields—like those of old \nSought in the Atlantic Main\, why should they be \nA history only of departed things\, \nOr a mere fiction of what never was? \nFor the discerning intellect of Man\, \nWhen wedded to this goodly universe \nIn love and holy passion\, shall find these \nA simple produce of the common day. \n  \n—William Wordsworth\, from “The Excursion” \n* \n  \nKen Margolis sent this poem: \n  \nBee! I’m expecting you! \nWas saying Yesterday \nTo Somebody you know \nThat you were due– \n  \nThe Frogs got Home last Week– \nAre settled and at work– \nBirds\, mostly back— \nThe Clover warm and thick— \n  \nYou’ll get my Letter by \nThe seventeenth; Reply \nOr better\, be with me– \nYour’s\, Fly. \n  \n–Emily Dickinson \n* \n  \nJill Littlewood sent this poem: \n  \nThe Opera Singer \n  \nToday my heart is so goddamned fat with grief  \nthat I’ve begun hauling it in a wheelbarrow. No. It’s an anvil  \ndragging from my neck as I swim  \nthrough choppy waters swollen with the putrid corpses of hippos\, \nwhich means lurking\, somewhere below\, is the hungry  \nsnout of a croc waiting to spin me into an oblivion  \nworse than this run-on simile\, which means only to say:  \nI’m sad. And everyone knows what that means.  \n  \nAnd in my sadness I’ll walk to a café\,  \nand not see light in the trees\, nor finger the bills in my pocket  \nas I pass the boarded houses on the block. No\,  \nI will be slogging through the obscure country of my sadness  \nin all its monotone flourish\, and so imagine my surprise  \nwhen my self-absorption gets usurped  \nby the sound of opera streaming from an open window\,  \nand the sun peeks ever-so-slightly from behind his shawl\,  \nand this singing is getting closer\, so that I can hear the  \ndelicately rolled r’s like a hummingbird fluttering the tongue  \nwhich means a language more beautiful than my own\,  \nand I don’t recognize the song  \nthough I’m jogging toward it and can hear the woman’s  \nbreathing through the record’s imperfections and above me  \ntwo bluebirds dive and dart and a rogue mulberry branch  \nleaning over an abandoned lot drags itself across my face\,  \nstaining it purple and looking\, now\, like a mad warrior of glee  \nand relief I run down the street\, and I forgot to mention  \nthe fifty or so kids running behind me\, some in diapers\,  \nsome barefoot\, all of them winged and waving their pacifiers  \nand training wheels and nearly trampling me  \nwhen in a doorway I see a woman in slippers and a floral housedress  \nblowing in the warm breeze who is maybe seventy painting the doorway  \nand friends\, it is not too much to say  \nit was heaven sailing from her mouth and all the fish in the sea  \nand giraffe saunter and sugar in my tea and the forgotten angles  \nof love and every name of the unborn and dead  \nfrom this abuelita only glancing at me  \nbefore turning back to her earnest work of brushstroke and lullaby  \nand because we all know the tongue’s clumsy thudding  \nmakes of miracles anecdotes let me stop here  \nand tell you I said thank you. \n  \n—Ross Gay \n* \n  \nElizabeth Domike sent this poem: \n  \nJoseph Sleeps\, \n  \nhis eyelids like a moth’s fringed wings. \nArms flail against the Ninja Turtle sheet \nand suddenly-long legs \nrace time. \n  \nAwake\, he’s a water-leak detector\, a recycling ranger \nwho bans Styrofoam and asks for beeswax \ncrayons\, a renewable resource. \nHe wants to adopt the Missouri river\, \nwrite the president \nto make factories stop polluting. \n  \nThey’re old friends\, he and George Bush. \nHe writes and scolds \nthe president\, every month or so\, \nabout the bombing the children of Iraq \n(he made his own sign to carry in protest)\, \nabout the plight of the California condor and northern gray wolf\, \nabout more shelters and aid for the homeless. \nThe lion-shaped bulletin board in his room \nis covered with pictures and letters from George\, \nwho must be nice\, \neven if he is a slow learner. \n  \nJoseph is a mystery fan\, owns 54 Nancy Drews. \nNancy’s his friend\, along with Jo\, Meg\, and Amy \nand poor Beth\, of course\, whom he still mourns. \nHe also reads of knights and wizards\, superheroes\, \nand how to win at Nintendo. \n  \nThe cats and houseplants are his to feed and water \nand the sunflower blooming in the driveway’s border \nof weeds. He drew our backyard to scale\, \nusing map symbols\, sent off to have it declared \nan official wildlife refuge\, left a good-night \nnote on my pillow\, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. \n  \nIn my life\, I have done one good thing. \n  \n—Linda Rodriguez \n* \n  \nI love this poem by Walt Whitman! \n  \nBeginning My Studies \n  \nBeginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much\, \nThe mere fact consciousness\, these forms\, the power of motion\, \nThe least insect or animal\, the senses\, eyesight\, love\, \nThe first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much\, \nI have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther\, \nBut stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs. \n* \n  \nWhile in Mexico\, I’m reading the poetry and prose of the English Romantic poets\, and critical writings about them—in order to better understand who they were\, the times they lived in\, and what their ideas were. Kathleen Raine is one of my guides: \n  \n[Shelley] is the poet of apokatastasis\, the restitution of all things to their essential perfection. In his belief that this possibility lies latent in man and in all  creation\, Shelley has the unanimous teaching of tradition\, both pre-Christian and Christian\, with him; besides the interior assent of every spirit not quite dead. Nor was he wrong in believing that love is the transforming principle which alone can bring this about\, uniting what is divided\, transforming…the hateful into the beautiful…. \n  \nLove is the agent of apokatastasis; a truth which the Christian church itself acknowledges in the sacramental nature of marriage. His vision of the harmonious co-existence of all things in the state of Paradise (to which love\, in whatever form\, gives access) he has perhaps communicated (in “Prometheus Unbound” especially) more perfectly than has any other English poet….We can no more object that such poetic evocation of the state of beatitude itself lacks “the sense of evil” than we can make the objection to Mozart’s D-minor quartet. It might be said that the arts exist\, finally\, for no other end than the holding before us of images of Paradise. \n  \n—Kathleen Raine\, from “A Defense of Shelley’s Poetry\,” in Defending Ancient Springs\, pp. 154-155 \n  \n—Johnny Stallings \n* \n  \n Upwelling \n  \nDawn in the dark\, dream in the mind\, \nwhale in the sea\, tree in the seed\, seed \nin the earth\, leaf in the bud\, fledgling \nin the nest\, pollen in the wind\, rain in \nthe sky\, pain in the past\, love in the heart\, \nwonder in tomorrow\, song in sorrow\, song \nat the tip of the tongue\, mute poem coiled \nin the pen aching to ooze forth to find \na reader in need\, a listener long waiting\, \na generation opening eyes\, ready to rise\, \nbirds in the trees singing “Here we are \nand there you are and aren’t we all related?” \n  \n—Kim Stafford \n* \n  \nJeffrey Sher shared this poem by Billy Collins: \n  \nThe Lanyard \n  \nThe other day I was ricocheting slowly \noff the blue walls of this room\, \nmoving as if underwater from typewriter to piano\, \nfrom bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor\, \nwhen I found myself in the L section of the dictionary \nwhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard. \n  \nNo cookie nibbled by a French novelist \ncould send one into the past more suddenly— \na past where I sat at a workbench at a camp \nby a deep Adirondack lake \nlearning how to braid long thin plastic strips \ninto a lanyard\, a gift for my mother. \n  \nI had never seen anyone use a lanyard \nor wear one\, if that’s what you did with them\, \nbut that did not keep me from crossing \nstrand over strand again and again \nuntil I had made a boxy \nred and white lanyard for my mother. \n  \nShe gave me life and milk from her breasts\, \nand I gave her a lanyard. \nShe nursed me in many a sick room\, \nlifted spoons of medicine to my lips\, \nlaid cold face-cloths on my forehead\, \nand then led me out into the airy light \n  \nand taught me to walk and swim\, \nand I\, in turn\, presented her with a lanyard. \nHere are thousands of meals\, she said\, \nand here is clothing and a good education. \nAnd here is your lanyard\, I replied\, \nwhich I made with a little help from a counselor. \n  \nHere is a breathing body and a beating heart\, \nstrong legs\, bones and teeth\, \nand two clear eyes to read the world\, she whispered\, \nand here\, I said\, is the lanyard I made at camp. \nAnd here\, I wish to say to her now\, \nis a smaller gift—not the worn truth \n  \nthat you can never repay your mother\, \nbut the rueful admission that when she took \nthe two-tone lanyard from my hand\, \nI was as sure as a boy could be \nthat this useless\, worthless thing I wove \nout of boredom would be enough to make us even. \n  \n—Billy Collins \n* \n  \nHi Johnny.  \n  \nThinking about how we are often asked to show up to get-togethers with an open heart. Such a gentle request.  \n  \nHere in Santa Barbara where the flora and fauna are desserty and dry\, the difference from NW rain effects wakes me with wonder.   \n  \nThere was a refreshing rain recently\, so lavender and herbs and bougainvillea are blooming in winter.  \n  \nFinches and warblers and hummingbirds flitter along with the tiny leaves of the old oaks and sunlight flickers through the tree tops along with them. Quail and chipmunks skitter about. The sudden abundance of new bird songs – feels fleeting  . . . . \n  \nI think about what I’ll miss not seeing my granddaughter for a week. She is taking her first walk without holding onto my fingers! Impermanence can be heartrending\, but this is how it is.   \n  \nBrian Doyle wrote a book about the heart as a wet engine while he was worrying about his son’s heart health. \n  \nHere are some musings by him:  \n  \n“Our hearts are not pure: \nour hearts are filled with need \nand greed as much as with love and grace\, \nand we wrestle with our hearts all the time. \nThe wrestling is who we are. \nHow we wrestle is who we are. \nWhat we want to be is never what we are. \nNot yet. Maybe that’s why we have these \nrelentless engines in our chests\, driving us forward \ntoward what we might be.” \n  \n—Brian Doyle \n  \n“So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day\, an hour\, a moment. We are utterly open with no one\, in the end — not mother and father\, not wife or husband\, not lover\, not child\, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked\, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child\, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred\, scored and torn\, repaired by time and will\, patched by force of character\, yet fragile and rickety forevermore\, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant\, felled by a woman’s second glance\, a child’s apple breath\, the shatter of glass in the road\, the words ‘I have something to tell you\,’ a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die\, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair\, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.” \n  \n—Brian Doyle\, from One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder.   \n  \n“We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.” \n  \n—Brian Doyle \n  \nMay we show up with a healthy and open heart to what comes next.  \n  \n—Katie Radditz \n* \n  \nHope \n  \nPeace love happiness understanding…and hope. What’s the opposite of hope? At the least\, resignation; at the most\, despair. I am not willing to accept either resignation or despair; it’s not in my nature. And how can you experience and live in those four qualities of PLH and U without Hope? Not possible\, I’d wager. \n  \nSo how do I live in Hope? First I think of the men in prison. We talked a lot about hope\, and they were inspirational to me. I’d ask them to describe or explain their visions of hope. Initially the talk was not so optimistic\, with good reason. The more we all talked\, however\, the more beauty arose—more examples of the four qualities of peace\, love\, happiness and understanding…and compassion and gratitude and reciprocity and joy\, and…you name it\, every positive quality of life\, of living  rose to the surface as part of their mutual experiences. Those who were low on hope were lifted by others. I was lifted and illuminated by all the shared experiences. I was astonished and humbled; with my fortunate life compared to theirs\, how could I be without hope?  \n  \nI was reminded of the centuries-old German peasant song of revolt\, “Die Gedanken Sind Frei\,”  “(My) Thoughts Are Free”: \n  \nMy thoughts are free\, I proudly profess them. \nNo fence can confine them\, \nNo creed undermine them\,. \nThey ring from on high: \nDie Gedanken Sind Frei!” \n  \nI was reminded of Václav Havel: “Perhaps Hope is not something we search for\, but something we let in.”  and “Hope is a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”   \n  \nHope is the embodiment of peace\, love\, happiness and understanding\, and just now we all need to let Hope into our lives. \n  \nAnd if all else fails to give you hope\, just look outside right now at the snowdrops and daffodils\, springing from the cold\, dark earth into the light of day\, again and again\, year after year. That’s Hope.  \n  \n—Jude Russell \n 
URL:https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-3-6-25/
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