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peace, love, happiness & understanding 8/4/22
2022-08-04 - 2022-08-31
Edith Mirante in Chin State, Burma

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding
August 4, 2022

ADVENTURE TALES!

I asked some friends to send in stories of adventures they had. First to reply was Edith Mirante, who is a member of the Society of Women Geographers:

The Society of Woman Geographers was established in 1925 at a time when women were excluded from membership in most professional organizations, such as the Explorers Club, who would not admit women until 1981. It is based in Washington, D.C., and has 500 members.

The society was organized by four friends, Gertrude Emerson Sen, Marguerite Harrison, Blair Niles and Gertrude Mathews Shelby, to bring together women interested in geography, world exploration, anthropology and related fields. Membership was restricted to women who had “done distinctive work whereby they have added to the world’s store of knowledge concerning the countries on which they have specialized, and have published in magazines or in book form a record of their work.”

—from Wikipedia

Here’s what Edith wrote:

Being an adventurer is intrinsic to my personality. I’ve always sought the “unsafe path” and accepted the dangers & misadventures that come with that. I try to use those reckless proclivities for good, investigating human rights issues and environmental crises in remote, sometimes war torn, regions — especially the frontiers of Burma (Myanmar). My three books, Burmese Looking Glass, Down the Rat Hole and The Wind in the Bamboo are adventure stories as much as political & historical narratives.

=======

In the Pines, Burma

I had gotten used to riding on the back of small motorbikes, which had only recently replaced study mountain ponies in Chin State, a rugged, mostly roadless region of western Burma (Myanmar.) I managed not to upset the balance — or fall off — even on convoluted dirt tracks and rickety bamboo bridges, as I researched the region’s environmental issues in 2016 with the assistance of some motorbiking local enviro activists.

Mining (nickel and other minerals) was of particular interest to me. I had read in a local news outlet that Valvum, a village reachable from Tedim town was the site of “ongoing coal mining work managed by a Japanese company.” Low-grade, highly polluting coal is mined in some areas of Burma and with coal’s disastrous climate-changing effects for the whole world, the Valvum operation was certainly worth investigating.

Gunning the bikes up and down narrow, rock-strewn trails, we got to Valvum mid-morning. I drank tea with some women who were smoking cheroots in a dark, smoky house. Burma was enjoying a period of relative freedom for civil society after decades of brutal military dictatorship. But those changes were recent and I was concerned about possible scrutiny of our visit, whether by government agents or mining company thugs. So I tried to make sure I wouldn’t be getting anyone in trouble by visiting the mine. A village representative reassured us: “It is no problem to go there. They are expecting you there.”

Past the village the swerve, wobble and roll of our bikes disturbed the silence of khasi pine and rhododendron forest until a fence appeared and a couple of mine employees waved us through the gate. The owner, a 70 year old Japanese eccentric married to a local woman, was away, they told me. But they were happy to show me the operation: “Here are the four ovens where we make the coal.” So it turned out to be not a coal mine at all. This was a charcoal making project. The words for coal and charcoal are very similar in Burmese, as in English.

Although charcoal is used for household cooking throughout Burma, this product was apparently for export to Japan, where special charcoals are often used as air freshener, commanding high prices for small amounts. I was certainly relieved that it was not a coal mine. But I learned that this charcoal business was having its own environmental impact: depleting the area around Valvum of four types of trees, described in the local language as thal sing, lim sing, nai sing and se sing.

I mentioned that bamboo, a plentiful and thoroughly renewable resource, could be used instead for export quality charcoal. In Japan bamboo charcoal is prized and costly, for incense or just displayed in a bowl to purify the air. Chin State reminded me of Appalachia in many ways (the rhody forests, the Christian hymns resounding in mountain churches, those blue ridges, hollers and mines.) One place’s pollution or deforestation is another part of the world’s clean breath of air.

Leaving Valvum we reached the main road, where I had to wrap up in scarves like a nomad raider to keep the dust out of my lungs. Six years on, that entire region has become a horrifying conflict zone. Since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar, entire towns and villages have been burned across Chin State by the shock troops of the regime. Civilians fled to neighboring India. The young environmentalists I knew and other activists fight back with guerrilla tactics, as armed convoys invade their land. The pine forests are now resistance strongholds.

—Edith Mirante, 2022
for more about Chin State:
https://www.projectmaje.org/chin_report_2021.htm
*

VW Bug in Mud

We had this bright idea to take a short cut on a road that faded from gravel to dirt to mud. “Maybe if we go fast enough we can get through that big puddle.” Nope. We were stalled with wheels spinning, car body resting in muck. Did I mention we were ten miles from anywhere…my baby sister was with us…it was dusk? Well, we gathered a heap of flat rocks, lifted the car high enough to place pavers under each wheel (playing mighty Archimedes with a dead tree we plucked from the ground), laud down stones to fill the ruts, revved it, and roared onward…arriving home to the frightened family around midnight. A sturdy lesson in foolishness and self-reliance.

—Kim Stafford
*

a seagull conversation

on a chilly autumn afternoon
with the barest minimum of experience
I’m cautiously paddling a kayak
around and among a group of small islands
off the jagged coast of Connecticut
gently encouraged and accompanied by
an athletic younger brother and his mate
each in their own kayak
maneuvering with skill far superior to my own

at the moment
I have unintentionally wandered out of their sight
suddenly alone in an unfamiliar domain
I calm a rising concern with assurances
my partners are almost certainly
on the far side of the next small island
or the island just beyond

meanwhile
I contemplate the territorial agreement
the local cormorants and seagulls appear to have made
occupying alternate perching rocks
twelve to fifteen feet apart
that surround the island I’m slowly moving past

clenched postures and cold stares make it clear
agreement has also been reached
that my presence is entirely unwelcome

as I round the narrow end of the island
one of the gulls hunkered on a rock just ahead
confronts me with the abrasive, demanding cry
that seems to express the hardcore seagull personality

after a tense moment, I try to soften the mood
with a modestly accurate but gentler seagull impression

the gull’s harsh scream in response
is a furious reply to a personal insult

my attempt to back away with a shorter, less ragged cry
brings a jagged challenge to deadly combat

my third pass at making peace is cut short
by a piercing shriek that must be a crippling curse

and the gull lifts its wings and rises from its perch

I pause and drift for a moment
resting the double-blade paddle across my lap
and watch the departing gull fly slowly but deliberately
in a remarkably straight line away from the nose of my kayak

I’m just beginning to consider the possibility
of feeling guilty about disturbing this gull in the first place
when the bird makes a tight turn mid-air
precisely reversing its course
now heading on a line directly toward my kayak

in the time it takes to think: what the hell?
I see a slender rope of firm black and white matter
almost two feet long and growing
descending from beneath the bird’s tail

swiftly lengthening and steadily on-coming
this two-tone cord of seagull rebuke
is truly surreal and completely unnerving

as the gull and dangling cord close in
I panic and thrust the right side of my paddle into the air
hoping to deflect the incoming projectile

my awkward parry is completely mistimed
and the sudden movement sends the kayak tipping wildly to the left
I manage to right the boat but a generous amount of ocean water
has washed into the kayak’s snug seating compartment

the frigid ocean stings as it soaks into my pants
but I can’t take my eyes off the approaching nightmare cord
which the gull suddenly releases
dropping it into the water a couple of feet in front of my kayak

relief begins to flood my mind before I realize
this cunning seagull has very nearly
sent me tumbling into the icy autumn Atlantic

later that evening, in warm dry clothes
comes the bottom line:
if the intruder’s pants are wet
the seagull’s point is made

—Nick Eldredge 2022
*

I’ve had an adventure or two in my day. Most of them a long time ago. I lived in India for a couple years. I was a gold miner in Northern California. I had a job where I was paid for sleeping. Another job was testing beet pulp pellets for hardness, durability and fine particle content. Once, when free climbing in the Wallowa Mountains, I found myself on a rock ledge from where I could not go up and could not go back down. Somehow, I lived to tell the tale. But that is not the tale I’m going to tell now…

I was awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night in the Fall of 1998. It was World Class Oddball Ken Campbell calling from London. “Johnny,” he said. “Would you like to enroll in the School for Phils?” “I don’t know, Ken. What is the School for Phils?” Ken explained that the little voices inside his head were telling him that it was important to usher in the Millennium by performing The Warp every weekend of 1999, and that he needed to train up a team of Phils, because if someone tried to play the part of Philip Masters every weekend for a year, it would kill them.

“When does the School for Phils begin?” “One week from today.” “It’s tempting. I’d have to quit my job…” “Are you in?”

A week later, I found myself in a smoke-filled basement in Camden Town. There were about six guys, besides myself. Oliver Senton was giving us a briefing. He had played the part of Philip Masters. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the longest part in the longest play in the English language. After a few days, enrollment in the School for Phils had dwindled to one. Me.

The Warp is a play unlike any other. It’s Neil Oram’s autobiography, from 1959 to 1979, in roughly the same way that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is autobiographical. As in Kerouac’s book, the names have been changed, but the events recounted actually happened. At least this was Neil’s version of what happened and he was completely sincere when he said he didn’t make anything up. Neil Oram has the most astonishing memory of anyone I have ever met. When he wrote his play in 1979, he could remember conversations he had fifteen and twenty years earlier.

Rehearsals couldn’t begin until I was “off book.” It took me four months to learn my lines. I started every day at 8 a.m., seven days a week, and worked on my lines till midnight. When I got tested, it took more than eight hours to say my lines, with someone giving me just my cues. The other actors all knew their parts. We only rehearsed for five days, with everyone lining up to do their scenes with me. When we performed the play at the Roundhouse, the performance began at 8 pm on Saturday and ended at 7 pm the following day. I was onstage the whole time.

A play that is more than 20 hours long sounds like it might be boring. When Ken directed The Warp there was not a dull moment. He was a comic genius, the funniest man I have ever known. I don’t know how Neil felt about this, but Ken directed his earnest account of his life journey for maximum laughs.

The first time I saw the play, I was playing a small part, Ralph Beak. He doesn’t come onstage for at least the first twelve hours, so I got to watch the first half of the play as an audience member, and it was the most exhilarating theatrical experience of my life. The energy that the actors brought to every scene was incredible! There are dozens of characters and more than 120 scenes. In every scene the actors were trying to outdo the previous scene. After eight hours of this barrage on my nervous system I was in a state of ecstasy. I felt like I had died and gone to Theater Paradise.

I had a little time off from line-learning, when our theater company would perform Macbeth in Pidgin English at the Piccadilly Theatre on London’s West End.

I performed the part of Philip Masters in The Warp three times, in early 1999, before returning to The States. At the end of the 23 hour-long performances, the audience stood up and shouted and cheered for about ten minutes. It’s the only time in my acting career that I got to feel what rock stars must feel when the crowd goes wild.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Reflections On the Art of “The Adventure”

The Oxford Dictionary suggests adventure might be a “daring enterprise,” describes adventurism as a “tendency to take risks,” and offers up synonyms such as “audacious, brave, reckless, valiant,” and “risky.”

Defining adventure seems very subjective and individual to me. Certainly one person’s daring is another person’s ho-hum. I do feel (for myself) it requires “loose ends,” cannot be over-planned, must include improvisation and unknowns, and necessitates I be “in the moment.” Thus I might say our entire life is an adventure as we navigate the surges, eddies, and constant strivings that are elements of being alive.

Rather than describe one specific episode of bravado, I’ve conceived a list of possibilities I hope will touch many:

—(Here’s the big one) Being with “me”…phew! (Can you relate?)
—Family reunions (‘nough said)
—First stroke of brush on canvas
—The turn of a thought
—Being member of Johnny’s dialogue group
—Hiking in bear country
—Being a part of OHOM circle of friends
—Making new friends
—Imagining in new ways
—Prison
—Going to the library/book store
—Writing first word of poem/essay
—Stepping onstage in front of an audience

Here’s a few more:

—Agreeing
—Listening
—Changing
—Loving
—Smiling
—Commitment
—Birth/Death

And as a last thought:

—This moment!

Conclusion: we all, at every moment are engaged in the living act of
“The Adventure”

Peace and Love To All

—Abe Green 2022

(Note to readers: peace, love, happiness & understanding now comes out on the first Thursday of every month, instead of every other Thursday.)

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 7/24/22
2022-07-24 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Beloved Bibliophiles!

We had so much fun last time with AUTHORS AND WRITINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY! that we’re doing it again on Sunday, July 24th, at 3 p.m. (PDT).

Novels, stories, poems and plays that make you laugh, lift your spirits, give you a feeling of well-being. Which authors are the most reliable for cheering you up?

Here’s the link for the Zoom gathering:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there.

May all people be happy!

Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 7/15/22
2022-07-15 - 2022-08-14
photograph taken in Iceland by Kim Stafford

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

July 15, 2022

Remember?

Remember that day
when the war ended
and you climbed
from your trenches
and we oozed
from our bunkers
leaving
grenades, guns
bullets and bayonets
behind?
Remember how we
all sang in the streets
danced in the fountains
crazy with joy?
Remember how
clouds lifted
hearts rose
hatred, vengeance
bitterness and rage
fell away like
grave clothes?
Remember how
we stood
tall and happy
in the morning
light
eyeing the world
and one another
with new eyes?
Remember how
in that ecstasy
we forgot
if ours was
a red state
or blue
liberal cause or
conservative stand?

Remember
how easily
we remembered
who we were
from whence we had come
where we were going
why we were here
and what we should do?

I will never forget
that day
when the war ended
and trust sprouted
and spread like
a green
sea of grass
across every divide
over every division
uniting all
into one state
of grace
indivisible
at peace
under heaven.

—Will Hornyak July 10, 2022
*
#223 Benefit From The Positive Elements

“If the presence of the other is refreshing and healing to you, keep hold of this presence and nourish yourself with it. If there are negative things around you, you can always find something that is healthy, refreshing and healing, and with your mindfulness you can recognize its presence in your life.

You need to recognize that these kinds of positive elements exist and that you can benefit from their refreshing and helpful presence. If you are facing a sunset, a marvelous spectacle, give yourself a chance to be in touch with it. Give yourself five minutes, breathing deeply, and you will be truly there. Touch the beauty of nature in a deep way. That will do your body and mind a great deal of good.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” is the embodiment of this page from Your True Home, and I speak it silently to myself each day on entering my time of meditation.

I can’t deny that I am often agitated and fearful about the world, particularly about our country, when I sit down to meditate. And I quietly breathe in, and out, and remind myself:

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.

—Wendell Berry

I am so fortunate to be surrounded by beauty. I look to the north and see snow-clad Mt. Adams, and to the south, fleecy Mt. Hood —my two sentinels. To the east the sun rises over Surveyor’s Ridge and to the west it sets over Mt. Defiance. And above me either the “day-blind stars, waiting with their light,” or the visible blaze of stars in the deep and silent night sky.

Wendell Berry and Thich That Hanh know the score.

—Jude Russell
*

I read Thomas Traherne’s poem “Silence” this morning. It begins:

A quiet silent person may possess
All that is great or high in Blessedness.
The inward work is the supreme…
A man who seemeth idle to the view
Of others, may the greatest business do.

Later in the poem, he describes Adam, in the Garden, before the Fall:

The first and only work he had to do,
Was in himself to feel his bliss, to view
His sacred treasures, to admire, rejoice,
Sing praises with a sweet and heavenly voice,
See, prize, give hourly thanks within, and love,
Which is the high and only work above
Them all.

Traherne felt that, as a child, he lived in that same Paradise:

A world of innocence as then was mine,
In which the joys of Paradise did shine:
And while I was not here I was in Heaven,
Not resting one, but every, day in seven,
For ever minding with a lively sense,
The universe in all its excellence.
No other thoughts did intervene, to cloy,
Divert, extinguish, or eclipse my joy,
No other customs, new-found wants, or dreams
Invented here polluted my pure streams…

As an adult, by writing poems in which he gives thanks and praises to God, who created “the universe in all its excellence,” he could again enter the Garden of Paradise which he knew as a child:

He was an ocean of delights from Whom
The living springs and golden streams did come:
My bosom was an ocean into which
They all did run. And me they did enrich.
A vast and infinite capacity,
Did make my bosom like the Deity,
In whose mysterious and celestial mind
All ages and all worlds together shin’d,
Who tho’ He nothing said did always reign,
And in Himself Eternity contain.
The world was more in me, than I in it.
The King of Glory in my soul did sit,
And to Himself in me he always gave
All that He takes delight to see me have,
For so my spirit was an endless Sphere,
Like God Himself, and Heaven, and Earth was there.

—Thomas Traherne (1636-1674)

A quiet silent person may possess this Blessedness. It’s our birthright.

—Johnny
*

Poems from Kim are always welcome:

Pain & Grace

Far from here, pain abounds—
war, storm, crime, cruelty.
News freights that here to us.
Close to home, grace abounds—
rain, leaf, birdsong, touch.
Poetry sends this there to them.
This disjunction puzzles everyone.
Unknown beauties must be there.
And here, we have hurts in plenty.
So what is worth the telling? Let me
be the journalist of old affections.
In the tyrant’s prison, may there be
a song.

A Right to Rest

When you’re well, it’s Up and at ’em!
Rise and shine! Daylight in the swamp!
And there you stride into the storm of all
that calls you to be the hero of action and
accomplishment. You’ll earn rest when
spent at dusk, stumbling for home.
But when you’re under the weather, it’s
Take it easy…Kick back…Doze. At last,
your puritan self will let you be a slacker,
shiftless, a lazy bum. Now’s the time
for frailty, for faltering, when sickness
takes pity on your weary soul.

Covid Guest

For years you traveled in my country.
People told stories of your wanderings,
counted how many you met when they
could take off the mask of reticence.
Some shut their doors, shunned your
touch, but others took you in, hosted
your companionship, even grew intimate.
How their breath came fast as you dazzled
and left them utterly amazed.
Now you come to my house, and at last
we meet. “Don’t be a stranger,” you say,
offering your hand. And I take you in.

—Kim Stafford
*

Congratulations to Michel Deforge, who has now written more than 300 meditations in his journal, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditations in Your True Home. In our Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue what we have shared of Michel’s writings is only the tip of the iceberg. Here are some things from his June journal:

June 6, 2022 #299 Definition of Hell

I love Thây’s solution—compassion. Any place I go, I will meet men and women who have created their own hell on earth. All I can do, and need to do, to ease their suffering is bring my compassion (from love and understanding) into his or her life—mine too! I don’t have to be the “best” or be all-compassionate. I merely need to breathe (consciously), share some compassion cultivated from understanding the person before me in that moment—no history past, or future yet to be formed: simply he and me, in the now. Johnny is our example, here at TRCI; it’s repeatable.

June 23, 2022 #309 How to Listen to the Dharma

This could apply to any time I (and you) are listening to a talk, a lecture, a debate, a sermon, maybe even a discussion on wise and salient topics. I imagine, even if it’s silly, foolish, wastrel chatter I (and you) can allow the noise to wash over and pass on through. Engaging with intellect risks trapping all sorts of ideas, notions—pond scum, if you will. Wholesome talk/listening can also be reviewed later and maybe bear fruit. Listen to wisdom by letting it just soak in, without any interference or additives. Your life seeds will be better for it in the long run.

June 26, 2022 #310 Here to Love

This is a simple one. Breathe, smile, be aware, and love. I wonder how often and easily any of us can get into a mental mess by giving too much thought to Love: What it is/is not, how it “works.” Maybe, and I don’t really know from my own experience, we simply need to breathe, smile, be present to the reality of now—including the object of love (self, other, or object not self), and then choose to contemplate loving thoughts toward our object of love. I think an appropriate love will arise. (Provided the contemplation was appropriate.) Of course, another option comes to mind: Breathe, smile and just be. Just breathe and be, simply, as if in mindful meditative practice. Allow life to continue, just to observe, without judgement, what happens.

June 29, 2022 #312 None Other Than Enlightenment

All these skills and practice come together, as I continue practicing on my own, to reveal a freedom from suffering and a life of “nirvana.” It’s no special secret. If I (we) do this work, we will reap the rewards of enlightenment in all of our efforts and interactions with reality. And it all starts with deliberate breathing.

On June 30th, Michel wrote this:

Johnny and friends,

I don’t know precisely when, but I am given to believe that I will go to my first hip replacement surgery in July. I’m hoping the week following the 4th, but I have to wait and see. At the same time, TRCI is locking back down as infections of Covid rise. (Big sigh!) If I go “dark” you’ll know I went to the infirmary and didn’t have my writing tools to keep journalling. We’ll see.

I hope everyone is well and I will be back “on track” as soon as I am able.

Take care, with much love and gratitude,

Michel
*

Katie says:

While I was typing this up I was doing meditation with the Shambhala sanghas in New York and Ukraine, and one person read Thay’s poem “Please Call Me by My True Names.”

So magical this life.

Ada Limón – born 1976 – has just been named the new Poet Laureate of the United States. We need her poems today; so glad to share them.

“Right now, so often we are going numb to grief and numb to tragedy and numb to crisis,” Limón said. “Poetry is a way back in, to recognizing that we are feeling human beings. And feeling grief and feeling trauma can actually allow us to feel joy again.”

Here are a few of my favorites of her poems –

A New National Anthem

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

Burying Beetle

I like to imagine even the plants
want attention, so I weed for four
hours straight, assuring the tomatoes
feel July’s hot breath on the neck,
the Japanese maple can stretch,
the sweet potatoes, spider plants,
the Asiatic lilies can flourish in this
place we’ve dared to say we “own.”
Each nicked spindle of morning glory
or kudzu or purslane or yellow rocket
(Barbarea vulgaris, for Christ’s sake),
and I find myself missing everyone I know.
I don’t know why. First come the piles
of nutsedge and creeper and then an
ache that fills the skin like the Cercospora
blight that’s killing the blue skyrocket juniper
slowly from the inside out. Sure, I know
what it is to be lonely, but today’s special
is a physical need to be touched by someone
decent, a pulsing palm to the back. My man
is in South Africa still, and people just keep
dying even when I try to pretend they’re
not. The crown vetch and the curly dock
are almost eliminated as I survey the neatness
of my work. I don’t feel I deserve this time,
or the small plot of earth I get to mold into
someplace livable. I lost God awhile ago.
And I don’t want to pray, but I can picture
the plants deepening right now into the soil,
wanting to live, so I lie down among them,
in my ripped pink tank top, filthy and covered
in sweat, among red burying beetles and dirt
that’s been turned and turned like a problem
in the mind.
—Ada Limón

Carrying Thay Into the Future

Thay founded Plum Village Monastery in the French countryside in 1982. His first monastery in the West and his home for many years, Plum Village has been a refuge and mindfulness center for those displaced and suffering from war, to those searching for the ease of feeling at home in a peaceful community. Over the next four decades, Plum Village drew more and more practitioners while Thay went on to found 10 more monasteries and practice centers around the world.

“I can see very clearly that wherever you are, you are my continuation, and in one way or another, you are carrying me into the future,” Thay has said of those who follow the Plum Village path of mindfulness. “We, teacher and student, will continue to climb the hill of the century, offering our love, understanding, freedom, and solidity to the world.”

—Katie Radditz

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 7/10/22
2022-07-10 15:00
Daniel Pinkwater

Beloved Bibliophiles!

This Sunday, July 10th, at 3 p.m. (PDT), our theme will be Authors and Writings That Make You Happy.

Novels, stories, poems and plays that made you laugh, lifted your spirits, gave you a feeling of well-being. Which authors are most reliable for cheering you up?

Here’s the link for the Zoom gathering:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 7/7/22
2022-07-07 - 2022-08-03
Bryan Joyner

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

July 7, 2022

(Note to readers: peace, love, happiness & understanding is going to be coming out on the first Thursday of every month, instead of every other Thursday.)

I met Bryan Joyner at Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI), in Portland. He came regularly to the weekly “Arts in Prison” group that I facilitated there for a number of years, through Open Hearts Open Minds (openheartsopenminds.net). He also was an enthusiastic participant in the Music Program that Matt Insley and I started there, along with Mark Mojdehi and Patrick Seraya. The OHOM’s Music Program is still going strong, under the guidance of Nate Query, who is the bass player for the Decemberists. Bryan got out of prison in May of 202O. In cooperation with Superintendant James Hanley at CRCI, Nate, Taiyah Marshal and David Pettinger did an extensive interview with Bryan, which is on YouTube. With Bryan’s permission, I have transcribed and edited a portion of the interview, especially for our friends in prison who don’t have access to the Internet.

Interview With Bryan Joyner

Bryan Joyner. ….I like authentic music that sounds like itself. I don’t like copycatters, or people that mimic, and stuff. I stick to the originals—people that I think have good lifetime in their music, and make good music that I can relate to. I also listen to a lot of R & B, a lot of Soul Music, a lot of Seventies and Eighties. Those are my primary “go to” music to listen to. Gangsta Rap, that hardcore street stuff, kind of amplifies some of my negative anti-social behaviors that I don’t agree with anymore. So I don’t like to listen to that stuff, because that’s what it’s promoting. Whereas, R & B really makes you get in touch with that other side of yourself—it makes you really realize that love is important—more important than any of this other stuff. And that helps me with my personal point of view. So, when I’m comin’ at a rhyme, no matter what it’s about my personal point of view, I like to be calm. I want to be calm and I want to be grounded. I want to come at it understanding that people are going to listen to this; how is that gonna affect them? That’s important to me, as far as my presence, my presentation.

David Pettinger. That’s really beautiful to hear. When you talk about love and things like that—when do you find yourself looking for those moments of growth? And seeing that love can be healing? When do you look for it, and how do you reach levels of personal growth?

Bryan. Uh, pain. Pain. When you see pain, love needs to be administered. When you see suffering, when you see pain. And pain can be interpreted on the external differently than from the internal. A lot of people can deal with a lot of pain, can cope—or not necessarily cope well—with a lot of pain. But if you can recognize that someone else is in pain, then you know that love is needed in that area, for that person. It probably is just as much needed for yourself in that area, as well. Self first. So, if you see pain and then you feel it, you can empathize with it, and you can recognize it. That is an area in yourself that you need love at, too. So, I think that’s how I recognize it.

I think by healing the pain in yourself, you involuntarily give people the permission to heal themselves as well—through the example of how the process works, and trusting in the process of healing. Because healing don’t happen like a snap of a finger. Man, it doesn’t. The pain still is there even after you heal. It’s just about really accepting that you can’t change it. And once you can do that, the process can begin.

Taiyah Marshal. I think you touched on something that I think most people just walkin’ around in the world need to tap into, which is empathy—having real empathy for those who had various different experiences. It’s incredible how disconnected people can be nowadays. You have obviously gone through a lot. How have you reconnected and rounded yourself out? With writing? You say you’re not making music right now. You’re focusing on getting yourself together, which is completely understandable. How do you tap into that?

Bryan. Uh, narcissism is a big aspect of the disconnection that the world is experiencing now. Being in love with things and feelings and thoughts, versus people. And yourself. The narcissist doesn’t feel what other people feel, because they’re distracted with their own ego, and creating a version of themselves that is beyond reality. And it’s just psychological. We all suffer from it, we all deal with it to a certain extent, because it’s part of the culture to be self-serving and to be the king in my house. It’s mine. It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine. Feeling empathy for another person is something that is a natural ability. It’s like breathing. Okay? It is breathing. When we were children we had no other ability than to empathize, and then cry. The only way a child can protect themselves is through the sense of empathy, through the sense of feeling, and hearing, and sensing danger. ‘Cause there’s no other defense mechanism that a child has. They don’t have claws. They don’t have sharp teeth. They can’t run fast. They’re not that smart. Y’know? There’s no way for them to defend themselves, except preemptively through empathy. They sense danger, or they sense safety, or they sense love.

When you grow up in a world where everything is dangerous, or is perceived to be dangerous, you lose a sense of empathy and feelin’ things out, and you become more psychological—where things become labels. People become constructs to manipulate like a chess piece, like a pawn. And this is the type of behavior that is actually encouraged in our society from day one. Honestly. We’re living in a technological world where people don’t have to even see you to talk to you. Look at this! We ain’t even around each other, havin’ a whole conversation. The disconnect is part of the structure of society that we live in. So, honestly, in some way we’re ordered to be a narcissist, that dog-eat-dog mentality. “I gotta get mine, even if I gotta take it from you.” These kind of traits are encouraged.

And loving traits are presented as being weak. Like, lame. A victim, y’know. You’re a victim if you care. If you help the old lady across the street. I have always had a sense of empathy, but once my personality took over, I was disconnected as well. And being incarcerated, it was like I was in a bubble. I realized that I am only gonna be able to eat what is in this bubble. So I started reading. I started meditating. I started praying. And what happened was I opened myself up. I opened up my heart chakra by doin’ that. My heart chakra was open and it still is, to the point where now those things that I used to purposely ignore—the pain from other people, the suffering—I started to let it in my bubble. And I started to realize there’s a connection we have with everyone that is intrinsic. It’s natural. It’s the same thing as the air that we breathe. We’re all breathin’ the same air. It’s the same. When the sun hits your skin and it hits mine, we’re both warm. ‘Cause that’s what the sun does. And empathy does that. It’s like a connecting bond that’s invisible. And so, it’s easy to take for granted because we live in a material world and we praise that materialism, and it creates a sickness of self-importance, self-grandiosity, selfishness, self-centeredness—that the world revolves around me. And that is a complete disconnect from what’s actually happening, which is that we all need each other—that the love that I feel for you is the love that I actually have for myself. And that’s why I’m reflecting it off of you. So I think that empathy is very important, and what I had to do personally to tap into that was to really take a look at myself, and how I was connecting with people. And I wasn’t connecting with people. I’m a know-it-all. And my personality was in full effect all the time. It’s like an alternate ego. It is an alternate. The ego is alternate from the self. You know what I mean? Bein’ my true self at this point of time in my life…I’m 41. I’ve basically been an egomaniac for 20 of those years—tryin’ to create this version of myself that was strong enough to live in this society. I survived. It did its job, and now it’s time to go home and allow God to point me in a direction, to show me the path. Period.

Taiyah. First of all, I just want to commend you for all that self-awareness and self- growth, to be able to identify that and work on yourself is not an easy thing. You have to kill that ego. And I wish you the best on your journey.

Bryan. Thank you very much.

David. One thing I was curious about is which sources of literature did you find to be the most helpful?

Bryan. Oh, my gosh, I’m glad that you asked me that. This is somethin’ I’ll share for everyone, and this is somethin’, I’m tellin’ you bro, is gonna open you up. Check this out. One of the most inspirational and perception-altering books that I’ve ever read was My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. He also wrote a book called Ishmael. And these two books together changed my life. Like, there’s a life before you read the book, and a life after you read the book. Those two books completely messed me up. It had broke down the mental constructs I had in my mind about what this world is, and what is intended. Another book that I read that was perspective and mind-altering was A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. He has another one called The Power of Now. They’re basically the same book, but one gives you the narrative, without anything—just gives it to you raw. And the other one is coming from a perspective of someone that’s unconscious, asking questions, and then the questions being answered by Eckhart Tolle. The material is pretty much the same thing, but if you’re one of those kind of people that have questions, The Power of Now is more for you, and if you’re someone that has already started the journey A New Earth would be easier to read. So, those four books were entirely transformative for me. The last book I will give you is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. That story is about me. I can literally break down the chapters and the pages where…I’m tellin’ you, this guy is tellin’ my story, in a metaphorical way. And right now, just to compare that story, I’m at the end, in Egypt, gettin’ my ass beat by some guys who are tellin’ me that I’m a fool for bein’ out here lookin’ for a treasure. Right? And what I found was, the treasure is in me. Okay? That’s the metaphor of all that is that you already have the treasure inside of you. And that just changed the way that I look at everything. Those authors will be the people that I want to talk to personally, and just thank them for their expression in this world full of evil and hate and misery and suffering. Those are the gems that make life worth livin’ for me. And inside my little bubble, man, I just knew that there was a God. I just knew. If there were any doubts in my mind, there are none now at all. And my ego is in full effect, pushing everything away from me, only wanting what it wants, when it wants it, how I want it. And you can’t live like that and be at peace. You can’t just use people. You will never be at peace, ‘cause you gotta do the next thing to keep the manipulation goin’. You’ll never be able to rest, your soul will never rest. So bein’ in that state of constant high vigilance and constant alert, it is exhausting. It’s exhausting. Those are the books that really inspired me. Another person that inspires me is Prince. Rest in peace, The Prince. Shout out for Prince. That man was a genius! He was a genius. He had it. He knew some of the secrets to life. He knew. And I watch documentaries of him and it just blows my mind—the poise, the knowing that he has. The confidence in knowing those secrets. It just exudes from him in his aura. It’s beautiful. I hope that answers your question. (Laughs.)

David. In talking about The Alchemist, it sounds like you feel very seen in that artwork. Is that something that you try to convey to other people through your music or different forms of expression?

Bryan. Yes and no. There’s a side of me that doesn’t care what people think. I write the music that I like. But then there’s a technical side of me where it’s like: “Okay, what if somebody else listens to this?” Some of the messages that I implant in my music are personal, but I’m sayin’ it in a way where somebody else can pick it up, if they were interested. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink. And so I put water in it, but I don’t put the cup in there.

David. I definitely really respect that approach to things. You’re telling your story, there are pieces for someone that should they so see fit to find out for themselves, they can.

Bryan. Yeah. Absolutely. LOVE, as an acronym, is Letting Others Voluntarily Evolve. That’s the greatest kind of love that you can give a person is not to do it for them, but to allow them to figure it out on their own. And just be there for them when they fall down. Don’t try to prevent their experience. Like a little kid—if you don’t let them fall off their bike, they won’t grow up to buy a Lamborghini. Or a Buick. Whatever. Whichever they want to go for. But you can’t stop them from having that experience of falling off the bike because they need it in order to grow. And so, lovin’ someone sometimes is seein’ them feel pain, and empathizing with them, listening to what they have to say, being around them in a physical way, where you can put your arm around them. Not tellin’ them what to do, or doin’ it for them, or givin’ them the money that they need. It’s just really about just bein’ there, and feelin’ what they feel, and allowing them to release some of that, knowing that they connected with another person. And that’s what a narcissist will not do. They will not do that. As soon as they feel something they don’t want to feel—pheew!, they’re gone. It’s very important to feel those feelings with that person, and allow bein’ there for them to be how you love ‘em. Empathy is very important, and it’s comin’ back in style. I’m tellin’ ya! We just gotta keep on doin’ it. It’s gonna come back in style. It’s gonna be jazzy again.

Taiyah ….What was the creative process able to look like while you were in?

Bryan. ….They had the Music Program. That’s where I met Nate at. And Nate brought in his bass guitar, and they would play the tunes, and we would just make up…it would just be like freestyle, on the fly, whatever come up, however your vibe is feelin’. And, y’know, I really connected with Nate, because he’s just sincere. I mean, it is what it is, and he’s just authentic and genuine. He doesn’t say much, but when he’s talkin’ he means it. That was something that I picked up instantly. We were able, on a musical vibe, to get to know each other very fast. There’s still a lot I need to learn about him as friends, but this guy—there’s some things he ain’t got to say that I know. (Laughs.) Nate is amazing! You know what I mean? And I always respected how he found the time to volunteer and bring himself in, his vibe, y’know, his love. Bring in love. That’s basically what it was. And he was showin’ love and he was showin’ a sense of empathy, and not only feelin’ what we felt, but allowing us to feel what he felt. That was the most awesome part of it all—was the receiving of genuine love. That was how I perceived it at the time, and it really was something that I looked forward to every Monday morning, early. That was a really good experience for me being incarcerated—to have that outlet. That outlet. Outlet. Out let. In a prison, which is captive, to have an outlet makes all of the difference of the experience of being incarcerated. Having that outlet. That was the best part. So, even though I don’t do music in prison, at that point in time I was doin’ music in prison. It was happenin’. I was just as sharp, I was just as good. Maybe the content was a little lacking, because of the confinement mentality. Sometimes that can happen in prison. But all of the swag was there, the flow was there, it was all good. You run out of things to talk about sometimes, but if you’re bein’ honest, you don’t run out of things to talk about. And live instruments, for me—it’s like havin’ a conversation. And if you’re bein’ honest, you can talk about it. If you gotta make it up, and you gotta think about it—there’s a difference in that. The writing process in prison versus out of prison is completely different. It’s more restrictive in prison. It’s more limited, as far as influence and subject matter. But it’s pretty much the same as long as you’re being honest.

….Prison is a business. Okay? It’s a business. They’re not in the business of rehabilitation. They’re in the business of storage. So, to not rehabilitate somebody is a definite flip—in money. You flip that money if that person goes back out and does the same thing again. That money just got flipped. Okay. You lose money in this business if someone heals themselves. So, the promotion of healing in any kind of way, creatively or cognitively, is very important. It’s crucial, ‘cause not only does the person suffer, the community suffers as well. And we’re only as healthy as our sickest part of our community. People on the outside can point their finger and say “those people are bad,” while they steal from their job every day and get away with it. “Ah, look at those guys. He’s such and animal.” And she’s cheatin’ on her husband. Prison gives a place where people can point the finger and feel good about themselves that they’re not there, because they don’t do “those” things. But we’re all connected. So these types of programs, whether it be music, art, poetry, comedy, business planning—all of these things are healing tools and they need to be administered to prisons. ‘Cause it’s basically sick in there.

David. I really appreciate that answer….Are there more things we could be doing to push Columbia River?

Bryan. Stuff like this. Talkin’ to people that were there, gaining true insight into the mentality of the participants, broadcasting it, getting the footage and showing the community what this is and getting the community support out in any kind of way, shape or form—from any venue, any merchant, any citizen that is willing to participate and support it. Find the guys that were in the program and keep in touch with them. If they have the talent, if they have the skills, if they have the desire to better themselves, keep in touch with them. Pull them into the programs that are facilitating these type of things. Eventually, I want to get permission to come back in. And once I come back in, boy, I’m down to earth. We’re gonna make this happen. If you’re really about that, I will be able to tell by your energy, by your vibe. I’m gonna be feelin’ you, and I’m gonna understand where you’re at, where you’re comin’ from and, if there’s somethin’ there, where you’re goin’. I’m gonna be able to understand that, and I want to. A lot of the young brothers looked up to me because of my consistency—the fact that I was consistent, that I wasn’t making up stories, that it was always like this with me. I would love to participate and join the movement. For real. And I’m still part of the movement. I haven’t been back to prison since. I got myself together. I’ve been on a spiritual journey of really detaching from my past. Attachments! And freeing myself psychologically and emotionally, so that my spirit can grow.

A lot of these guys are on that journey and have no clue. They just have no insight, or anything to reflect off that that’s what they’re going through. All that they know is that they love music and when they do it they feel free. (Laughs.) That’s all that they know, so they show up. And that’s the beginning. That’s the beginning of being in connection with God. When you do the thing that you love to do, you fall into a state of prayer, a state of connection with God. Because there’s nothin’ else happenin’. The past doesn’t exist. The future is not there. You’re just locked into now—the moment of. And in that moment you are being your true self. There’s no ego there. There’s no constructs. There’s no sense of time. You ain’t worried about no bills. Nothin’ else is happening. And that is like meditation. Music can be a meditative practice.

Share with the community. Allow people to experience these individuals that have important places in our society that they’re not allowed…they’re not bein’ able to hone that skill, that inner peace, that sense of worth in themselves. And when someone is interested in what you say: “Hey, we want to give you an interview. We wanna hear what you have to say.” Even for me. I was like, “For real? You care? You wanna know? What? Me? Me? You wanna know what I think? Wow!” And to be incarcerated, and have that same type of privilege—that person will walk with their head up high. They’ll know that they have something that they’re connected to, that they can do good, that will ultimately give them a sense of self-worth, of self-importance, of value. It may be superficial, in a way, but just “in a way,”—not really. If that person is a narcissist, tryin’ to feed their ego, it will be superficial. But a person that is really trying to figure out this thing called “life,” that is like a milestone. That is like a touchdown—in a game that they were losing a hundred to zero. And to walk out of that building with at least seven points feels better than just straight getting skunked.

Taiyah. I want to take it back to you, because you’re on your spiritual journey. I want to hear what are some affirmations, or practices that you do in your day-to-day, to stay in the now, to stay in the present, and just amplify that positive energy.

Bryan. I would say: meditation. Meditation, for me, is listening—to God. It is when you let your thoughts do what they do, and don’t hold onto them. You don’t grab one, and turn it all around and look at it from every angle, try and dissect it. You just kinda let it go by. And let ‘em all go by, all of the things, all of the clutter. It comes to a point where you don’t hear it anymore. I work every day, and something that I always tell myself is that I gotta do it. I gotta do this for myself. I have to make sure that I’m okay. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I’m okay. And right now I’m understanding the dynamic of my ego versus my soul. And that my persona is not healthy. So, I’ve been praying a lot. My favorite prayer is: “Thank you, God. Thank you, God.” It’s my favorite prayer. It seems to be the simplest prayer, but it’s more complicated than that—for me. And when the things happen for me that I don’t want to happen, or that I didn’t expect to happen, or that I was tryin’ to prevent from happening, I still say: “Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you, God.” That is an affirmation for myself that has been the balancing factor in my life. And it has taken my spiritual practices at this point of time in my life and allowed them to land on something solid. Whereas, though, the void in my heart was…I was just trying to throw everything in there. I threw people in there! I threw my daughter in the void. I threw my girlfriend in the void. I was tryin’ to fill that sucker up with whatever I could get my hands on—whatever I could put in that void to not feel it. And then I realized that the only thing that will close the void is God. That’s the only thing that can fit in there and completely take it away. And that’s an affirmation. Only God can heal me. Only God can fulfill me. Only God can complete me. Only God can make me whole again. Those are affirmations that I believe in, and I say to myself, periodically throughout the day, that allow me to re-calibrate, to re-focus, to get back in accordance. Sometimes I’ll be in lapse, and don’t even know it. I’ll be complaining. I’ll be disgruntled—“Man, who do you think…? Why would they do that?”—kind of attitude. And then I gotta take a step back and say: “Whoa. Thank you, God. Just thank you for lettin’ this happen. This is a ‘you’ thing, not a ‘me’ thing.” And it allows me to let go of psychological, egotistical, narcissistic control of trying to make things what I want them to be versus what they are—and what they will be, naturally.

For example, I’m at a homeless shelter, and I’m on the bottom bunk, and this other guy needs the bottom bunk. Now, I’m six-two, two hundred and forty pounds; what the hell I look like climbing up a goddam bunk on the top? Right? But this guy needed it. And so, instead of me complaining and manipulating the situation to where I keep the bottom bunk, I just said, “You know what? Let him have it.” Y’know? “Thank you, God. Thank you God for whatever this is about. Thank you.” And I was able to let that go. But, ironically enough, I needed to get around to a couple places because I don’t have a car, and this guy was like, “I’ll take you.” (Laughs.) What a coincidink! You know what I’m sayin’? But it’s not. It’s life! It’s not a reward, it’s not special, it’s not magic—that’s the way God works. And sometimes we block our own blessings by trying to make it what we want it to be versus what it actually is.

So, writing, meditating, praying, reading are daily practices. Listening to music. I love R & B and stuff like that. If there’s somethin’ new and hot, I’m on it, I’m lookin’ for it. My day-to-day just consists of praying, meditating, and focusing on the next thing to do by writing it down. And reading the literature that I need to read to understand what I need to do next—stuff like that. It’s really simple. It’s complicated to some. They just don’t want to do it. It’s hard to stay focused on one thing too long. For me, it’s just about bein’ humble, man, just appreciating life for what it is right now. Going day by day and just be the best me I can be right now. And stayin’ in that energy as long as I can before that other energy pop up, like: “What they think they lookin’ at? Who do they think they are?” I still got that in me. I think we all do at some point in time, but for me it’s about keepin’ that guy in check. And also loving that side of myself, so that I can heal. We got a side of ourself that we really don’t show everybody, because we don’t like it. We keep it to ourselves. And after a while that water gets stagnant, and the mosquitos start coming, and it gets all infested and nasty inside of ourselves. We’re 90% water, so we have to have a constant influx and flow of energy inside of us to go out. We have to have those outlets that mean something to us, that are actually outlets. Because meditation might be an outlet to me, and to the next person it’s not. But I know that meditation is definitely healthy, that’s somethin’ I can bank on, that’s going to be 100% good for me. You can never meditate too much. Meditating, sitting in one spot, letting your thoughts go by, and tryin’ to listen to what God got to tell you. I mean, sounds legit to me, so that’s what I do. (Laughs.)

David. That’s really beautiful to hear. I really have been enjoying this conversation. I feel like there’s a lot of things that, as a society, we need to hear. And I feel a lot of this is resonant to me, like your spiritual journey. If feels very healing and good to hear—sharing all these things.

Bryan. Thank you, guys.

Nate. Bryan, I’m still here too, and, man, I really appreciate you goin’ deep on everything you have to offer. You’ve really given me a lot to think about and I really appreciate your doing this.

Bryan. Thank you, bro. I really appreciate you inviting me in. It’s been a pleasure. There was nothin’ that I said that I felt embarrassed about, or apprehensive. I just told the truth. I just told you what I know. Sometimes I felt like I was going a little bit off track, I just tried to dial it back and bring it back home.

Nate. Nah, man, you’re good.

Bryan. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you, man.

The full interview is on YouTube:

peace & love
Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous!: A Conversation With Susan Griffin 6/26/22
2022-06-26 14:00 - 16:00
A Conversation With Susan Griffin

On Sunday, June 26th, Susan Griffin was our Special Guest. She talked about the book she is currently writing, a biography of Phoebe Hearst. She read some poems about her sister.

She read from her newest book, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something.: A Writer’s Guide and talked about the writing process. This book will be available January 17, 2023. You can pre-order it now from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Out-Silence-Sound-Nothing-Something/dp/1640094105/ref=sr_1_1

From the back cover of the book:

“In an elegant but contemporary voice, award-winning author Susan Griffin breaks down the creative process step-by-step, guiding the reader through a practical course in how to begin and end a work of literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, or prose.

The distinguished author of more than twenty-two books…Susan Griffin distills daily wisdom garnered from more than five decades teaching creative writing and editing manuscripts, as well as from her own writing. This collection of brief but ultimately pithy chapters designed to help beginning writers get started also guides experienced writers through blocks and difficulties of all kinds.

Organized according to a practical timeline, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something. elucidates the process of writing from beginning to end, presenting an approach that is similar to the practice of meditation as it encourages and enlarges the mind’s intrinsic capacity for creativity. An autobiographical account, a sometimes humorous, at times moving essay called “How I Learned to Write” is threaded throughout the book.”

I read Susan Griffin’s book Woman and Nature when it came out in 1978. I was 27 years old. Although my women friends were all feminists, this book went deeper and taught me more about the history of how men had thought about and talked about women than anything I had encountered up to that time. In her book she explored the relationship between the oppression of women and the destruction of the natural world. The end of the book is a vision and a prophecy of a transformation in the way we live in and love the world and each other.

Woman and Nature changed the way I see and understand the world. Over the past more than forty years, I have returned again and again to her luminous prose in the hope of becoming a wiser and more loving person. Another personal favorite of mind is The Eros of Everyday Life.

Poet, playwright, philosopher, essayist, teacher–Susan Griffin’s books include:

Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978)
A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (1993)
The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society (1995)
Bending Home: Selected New Poems, 1967-1998 (1998)
What Her Body Thought: A Journey Into the Shadows (1999)
The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues (2001)
Wrestling With the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen (2008)

Everyone who came to the Zoom gathering enjoyed Susan’s warmth and wisdom.

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous! BLOOMSDAY! 6/16/22
2022-06-16 19:00 - 21:00
Stephen Rea as Leopold Bloom, from the film “Bloom,” directed by Sean Walsh (2003)

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

–James Joyce, Ulysses

BLOOMSDAY!

Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Thursday, June 16th, at 7 p.m. (PDT) we will celebrate together on Zoom the day in 1904 when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus wandered the streets of Dublin, while Molly Bloom entertained a visitor at home.

Everyone is welcome to bring favorite passages to read from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. We will talk about James Joyce, and about the novel and our experience of it. Here’s the link (for this event only):

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81191011051

This will be fun for those who have read Ulysses and for those who haven’t.

(For those who want to do a little homework in preparation for Thursday’s festivities, you might take a look at Mythic Worlds, Modern Words by Joseph Campbell, Stuart Gilbert’s classic study James Joyce’s Ulysses, or watch the 2003 film “Bloom,” with Stephen Rea in the role of Leopold Bloom.)

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness
Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 6/15/22
2022-06-15 - 2022-07-14
Photo by Kim Stafford

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

June 15, 2022

For long years a bird in a cage;
Now, flying along with the clouds of heaven.

(quoted by R. H. Blyth, in Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, p. 37)
*

Buddha nature
not
a gift
from
Buddha
but
from
nature.

—Alice Walker, from A Poem Traveled Down My Arm
*

Joseph Campbell quotes from Ulysses and then provides a brief commentary:

“Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.”

I mentioned this basic theme before with respect to the esthetic experience. Any object can open back to the mystery of the universe. You can take any object whatsoever—a stick or stone, a dog or a child—draw a ring around it so that it is seen as separate from everything else, and thus contemplate it in its mystery aspect—the aspect of the mystery of its being, which is the mystery of all being—and it will have there and then become a proper object of worshipful regard. So, any object can become an adequate base for meditation, since the whole mystery of man and of nature and of everything else is in any object that you want to regard. This idea, the anagogical inspiration of Joyce’s art, is what we are getting in this little moment.

—Joseph Campbell, from Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce, p. 130.
*

Katie sent this:

”Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.”

—Max Ehrmann, 1872 – 1945
*

Well, it’s a beautiful morning here. The sky is full of massive cumulonimbus. The wind pushes them at an amazing speed. On the big grass-covered hill the wind blows the tall grass in waves and swirls, which makes it possible to truly see the shape and living being of the wind & how it kisses the Earth. To be allowed to partake in the beauty of life, in the simple rite of nature & to view “life” is a gift. I know that it’s not always an easy place, this world we live in. All we can do, any of us, is to live as best we as we can & don’t pass up the small moments of peace, or the deep breaths of life’s beauty that is alive all around us. How we view life in our mind reflects in the actions of our hearts, which are the paint brushes we use to allow others to truly see who we are. It’s the actions in deeds & words & the intent in our beings that either bind us to others or pull us apart.

The rays of the sun are exploding through one of the massive clouds…such beauty…it can never belong to just one being, it belongs to us all.

—Rocky Hutchinson (5/23/22)
*

This is from Nicole Rush:

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters, by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1

I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost.
I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place. But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there.
I still fall in.
It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5

I walk down another street.

I have spent a lot of my life stuck somewhere in Chapters 1 – 4. Sometimes I really just didn’t see the hole. Perhaps I was distracted. Maybe I’m just clumsy, tripped and fell in. Or maybe it felt exciting to always be falling in and figuring a way out. Maybe it kept me from walking where I knew I should but was afraid to go.

I was in an intensely emotional and complex relationship with my ex-husband for 21 years. There were moments I saw him in the hole and willingly climbed in just so I could be with him. Other times I saw him in there and felt thankful to be on the other side, standing alone. And I left him there. And other times we fell in the hole together. Sometimes I was stuck down there hoping he’d hear me calling out, wanting to be rescued, but he couldn’t save me because I had pushed him in a different hole. He was stuck, too, calling out for me. And I pretended not to hear him. Then we both climbed out but we were on different sides of the street, walking in different directions.

The choice was always there. I suppose sometimes I close my eyes because walking inside of the dream feels easier than being present. But when my eyes are open I see that I have a choice. I see the path I am meant to walk down, even if it isn’t the one I am used to.

Today I am walking down a new street. I have a vague idea where I’m going but if I don’t make it there, I know it’ll be okay. I’m paying attention to each step I take. I’m looking out for the holes. When I see one, I know I can leap over or turn onto a new street.

Mindfulness is like spectacles for our consciousness. Sitting in stillness, welcoming where we are, wherever we are, allows us to access the clarity to witness ourselves. There’s no use in judging ourselves for being in a hole – what good does that do? It certainly doesn’t make the hole go away or help us climb out. When we see ourselves from a place of compassion we can then reach inside and touch the wisdom that is always resting there. That wisdom and awareness is what shows us when it’s time to turn the corner.

In gratitude

—Nicole Rush
*

(This is from Alice Walker’s book The Cushion in the Road) (JS):

Life Lessons: Gratitude Is My Only Prayer

July 27, 2011

Many years ago I was drubbed by a mysterious illness (later self-diagnosed as Lyme disease) that brought me to my knees. At the same time critics pilloried me: my work, it appeared, severely offended them. Moreover, my love life crashed around my feet. Still, one day, after years of being under a cloud of sickness and censor, I realized I was not only rising from my ashes, but shining. From that time to this I’ve lost the need for lengthy prayers. I have only one, but it is constant. Thank you, I say, before eating, working, moving. Loving. Thank you. It is enough.

These are other “life lessons” that have helped clear my path.

If you love doing it, it isn’t “work.”

I have written over thirty books, yet looking back I hardly remember the work it took to create them because I enjoyed writing them so much. It’s the same with everything: I can spend two hours grubbing about in my garden, dazed with pleasure and intent, and it feels like five minutes. Therefore, before I embark on any new venture, I ask myself: will the joy of doing this make me lose track of any concern for time? If the answer is yes, I proceed!

A bad mood is temporary. So is depression.

I learned this when I was much younger. I used to be depressed quite often, a chemical imbalance made intolerable by my monthly cycle. I used to want to do away with myself. Somehow I managed to keep a journal during these periods, tracking every weird turn in my emotional life. Over months—possibly years—I discerned something quite interesting: my moods and depressions had a beginning, middle and end. Aha, I thought, I need only learn to witness them and wait them out. This I began to do until, by my thirties, they were mostly gone.

To have peace of mind is to be wealthy.
(Also to know when you have enough!)

When I was much younger I thought people were made happy by the things they possessed. I also wanted things. I now have lots of things, and I enjoy them. But if they were taken away I could still be quite happy, though I might miss them. I’ve learned that things are not what make happiness, but rather a calm stability of Being and serenity of spirit. The peace I experience in my own mind is my most prized possession.

Love everyone and everything you can!
(They don’t even have to know about it.)

I used to think the most important thing about love was to receive it. Now I understand it is more important to feel it and to give it. That the good feeling we associate with love is generated by us, not by a lover of us. Their love is very nice, and I welcome it, but the feeling of actually generating love within one’s self is so exquisite it almost leaves being loved by another in the dust! My greatest joy comes from loving everything and everyone I can. And it is amazing how big this can get! Daffodils, coconuts, frogs, catamarans, indie movies, dogs, bougainvillea, tribal art, snowstorms, old people, the Alps, chickens, my various “children,” regardless of what they think of me, and so on.

When in doubt, find a nice hammock.

People who work hard often work too hard. I’ve learned to take time out and swing in one of the many hammocks I have wherever I live. From a hammock the world seems quite doable, especially if one is listening to a good audiobook and having lemonade. From my hammock I send out good wishes to all of human- and animal- and plant-kind. May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms. May peace prevail.

(This piece was written for a magazine in the Middle East.)

—Alice Walker
*

(My old friend Marc Frank sent me this poem; ruhi ruki rumi is his pen name.) (JS)

ah these words that
want to come out

who’s voice speaks
to utter out things

i hear the inner voice
write what i tell you ‘write’

i listen to the voice within
out of silence it comes in

i feel the feeling inside
sounds in the head reside

words come one after another like drops appear

take heed take warning
times are more than changing

time to hold onto God
no matter your thought

if Einstein spent the last weeks of his life mathematically wanting
to know God’s mind

why wouldn’t you
who comes & goes

ah the intrigue of your game my eye begin to see the joke of all things

—ruhi ruki rumi
*

#358- So Many Reasons to be Happy

“We have so many reasons to be happy. The earth is filled with love for us, and patience. Whenever she sees us suffering, she will protect us. With the earth as a refuge, we need not be afraid of anything, even dying. Walking mindfully on the earth, we are nourished by the trees, the bushes , the flowers, and the sunshine. Touching the earth is a very deep practice that can restore our peace and our joy.”

(from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh)

…and nourished by the creatures therein, as well. In prison, men have infrequent opportunities to experience or interact with nature. I, on the other hand, am constantly living in and relating to nature. Because it is such an integral part of me, I find that I always want to bring some experience into our discussion in the dialogue group; I am hesitant, however, because of the enforced paucity of nature in their daily lives of incarceration.

But they find a way. Five years or so ago, an inmate described an experience that got him out of a cycle of anger, depression, and repeated solitary confinement in ‘the hole.’ He was in for murder and life without parole. One day while in ‘the hole,’ he discovered a praying mantis on the floor in a corner. He was going to step on it, crush it with his shoe, but stopped when he noticed the mantis’ legs sawing away. He sat down and watched the mantis’ movements with fascination. When his lunch came, he tore off a piece of lettuce and placed it in front of the creature. The mantis devoured it. The inmate continued to feed and observe the activity of the insect—water from a plastic spoon, other bits of vegetation, bread crumbs, dead flies, etc.

Weeks passed, and months. The mantis stayed alive because of the inmate’s care. They were in ‘the hole’ together for eight months. Over those months, the inmate’s behavior changed, softened, and he realized that he wanted his life to be one of caring and not one of anger and destruction. He was released from segregation and put back into the general prison population, and eventually was approved to join our group.

He never saw the praying mantis again. His story told us that even a minute connection to nature can change a life, save a life—of an insect and of a man.

—Jude Russell
*

This is one excerpt from the many entries in Michel Deforge’s May meditation journal—inspired by a meditation in Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh:

May 8, 2022; Mother’s Day!; #281 Loving Words

This is so fitting for today. So often it is the mother (or gentle nurturer) who speaks the loving words into our lives as children. For some this didn’t, or couldn’t, happen. For others the ideals got warped somehow. BUT, we are not our past traumas! We can speak these words of love and encouragement into our own lives and the lives of others. When we catch someone doing a kind, loving, compassionate deed for any other being we can praise them privately….

Do you speak loving words into your life? Does it sound too “weird,” too touchy-feely (for a men’s prison—or other environ)? I get it. I’m not experienced at this either. Ponder the words you long to hear from your own mother (or surrogate), or father—the words rarely, if ever, spoken to/about you. Let go of feelings and recriminations, guessing why these words went unsaid, and focus on what you want to hear. Now speak those words to yourself—words of love, compassion, approval, admiration, support, encouragement, recognition of success, pick-me-ups for sadness or “failure.”

We all know the words we want and need to hear. We might even speak some to our friends, family and loved ones; they likely need this as much as any of us. Mother’s Day doesn’t have to be the only day to celebrate our own mothers—as Carl is fond of observing—we just need to celebrate the people in our lives whom we love when it occurs to us. (This may take some effort to occur more than rarely, but it can be done.)

I don’t know why I’ve delayed telling my friends that “I like you,” and give a reason why, so it’s not just patronizingly said for the sake of saying it. Yet, I do put it off. Could it be the rare chance encounters with not enough time for meaningful speech? Probably. Must we wave and scurry on our way? Always?! What happens to my life if I write a letter, or slow down and really greet a friend—looking him in the eyes and saying some loving words I genuinely mean?

I may be delayed a few seconds from an appointment I’m already tardy to attend. What if I never express my joy at seeing someone, and a tragic event occurs and the opportunity is lost? While in college Psych class, an exercise demonstrated that regrets are often easily avoided if we can overcome social fears. (We have these barriers among friends? Still?!) Will he reject, rebuff, stop liking me, get weirded out by my affection or kind words…? The internal dialogue of our old neuroses and no-longer-helpful or necessary post-trauma coping skills does not serve our better selves. I don’t know how to surpass these barriers of fear—except through love. The challenge becomes being courageous enough to be first to say, “I love you,” “I like you because…,” “You’re special to me…,” “You matter in my life…” I think the picture is clear. So…why do I still stand here wanting to speak, yet stay silent? I’m not alone in this…

—Michel Deforge
*

Dear friends,

This past week, I drove along the Columbia River all the way to Walla Walla and noticed how the rolling hills of the Gorge are green. I don’t ever remember on our way to Umatilla, these velvety brown hills ever being tinged with green. But this Spring, well almost summer, they are asparagus and sage green, and they are full of yellow and purple wild flowers.

It was so uplifting and I felt deep gratitude for the long spring rains.

We were not even gone a week, but on our return our yard looked like a tropical jungle, the paths barely passable for the giant ferns and drooping maple branches. And the rhododendrons have the biggest red flowers we have ever had in our yard.

I paused to think how important it is to have beauty, abundant nature to quiet our minds to wonder and open our hearts to fearlessness and to soften.

In the mornings since Russia invaded Ukraine, I join a Shambhala group in Ukraine for morning meditation. The sangha members in Ukraine feel supported by our ongoing presence and help; we foreign participants feel equal support in facing from afar the destruction and fear of the war. So familiar, this feeling like being together in dialogue or at a play in prison.

Yesterday, Slava, one of the hosts in Ukraine gave his daily check in on how he and his family and town are doing. His bookshelves and Buddhist altar and photos are usually in the background. Like most zoom get togethers look. But yesterday he was outside on his bicycle in the mountains. He had taken a retreat weekend away from the war, and he said summer had come at last after a cold spring! Just like Portland. He posted a photo that helps him remember his true nature, calling it our basic goodness. He wanted us to be able to meditate with a picture of Ukraine that is beautiful. From a vast hill full of yellow and pink and white wildflowers the scene swept down to a river valley and mountains jutted up on the other side. It could have been the Columbia gorge.

What ensued after meditation was a joyous discussion about how regeneration in Spring, especially the beauty of blossoms, is this instant reminder that can help us stay centered and true to ourselves and our Humanity, no matter how discouraging the news and life can be. A reminder even that it is not us against them, but a confusing, political, global state of affairs.

When we drove back home through the Gorge we got so happy thinking that in August there will be peaches again near Umatilla at Peach Beach. Hope blossoms! So here are two poems for blossoms to keep our humanity solid and our hearts open to loving life despite the sorrow it can bring:

How It Might Continue

Wherever we go, the chance for joy,
whole orchards of amazement—

one more reason to always travel
with our pockets full of exclamation marks,

so we might scatter them for others
like apple seeds.

Some will dry out, some will blow away,
but some will take root

and grow exuberant groves
filled with long thin fruits

that resemble one hand clapping—
so much enthusiasm as they flutter back and forth

that although nothing’s heard
and though nothing’s really changed,

people everywhere for years to come
will swear that the world

is ripe with applause, will fill
their own pockets with new seeds to scatter.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
*

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee
*

May we be at peace,

—Katie Radditz

peace, love, happiness & understanding 6/2/22
2022-06-02 - 2022-06-15
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

June 2, 2022

Walt on my mind…and in my heart

Today (5/31/22) is Walt Whitman’s 203rd birthday. We celebrated last Sunday with a group reading of “Song of Myself” on Zoom. It was exhilarating! The readers were Alan Benditt, Steve Cackley, Nick Eldredge Brent Gregston, Perrin Kerns, Andy Larkin, Ken Margolis, Todd Oleson, Katie Radditz, Jude Russell, Kristen Sagan, Toby Scales, Jeffrey Sher, Nancy Scharbach, Kim Stafford, Johnny Stallings, Howard Thoresen and Max Walter.

In the fourth issue of “peace, love & happiness,” we celebrated Walt Whitman. Here’s the link:

https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-walt-whitman-issue-4-9-4-15/

We just inaugurated a Friends of Walt archive on the Open Road website. There are lots of treasures! Check it out!

https://openroadpdx.com/event/friends-of-walt-an-archive/

So, I’ve been thinking about my friend Walt a lot lately. He published his first book of poems, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. It contained 12 poems, including the one he later named “Song of Myself. (In the original edition, the poems didn’t have names.) He sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote back to him:

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, 21 July, 1855

DEAR SIR–

I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “LEAVES OF GRASS.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perceptions can inspire.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R. W. EMERSON
*

Kim Stafford sent this:

Need we look further for where Whitman got his cadence than Emerson…perhaps from the essay you mentioned, “The Poet,” which Emerson must have composed, or perhaps revised, aloud, in preparation to deliver it as a lecture, oration, or operatic performance. Think of the young Whitman, after toiling on some journalistic task, encountering music like this last paragraph of Emerson’s essay:

O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

–from the essay “The Poet” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
*
During the Civil War, like our friend Ken Margolis, Walt did hospice work—giving comfort to the sick and dying. He had the first of a series of strokes in 1873, which left him partially paralyzed. His book Specimen Days was published in 1882. It’s a kind of journal that gives an account of his thoughts and experiences during the Civil War and up to the time it was published.
Walt continued to write poems and add them to Leaves of Grass. He revised it five times before he died, in 1892, at the age of 72. His friend Robert G. Ingersoll—(whose essay “Crimes Against Criminals” was featured in Issue #7 of “peace, love & happiness”: https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-newsletter-5-7-5-13/)–gave a speech at Walt Whitman’s grave. Here it is:

Address at the Funeral of Walt Whitman

Again, we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay tribute to his greatness and his worth.

I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower or greater than any of the sons of men.

He came into our generation a free, untrammeled spirit, with sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human sympathy.

One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast: “Not until the sun excludes you will I exclude you.”

His charity was as wide as the sky, and wherever there was human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whitman bent above it as the firmament bends above the earth.

He was built on a broad and splendid plan—ample, without appearing to have limitations—passing easily for a brother of mountains and seas and constellations; caring nothing for the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the shore, but giving himself freely with the recklessness of genius to winds and waves and tides; caring for nothing so long as the stars were above him. He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.

He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice; uttered a song worthy of the great Republic. No man has ever said more for the rights of humanity, more in favor of real democracy, of real justice. He neither scorned nor cringed; was neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and stars.

He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He loved the clouds; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the twilight, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at the sea when the waves burst into the whitecaps of joy. He loved the fields, the hills; he was acquainted with the trees, with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men.

He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine passion that has built every home; that divine passion that has painted every picture and given us every real work of art; that divine passion that has made the world worth living in and has given some value to human life.

He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be ashamed of that which is natural. He was not only the poet of democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was the poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all the nations of the earth.

He stretched out his hands and felt himself the equal of all kings and of all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter how high, no matter how low.

He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all things, a man, and above genius, above all the snow-capped peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man.

He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death, and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept all there is as a divine melody.

You know better than I what his life has been, but let me say one thing: Knowing as he did, what others can know and what they can not, he accepted and absorbed all theories, all creeds, all religions, and believed in none. His philosophy was a sky that embraced all clouds and accounted for all clouds. He had a philosophy and a religion of his own, broader, as he believed—and as I believe—than others. He accepted all, he understood all, and he was above all.

He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart and brain. He had nothing to conceal. Frank, candid, pure, serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered, simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be understood yet, and that for which he was condemned—his frankness, his candor—will add to the glory and greatness of his fame.

He wrote a liturgy for mankind; he wrote a great and splendid psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity—the greatest gospel that can be preached.

He was not afraid to live; not afraid to die. For many years he and Death lived near neighbors. He was always willing and ready to meet and greet this king called Death, and for many months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night; waiting for the light.

He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he looked upon the mountain tops, and when the mountains in darkness disappeared, fixed his gaze upon the stars.

In his brain were the blessed memories of the day and in his heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life.

He was not afraid; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so, hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his journey’s end.

From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore, he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages seem now like strains of music blown by the “Mystic Trumpeter” from Death’s pale realm.

Today we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss, one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human clay.

Charitable as the air and generous as Nature, he was negligent of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and should say.

And I today thank him, not only for you but for myself, for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave words that he has said of death.

He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the “dark valley of the shadow” holding Walt Whitman by the hand. Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound like trumpets to the dying.

And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man’s tomb. I loved him living, and I love him still.

—Robert G. Ingersoll, at Harleigh, Camden, New Jersey, March 30, 1892

Bibliophiles Unanimous!: Annual Group Reading of "Song of Myself" 5/29/22
2022-05-29 15:00 - 18:00
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

Beloved Bibliophiles!

On Sunday, May 29th, we celebrated Walt Whitman’s 203rd Birthday with our Annual Group Reading of “Song of Myself”!

Readers included: Alan Benditt, Steve Cackley, Nick Eldredge, Brent Gregston, Perrin Kerns, Andy Larkin, Ken Margolis, Todd Oleson, Katie Radditz, Jude Russell, Kristen Sagan, Toby Scales, Nancy Scharbach, Jeffrey Sher, Kim Stafford, Johnny Stallings, Howard Thoresen and Max Walter.

As always, reading this poem together brings readers and listeners alike into a state of Delirious Happiness and Cosmic Consciousness!

After the reading, Kim suggested that we share recommendations for books, articles, videos, et cetera, relating to Walt Whitman. So, on this website, I’m going to create a page called “Friends of Walt,” where people can share their thoughts and poems and inspirations and bibliographies. Here’s the link:

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

Friends of Walt: An Archive
2022-05-29
painting of Walt Whitman by Rick Bartow

To celebrate Walt’s 205th Birthday, Johnny Stallings performed “Song of Myself” on May 31st, in Muir Hall at Taborspace, in Portland.We read from and talked about “Song of Myself” for ¡Bibliophiles Unanimous! on Sunday,June 2nd. Here’s what Robert G. Ingersoll said at Walt Whitman’s funeral:

Robert Ingersoll’s Tribute to Walt Whitman

MY FRIENDS: Again we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay a tribute to his greatness and his worth.
I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain.
He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower or greater than any of the sons of men.
He came into our generation a free, untrammeled spirit, with sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human sympathy.
One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast: “Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.”
His charity was as wide as the sky, and wherever there was human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whitman bent above it as the firmament bends above the earth.
He was built on a broad and splendid plan—ample, without appearing to have limitations—passing easily for a brother of mountains and seas and constellations; caring nothing for the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the shore, but giving himself freely with recklessness of genius to winds and waves and tides; caring for nothing as long as the stars were above him.
He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.
He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice; uttered a song worthy of the great Republic. No man ever said more for the rights of humanity, more in favor of real democracy, of real justice.
He neither scorned nor cringed, was neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and stars.
He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He loved the clouds; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the twilight, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at the sea when the waves burst into the whitecaps of joy. He loved the fields, the hills; he was acquainted with the trees, with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men.
He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine passion that has built every home in the world; that divine passion that has painted every picture and given us every real work of art; that divine passion that has made the world worth living in and has given some value to human life.
He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be ashamed of that which is natural. He was not only the poet of democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was the Poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all the nations of the earth.
He stretched out his hand and felt himself the equal of all kings and of all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter how high, no matter how low.
He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all things, a man, and above genius, above all the snow-capped peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man, Greater than all is the true man, and he walked among his fellow-men as such.
He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death, and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept all there is of life as a divine melody.
You know better than I what his life has been, but let me say one thing. Knowing, as he did, what others can know and what they cannot, he accepted and absorbed all theories, all creeds, all religions, and believed in none.
His philosophy was a sky that embraced all clouds and accounted for all clouds. He had a philosophy and a religion of his own, broader, as he believed—and as I believe—than others. He accepted all, he understood all, and he was above all.
He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart and brain. He had nothing to conceal.
Frank, candid, pure, serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered, simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be understood yet, and that for which he was condemned—his frankness, his candor—will add to the glory and greatness of his fame.
He wrote a liturgy for mankind; he wrote a great and splendid psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity—the greatest gospel that can be preached.
He was not afraid to live, not afraid to die. For many years he and death were near neighbors. He was always willing and ready to meet and greet this king called death, and for many months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night, waiting for the light.
He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he looked upon the mountaintops, and when the mountains in darkness disappeared, he fixed his gaze upon the stars.
In his brain were the blessed memories of the day, and in his heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life.
He was not afraid; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of the day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so, hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his journey’s end.
From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore, he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages seem now like strains of music blown by the “Mystic Trumpeter” from Death’s pale realm.
Today we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss, one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human clay.
Charitable as the air and generous as Nature, he was negligent of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and should say.
And I today thank him, not only for you but for myself—for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave words that he has said of death.
He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the “dark valley of the shadow” holding Walt Whitman by the hand. Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound like trumpets to the dying.
And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man’s tomb. I loved him living, and I love him still.

—Camden, New Jersey, March 30, 1892

The origin of Friends of Walt comes from an email that Kim Stafford sent me after our annual reading of “Song of Myself” to celebrate Walt Whitman’s Birthday on May 29th, 2022. Here’s what he wrote:

Following our shining session today, would you like to invite the group to send you citations for Whitmania, to be compiled and shared with everyone: title and author of biographies, the URL for the Billy Collins talk on YouTube, Will’s source of quotation for how Emily Dickinson appreciated Whitman, and anything else. A sort of reading list for us to peruse before the next annual reading?

Just a thought…and if you reply “Good idea–why don’t you do it?” … we can collaborate. (Perrin’s looking up citations now.)

Have I ever told you the story about how my father was saved from being lynched in Arkansas in the winter of 1942 because he was reading Whitman when the mob came? We could put that in the bibliography, too.

–Kim
*

Okay, so here we go!

Starting with a poem Kim wrote today (5/30/22) about how Walt Whitman saved his dad’s life:

The story about Whitman saving my dad…which is told in the first chapter of Down in My Heart…and which Keith Scales made into a little play to perform one time at the Portland Poetry Festival for my dad, after his last reading, early August 1993.

Memorial Day: How Walt Whitman
Saved My Farther from the Mob

One Sunday afternoon in 1942, three peace warriors
walked into a little town in Arkansas to loaf by the station
and take their ease. They were strangers there, so locals
gathered, curious. “What’s that you’re writing?” said one,
grabbing the page. “Why sir, it’s a poem.” “That aint poetry—
it don’t rhyme. It’s code. And you! What’s that you’re drawing?”
“Just a sketch.” “That aint no sketch, bub—it’s a map for Hitler.”
“Get a rope!” someone cried out, and time got bright and fast.
“And you!” the hothead shouted at my father, “What’s that book?”
and snatched it, slapped it open, and began to read aloud to prove
poetry had to rhyme. But lynching’s logic faltered as his fury
trailed off in a run of wild words, and time slowed down again.
“Call the sheriff!” someone shouted, as the crowd hummed
and muttered like a hive until the sheriff came, blustered
my father and his friends into his car, slammed the door,
turned and said, “Let’s get you boys out of town.”

Failing to catch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

–Kim Stafford
*

Perrin Kerns turned me on to some gorgeous videos by Jennifer Crandall. The URL address is

whitmanalabama.com.

Alan Benditt sent this link to a video of Charlie Rose talking with Allen Ginsberg, Sharon Olds and Galway Kinnell about Walt Whitman:

https://charlierose.com/videos/20510

This is our little homemade archive. Jeffrey Sher and Kim Stafford sent a link to the University of Nebraska’s vast online Whitman Archive. You can find all kinds of treasures here:

https://whitmanarchive.org

Kim said:

Today [5/30/22] I’ve been spending some time at this Grand Central Station of Walt Whitman sources, reading his fiction and journalism, some so pedestrian it makes Leaves of Grass even more miraculous.

Today, May 31, 2022, is Walt Whitman’s 203rd birthday. Happy Birthday, Walt!!! Howard Thoresen sent a link to the wax cylinder recording that Thomas Edison made of Walt Whitman, in his old age, reading or reciting his poem “America.” Here’s what Howard said:

This one has a lot of noise on it but I find it easier to hear than the cleaned up version (maybe because the text is on the screen):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBX2L_Re5Cc

Kim’s response to Howard (5/31/22):

Thank you, Howard. If we only we had Walt at 37 reading with full verve. But all the same, amazing to hear this voice.

Johnny, we might include for the page this mysterious ad from Volvo, where lines from “Song of the Open Road” are used without attribution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42ZMi0DnMtE

Walt selling freedom, Volvo selling cars…and a little love story folded in where the writer is scruffy hero with expensive wheels. Maybe there’s a Kerouac vibe implied as well.

–Kim
*

To celebrate Walt’s birthday today (5/31/22) I want to share one of my favorite short poems of his:

BEGINNING MY STUDIES

Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

–Walt Whitman
*

Will Hornyak recommended a talk that Billy Collins gave on Whitman. Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VYnkdcDQZA

Here’s an interview I did about “Song of Myself” on Marfa Public Radio in 2017:

Kim sent this:

Need we look further for where Whitman got his cadence than Emerson…perhaps from the essay you mentioned, “The Poet,” which Emerson must have composed, or perhaps revised, aloud, in preparation to deliver it as a lecture, oration, or operatic performance. Think of the young Whitman, after toiling on some journalistic task, encountering music like this last paragraph of Emerson’s essay:

O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer. The conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world, and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdicate a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt own; and thou shalt possess that wherein others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.

–from the essay “The Poet” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walt Whitman self-published his first book of poems, Leaves of Grass, in 1855, when he was 36 years old. It contained 12 poems, including the poem now titled “Song of Myself.” (In the original edition, the poems did not have titles.) He sent a copy of the poem to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who then sent Whitman this letter:

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, 21 July, 1855

DEAR SIR–

I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “LEAVES OF GRASS.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perceptions can inspire.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R. W. EMERSON
*

Take a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
2022-05-20 - 2022-05-29
Mask of the Punu people of southern Gabon (19th-20th Century)

Browse through the 375,000 high-resolution images of public domain works from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Here’s a link:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection

You can read more about this mask here:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318667

Peace, Love & Beauty

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 5/19/22
2022-05-19 - 2022-06-01
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

May 19, 2022

The Infinite a sudden Guest
Has been assumed to be—
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?

*

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade has suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

—Emily Dickinson
*

O Taste and See

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
*

from My Wisdom

When people have a lot
they want more

When people have nothing
they will happily share it

*

Silence waits
for truth to break it

*

Calendars can weep too
They want us to have better days

*

Welcome to every minute
Feel lucky you’re still in it

*

No bird builds a wall

*

Won’t give up
our hopes
for anything!

*

Not your fault
You didn’t make the world

*

Refuse to give
mistakes
too much power

*

Babies want to help us
They laugh
for no reason

*

Pay close attention to
a drop of water
on the kitchen table

–Naomi Shihab Nye
*

Happiness

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

–Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)
*

from Reconciliation: A Prayer

II.
Oh sun, moon, stars, our other relatives peering at us from the inside of god’s house walk with us as we climb into the next century naked but for the stories we have of each other. Keep us from giving up in this land of nightmares which is also the land of miracles.

We sing our song which we’ve been promised has no beginning or end.

III.
All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.

IV.
We gather up these strands broken from the web of life. They shiver with our love, as we call them the names of our relatives and carry them to our home made of the four directions and sing:

Of the south, where we feasted and were given new clothes.

Of the west, where we gave up the best of us to the stars as food for the battle.

Of the north, where we cried because we were forsaken by our dreams.

Of the east because returned to us is the spirit of all we love.

–Joy Harjo (1951- ) (Currently Poet Laureate of the United States)
*

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

–Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
*

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

–Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)
*

The Award

Though not
A contest
Life
Is
The award
& we
Have
Won.
*

Despite the Hunger

Despite
the hunger
we cannot
possess
more
than
this:
Peace
in a garden
of
our own.

–Alice Walker (1944- )

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 5/15/22
2022-05-15 - 2022-06-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

May 15, 2022

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he….

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death….

All truths wait in all things….

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars…
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

—from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
*

Albrecht Dürer’s painting reminds me of Walt Whitman’s poem. Both were born in May—Dürer on May 21st, 1471, Walt on May 31st, 1819. At the end of May, I like to get together with friends and read Song of Myself.

Meditation and mindfulness are important to me on my life journey. They help me to see and appreciate the miraculous nature of our human life on Earth. Walt’s poem has also been a great help to me. I’ve carried it with me since I was 18. It reminds me that my self is as big as the world, without beginning or end. It is the wisest and most exuberant utterance to come out of America. Maybe the world.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Timely Thoughts

People talk of time,
Speak of time with wonder—
But what is time,
Why all the thunder?

Where’s the lightning
The brilliant flash of proof?
Tangible time,
Intangible truth!

This talk creates storms,
And brings nightmares to life;
Nightmares I say,
And terrible strife.

We do not need time,
It is time that needs us.
Wait, what is time—
And why all the fuss?

—Joshua Barnes © 2022
*

Jude and Michel both wrote in response to Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditation “Long Live Impermanence.” (JS)

#273 Long Live Impermanence!

“If you suffer, it’s not because things are impermanent. It’s because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don’t suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away. If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving, and wise.

Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Instead of complaining, we should say, ‘Long live impermanence!’ Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.”

—from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh

My dad had a conflicted relationship with impermanence/permanence. Here are two stories that show that conflict:

He was a doctor and had witnessed many deaths in his medical career. His many patients loved him, and he always showed care and great concern for them. When it came to his own life and death, he was very clear—adamant, even: “If found unconscious, do not resuscitate!” To people visiting him in his late 80s, he had a small plate with slips of paper with the note printed on it. He would offer the plate to friends as if offering a plate of Oreos. “Here, take one,” he’d say, as they walked in the door.

He wrote his own obituary, professing no big deal that he’d died. Closing statement: “He’s dead. There’s no more Ed!” You get the picture.

We three daughters knew his wishes, so when his health was failing and he’d experienced a few hospital stays, we were in accord as to what to do. On his return from one hospital bout, in his very weakened condition, my sisters assigned me to talk to him about his choices. I knelt beside him, tears streaming down my cheeks, held his hand and explained, “Dad, we know your wishes, and we’ll honor that. You can choose to refuse to eat, if you believe it’s time. We can’t withhold food from you, but you can choose not to eat. Or you can choose not to drink water, but we’ve been told that that is a very painful way to do this. So you can do this, refuse to eat, if you want to—we won’t force you, you know that.” He looked at me a little sweetly puzzled and bewildered, and said, “But I like to eat.” At which we all burst out laughing, and I said, “Well, then let’s make you a bacon sandwich!”

The second story is more in keeping with his credo of impermanence.

A couple years after our mom died, Dad reignited a long-lost love story with a high school sweetie, Ginnie. Ginnie’s husband had died also, and she and Dad started exchanging flurries of letters between Vancouver, Wa. and Loudonville, Ohio. He told us he wanted Ginnie to come to Washington so they could get married. All he could talk about was Ginnie and her sweet brown eyes and soft brown hair. (We reminded him that she might look a little different at 90 yrs old than at 17.) To test the waters, we all made a trip to Ohio and reunited the two of them for a sweet, five day visit. We returned to the Pacific Northwest and they kept up the flurry of lovey letter writing.

We noticed at some point that Ginnie hadn’t been writing anymore. No letters for several months, so I called her caregiver in Loudonville, and she told me, chagrined that she’d forgotten to let us know, that Ginnie had died! Oh no! How are we going to break the news to Dad?!?! So again, I knelt down beside his reading chair and said, “Dad, I have some very sad news to tell you. I’m so sorry…but we just learned that Ginnie—your Ginnie has died.” Dad let the news sink in, then cocked his head and said, “Well… she was old.”

Impermanence acknowledged.

—Jude Russell
*

April 26, 2022

Wisdom rests here. How we face, accept and adapt to impermanence will play out in our suffering. Allow me to explain. (Read Thây’s writing first!) When I set up an ideal (not reality, but an interpretation of how I expect reality to be) and reality doesn’t fulfill my “ideal,” then I suffer—get upset or anxious, etc. When I can just exist in this moment as it is with no expectations, then I can be present, loving, compassionate and open to all the opportunities the now presents. I have freedom to flow with the reality as it is, instead of fighting with it for what I want it to be, but can’t have. Doing this I become a petulant selfish child demanding my way, attempting to force reality to fit in my box.

Sadly, it never works like this. We’ve all tried. I have never gotten this to resolve positively; only as more suffering in now, and later on too! Impermanence is the hero of my story of suffering. All I need to do for the thing I dislike, or wish were different, is wait. I don’t have to attach, judge, work to change anything; all I need is to accept what is. Shortly all will shift, and over time things will change. It may not always be my idea of better, but it will be different. If I accept, I avoid suffering. (Acceptance does not include grasping or holding on tightly—hold with open hands.) If I attempt to control, grasp, hold, define, judge, change—then I get suffering. Long live impermanence!

Here’s another passage from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh, and Michel’s meditation on it. (JS)

#267 How Strange

“At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the Bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, ‘How strange! All beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, to be free, yet they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.’ He saw that, day and night, we’re seeking what is already there within us.”

April 14, 2022

How strange, indeed! That we should spend (waste even) an entire lifetime in search of that which is already within us. We have only to awaken to what already is. Somehow that is the challenge/trial of our individual quests; to come to an end of self and a realization that what we seek is and has always been within us all along. Instead, many run around aimlessly for years and decades and lifetimes (multiples for some), looking to find our relief in something/someone external. Some seek money, fame, beauty, youth, knowledge, possessions, status, mates (trophies?), glory, progeny, legacy, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, anything to excess.

Can I (you-we) stop this endless running for just a moment, please? Look at the man/woman in the mirror. Is anything external satisfying the “itch” for which we quest to resolve? No?! Face the man/woman in the mirror; get to know him/her; learn to love, accept, and express compassion for him/her. And if I’m wrong (I doubt it on this one occasion) what has been lost? Nothing! You’ve only spent some time learning to come home to your true home—your true self. And if I’m right (since I’m only restating wisdom of wiser folks) you’ve started to heal and come home. Welcome home!

—Michel Deforge
*

Desert Song School

In this tattered paradise we left them—these
acres of muddy reed where the maze of ditch
and dike lets every wing and cry be sovereign—
when dawn starts the chant by sweet cacophony
of bittern, heron, crane and teal through mist
in harmony oblique, a mozart fledgling nested
in thistledown must mutter her first yearning
proclamation, her aria profundo, shrill or secret
to split silence be she egret, avocet, stilt or tern,
ibis, shoveler, shearling, pelican or snipe
to dwell inside a symphony, to try her tune
before she learns to fly or feed or seek a mate,
her one and only way with song, brief life cry
where waters glitter for the rising sun.

—Kim Stafford
*

Small Kindnesses

Last week I thought about my mother on Mother’s Day and on her birthday, Friday, May 13. Sometimes these anniversaries fall on the same day. I have always liked the pause of remembering my mother and being mindful of how much of her very cells I carry with me. She died from kidney failure when I was in my early 20’s, so this year I realized I have had 50 years of looking back on my mother’s kindness and my short time with her. I hope you all enjoyed thinking of your mom and loving-kindness.

Mother’s Day began as a holiday to mark and value peace and kindness toward all persons. Julia Ward Howe made a plea for no more sending our sons to wars. Mother’s Day had a lot of that meaning for us this year.

Kindness is something we all value. But sometimes we take it for granted. Especially small kindnesses. A couple of weeks ago, I was taking care of my grandsons. Sylvan, who is nine years old, is homeschooling. He had a zoom class on African history and culture that he attended that day. There was a story about the most wealthy King in Africa, pre-colonization. The King was especially known and loved for his generosity and kindness. The class teacher asked the kids if they could tell about someone who had been generous and kind to them recently. Or could they tell about something they had done for someone else out of kindness? The children, who had had all kinds of things to say earlier in class, made no comments. None of the kids had a response! The teacher even told of some small kindness done for her to prompt them, but nooo. I talked with Sylvan afterward and I realized as a youngster he takes things for granted that adults do for him, when he’s hungry he gets fed or helps fix the food, or if he needs a ride his parents take him. And when he is nice to someone there’s always a good reason for working things out. It made me realize that kindness is a concept. Children are naturally living in the moment. And it’s our consciousness that helps us be kind in our actions and aware of kindness done toward us. This consciousness helps open our hearts with mindfulness.

My friend Jennifer, referring to the bumper sticker “Practice random acts of kindness,” said that it’s a gift when we intentionally do something for a person to make life easier.

Here is a poem to prompt us to be aware of kindness and how it makes us feel:

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

—Danusha Lameris, from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection

Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection is an anthology that includes poems by Ross Gay, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye and many others. The poems urge us in these polarized times to “move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days.”

Wishing you and the world, Peace and Kindness

—Katie Radditz

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 5/8/22
2022-05-08 15:00 - 17:00
Beloved Bibliophiles! This Sunday, May 8th, at 3 pm (PDT), our theme is What Shaped Your Worldview (Including Books)?

How do you experience and understand the world? Your world? What’s important to you?What do you love? What’s going on here? What made you you? Which books changed the way you see?

Here’s the link for the Zoom gathering:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 5/5/22
2022-05-05 - 2022-05-18
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

May 5, 2022

Every two weeks, I put together another issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding.” Sometimes, a day or two in advance, I have no idea what will be in it. Sometimes I find out by making a beginning.

Joshua Barnes, Alex Tretbar and Nick Eldredge recently sent me some things they have written, so we’ll start there. Going forward, I’d like to invite all our friends, inside prison and out, to send poems and short prose and essays you’ve written, or favorite writings by others (famous or obscure) which you feel might uplift, inspire or give delight.

Okay, here we go!:

A Question

A question to the listener of songs;
“Have you ever heard a blackbird sing?”
For surely there’s the finest of bards
Of those on feet & those on wing.

Flitting to and fro they speak
In musical tongues that seldom are heard,
Teaching to any with the patience to listen
To creatures as simple as warbling birds.

Surely you know of the birds I speak of,
For their songs are known far & wide
& are talked about in the oldest of circles
Crossing over each boundary’s side.

Oh, how I’ve learned from their forgotten ways,
Being under their wings & watchful eyes.
I wish my edification wasn’t so lonely,
That others were keen to learn from the wise.

I’d like to ask from where your tutelage came,
(not meaning to insult with my circling jests),
And where you learned of the songs you sing,
If not from out of a blackbird’s chest.

Maybe listeners, you can teach me a song
Of forgotten peals & tinkling bells,
For I’ve come to feel we both have drunk
From a similar source but different wells.

—© Joshua Barnes, 2022

Some unfinished thoughts I had:

Flickering

The flickering flame brings many questions to mind. Do we live in a world of darkness and shadows, watching the light flicker in from the outside? Or do we live in a world of light, where the darkness is a thing that intrudes.

Maybe there’s a happy medium, or maybe the answer is neither & is something altogether different… Maybe there is no answer.

Each thought in my head flickers like a flame, dancing around, eluding me at every juncture. It’s ironic, the flames hide in the shadows of my mind, & although they shine I am left in darkness.

Even so, it could be I’m not meant to spy the campfires of life, but from a distance. Maybe the only way of knowing is knowing… Maybe we don’t need to know at all.

I once asked someone these questions & found only another shadow & a mere flickering from them.

The questions are only stepping stones across the river, if seen as such… They can be either the path, or the obstruction disrupting the stream. They can be anything. To me, the darkness serves to cloak & veil & make you grow.

& though it leaves you stumbling after the light in unhappy circles, wondering if everything is an illusion, it still leaves you wondering.

The wonder of wonders leaves me wondering still.

—Joshua Barnes
*

Akrasia (the Greek word for “incontinence”) is the condition in which while knowing what it would be best to do, one does something else. How can such a state exist? It’s tempting to say that foolishness is inherently human, but sometimes even simpler-minded animals choose wrongly when they know better.

The salient question is why, and the answer is that conscious, knowing missteps are unavoidable—and often beautiful. I could plant a flower in the dark soil of my garden, or I could do so in the barren dust of a desert, where its blue petals will die sooner but glow brighter.

A blue little flower is nodding, standing under
my understanding of the wind. Like a dream,
death always means more than it means. Fact:
if you scream loud enough into my hearing
aid, the drum will begin to itch. How to scratch
what’s out of reach, like a bone, soul or sky?
I, too, have seen peace in the eyes
of a canary staring into the sun
forever, the film of its blind pupils
developing like a backwards Polaroid.
I think of all the disincarnations
war begets, how I have looked into the eddies
at the base of folly’s wall & found there
the white surf of desperation, mine.
Prima ballerina, seamstress, comedienne—
I have died for you as many times
as there are orange street lights in this world,
and no matter how few suffixes survive
the coming punctuations, the pall…
I’ll look down the terrible length of the wall
and choose neither left nor right.
Knee-high is sky-high. Listen:
the blue little flower is screaming
so loudly my dream begins to itch,
and death alone survives the fall
through feathers.

(for Manon)

—Alex Tretbar, from Free Spirit, No. 14, April 2022
*

the rumor

there’s a curious rumor out there
about an ocean of living energy
an ocean that is endlessly expanding
exploring every possibility
evolving into a fuller
more complex
more realized expression
of its infinitely curious universal self

the rumor suggests this ocean
is somehow the source and the substance
of every single thing and all of us

that every aspect of our universe
what we know or believe we know
or cannot yet imagine
even the unfolding mystery
of who we are and may become
rises from this very ocean
like fog
like mist
like the wind-blown spray
that crowns a breaking wave

and, further, that every single thing and all of us
will, in our time, return to this ocean
like rain
like rivers
like gently melting snow

and finally
that the currents and tides of this ocean
are a weave of perpetual change and permanent balance
currents and tides that carry us all
deeper and deeper
into the mystery this ocean remains
the possibilities this ocean contains
into the expanding consciousness and simple serenity
this ocean will always maintain

so far this evolving universal ocean
that is every thing and all of us
is only a rumor
but on a casual walk
if you happen to catch a flower
from just the right angle
glowing in the electric embrace of the sun
in that blink of a moment
the rumor can feel
completely real

—Nick Eldredge

How to Be an Old Man of Some Scant Worth

Mistrust your certainties. Interrogate the obvious.
When you think you have the answer, be still.
Count your regrets, and let them teach you.
Listen to women, especially what they don’t say.
Sacrifice achievement to be fresh in thought.
Be the curious fool, the one who bows low
while attending to minor treasures in time.
Read the sky, and study neglected things
for clues to what you have missed by being
busy with the lordly agenda of a man.
Show children it’s possible: old and happy.
Cherish the fragile, the brief, the beautiful.
Give all you have to be ready to be gone.

—Kim Stafford
*

earth the door Orpheus goes through

into the twining tree roots sent down for water
joined by hypha searching moisture and minerals
in the underground night with myzhorrium that link
tree and nematode anchoring the cacophony of underworld life
feeding giant trunks reaching upward to branches where
in cresting light chlorophyll sparks its own green drive

Ghost River

Red patterns run
through sand and rock
thin lines etch a once fluid life,
opening as a flower,
tendrils flow outward,
branching, reaching
under cacti
these tracings
so fragile
become smaller,
dissipate into desert dust.

Sand trickles
as stream,
waves move in rock,
the sound
of water fills our mind,
calls out,
first as living river
now as image,
its meanderings
evoking
a vanished delta.

A rose appears in the desert,
petals cover the ground.

Memory and being
braided into a shimmering presence,
remember the water,
the water, remember.

—Deborah Buchanan
*

Ukraine

It’s 2022, and I’m frightened.
The bottom has fallen out of our agreement with God.
There is no bottom. We’ve pulled the plug.

From deep within, some remember the code.
Before thought, before prayer. It comes with the first cry.

—Mark Alter
*

my sangha
all people, plants, animals,
clouds, stones, rivers,
imaginings

amateur dilettante

an amateur is a lover
a dilettante takes delight in things
i plead guilty

—Johnny Stallings

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 4/24/22
2022-04-24 15:00 - 17:00
Keith Scales

Sunday, April 24th, Bibliophiles Unanimous! will be a SPECIAL EVENT!

We will celebrate William Shakespeare’s Birthday with legendary actor, director, writer & scholar Keith Scales giving a reading: OF STRANGE SHADOWS: THE MYSTERIES OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS. The Zoom gathering starts at 3 pm (PDT). Here’s the link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

DON’T MISS THIS!

peace & love

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/21/22
2022-04-21 - 2022-05-04
Aaron O’Hara as Bottom & James Stewart (Jasmine Marie Rose) as Titania
Donkey head by Nancy Scharbach.

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 7, 2022

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM IN PRISON

The Open Road also has some VERY EXCITING NEWS!!! “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison,” a film by Bushra Azzouz, will have its World Premiere on Sunday, August 7th, at 6 p.m., at the Cinema 21 movie theater in Portland, Oregon. Click on this link to watch the trailer and buy your tickets!:

https://www.cinema21.com/movie/a-midsummer-nights-dream-in-prison

April is of course National Poetry Month (https://poets.org/national-poetry-month), and around the 23rd of the month the Open Road likes to celebrate WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-newsletter-4-23-4-29/).

(WARNING!: this BARD’S BIRTHDAY ISSUE of peace, love, happiness & understanding is chock full o’ links! Endless hours of fun for the whole family!)

On April 24th, for our Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering, legendary actor-director-writer-scholar KEITH SCALES gave a reading: OF STRANGE SHADOWS: THE MYSTERIES OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS. A lively discussion ensued.

In July of 2006, I started a weekly Dialogue Group at Two Rivers prison, in Umatilla, Oregon—“The Stories We Tell Ourselves: How Our Thinking Shapes Our Lives.” I would leave the prison feeling exhilarated, with a sense that what we were doing together was profound, even sacred. After two years, one of the men who was serving a life sentence asked me if I would do a play with them. In 2008, we did “Hamlet.” It was the first time that inmates in an Oregon prison had performed a play by Shakespeare.

Two years later, we did “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Nancy Scharbach borrowed costumes from Portland Opera, and made the props, including a magnificent ass head for Bottom. Our dear friend Bushra Azzouz had the idea of making a documentary film about the project. She was given permission to bring a film crew to the prison eight times. She filmed interviews with each of the actors, group dialogues on subjects like “Love” and “Dreams,” as well as rehearsals and public performances.

Sadly, Bushra passed away three years ago, on June 13, 2019. Before she died, she assembled a team of people to make sure the film would get finished, including Enie Vaisburd, who is the Supervising Editor. The editing of the film is now finished. After getting sound and color correction, it will be ready to be released.

Many people contributed financially and in other ways to the film. A special thank you goes to Ronni Lacroute, who gave us a very generous donation, which has allowed us to finish the film. And, as always, a big big thank you to Jerry, Donna, Marsha, Chris and Jordon Smith, without whom none of the prison dialogues or plays would have ever happened.

The Portland Premiere of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison” will be a glorious event! Lovers of Bushra will be there in abundance—her husband Andy Larkin, members of her extended family from all over the globe, her close friends, her film students, members of the Portland film community, people who came to see the play, and of course actors who were in the play and who are in the film, along with their loved ones. We will enjoy two great works of Art—one by William Shakespeare and one by Bushra Azzouz. Not to be missed!

For Nancy and me, doing the Shakespeare plays in prison has been one of the richest experiences in our lives. We did “Hamlet” in 2008, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2010, followed by “Twelfth Night,” “Twelve Angry Men” (not by Shakespeare), “King Lear” and “A Winter’s Tale.” We did all this under the aegis of our nonprofit organization, Open Hearts Open Minds (http://openheartsopenminds.net).

In 2015, I decided that I would just be going out to the Umatilla prison once a month, instead of once a week. (It’s a six-hour drive, round trip.) I thought that would be the end of the theater projects at Two Rivers prison. To my surprise, my decision caused Open Hearts Open Minds to grow. Friends stepped forward to become prison volunteers and to keep the Dialogue Group going on a weekly basis. Deborah Buchanan, Bill Faricy, Jude Russell, Dick Willis, Kristen Sagan, Nancy Scharbach, Katie Radditz and Bushra Azzouz kept that program going. Carla Grant and Don Kern started a theater program at the women’s prison in Wilsonville, Coffee Creek. We started an Arts Program and a Music Program at Columbia River Prison in Portland. In 2015, I co-directed a production of “Hamlet” with Anna Crandall, Patrick Walsh, Victoria Spencer and Todd Oleson. Anna, Patrick and Victoria went on to direct “Metamorphoses” by Mary Zimmerman and “The Tempest” by Shakespeare. Todd Oleson directed “A Christmas Carol.” Jake Merriman is now in charge of the Theatre Program at Two Rivers prison. He has, with some collaborators, directed “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar.”

In July of 2019, I stepped down as Executive Director of Open Hearts Open Minds. Carla Grant took the helm. In September of 2019, The Open Road (https://openroadpdx.com) adventure began.

You might be surprised to learn that there is such a thing as a Shakespeare in Prisons Conference. The Bard himself might be astonished by this, by the number of books that have been written about him and the frequency with which his plays are performed all over the world—400 years after his death. Plays are transitory things. Evidence suggests that he hoped for immortality as a poet, but the idea of being a famous playwright could have seemed as far-fetched as becoming a famous wheelwright or shipwright.

Nikos Kazantakis, author of Zorba the Greek, travelled to England and wrote a book about his impressions. In the long chapter on Shakespeare, he says:

An infinite spirit, from the depths of hell to the summit of Paradise. If the whole of humanity was to send a single representative to speak for its rights before God, it would send him. He is also the only one who could represent our planet at some giant interplanetary conference. No one ever used human speech with such power and at the same time such sweetness as Shakespeare, with such harshness and at the same time such melody and so magical an aura.

–from England: A travel journal by Nikos Kazantzakis, p. 261

When I directed my first play in prison, I knew of one other person who had done that—Curt Tofteland. Curt was Artistic Director of Kentucky Shakespeare. I knew of him from the film “Shakespeare Behind Bars” (https://www.kanopy.com/en/multcolib/video/268952), a documentary film about a production of “The Tempest” that he directed at Luther Luckett prison in Kentucky. I had gone out to see his production of “Measure for Measure,” and later Nancy and I had the good fortune to see the last performance of “Julius Caesar”—the last play he directed there. After the show, in the prison, there was a giant Love-In. I was an emotional wreck at the end of that. It was clear that all the actors loved him SO MUCH, and that he loved them.

Curt lives in Michigan now, and is as busy as ever with his nonprofit organization, Shakespeare Behind Bars (https://shakespearebehindbars.org). Curt co-founded the Shakespeare in Prisons Conferences and the Shakespeare in Prisons Network in 20012, along with Scott Jackson and Dr. Peter Holland of the University of Notre Dame (https://shakespeare.nd.edu/service/shakespeare-in-prisons/). Here’s a link to one of Curt’s powerful TEDx talks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBMcB6kboLA&t=207s

By doing programs in Oregon prisons, I’ve met many wonderful people who live, or used to live in prison, and made many friends for life. Over these past fifteen years, I’ve also met a lot of beautiful people who, like Curt Tofteland, have spent a lot of time doing programs with women and men in prison, here and around the world—including everyone who has volunteered with Open Hearts Open Minds, and Lavon Starr-Meyers, who supervised our programs at Two Rivers prison. I’d like to introduce you to a few far flung members of my prison family: Zeina Daccache, Ashley Lucas, Lesley Currier, Alokananda Roy and Stratis Panourios. (There are more, but this is probably enough for now.)

In 2012, when we were rehearsing “Twelve Angry Men” at Two Rivers prison, Bushra said she had heard about a film called “12 Angry Lebanese.” I ordered a DVD of the film from CATHARSIS—Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy (http://www.catharsislcdt.org & https://www.facebook.com/search/top) and watched it. Zeina Daccache had directed a production of “12 Angry Men” at Roumieh prison, and made a fantastic documentary film about it. I invited her to come see our production in Oregon. She did. We became great friends. She’s made more films since then. To learn more about this amazing woman and the work she has done, here is a link to a TED talk she gave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf5akVvHhx4

I met Ashley Lucas at the first Shakespeare in Prisons Conference, at the University of Notre Dame. She was Director of Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), affiliated with the University of Michigan—the largest Prison Arts organization on Planet Earth. When she was doing research for her book Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration, she came to see our production of “The Winter’s Tale,” and interviewed the actors on the day after the final performance. In the first chapter of her book, she wrote at length about the love which was so much in evidence on the closing night of the play. In a previous issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding” I wrote about Ashley and her book

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-9-3-20/).

I was on a panel with Lesley Currier at the first Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in 2013. She is Artistic Director of Marin Shakespeare Company. At San Quentin prison, she and her company have produced many many Shakespeare plays, and original “devised” theatre performances, based on themes from the plays. Here’s a link to Kimani’s “Parallel Play Piece” from September 7, 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWgZNwLuks0

The Marin Shakespeare Company has an extensive archive of performances from San Quentin on their website (https://www.marinshakespeare.org).

At the third Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in San Diego in 2018, I had the extreme good fortune to get a darshan from the Goddess Saraswati, who has incarnated in the form of Alokananda Roy. She has produced dance-theatre productions in prisons in India. The performers were able to get out of prison to take their shows on tour to theaters in cities around India. Here’s a link to the moving story of her “Love Therapy”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OspzzO7gAiw&t=1186s

Had enough links yet? Wait! There’s one more! Early last year the fourth Shakespeare in Prisons Conference hosted Stratis Panourios, from Athens. Here’s a link to a TED talk by him, which eloquently tells the story of his experience directing Shakespeare’s “Tempest” in a prison in Greece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zMZaUUW_Xs&t=91s

I want to close this BARD’S BIRTHDAY ISSUE of “peace, love, happiness & understanding” with a few notes about books and films about Shakespeare and his plays.

My all-time favorite book about Shakespeare is Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being by Ted Hughes. It’s utterly unlike all the thousands of other books about William Shakespeare. He explores the mythic dimension of Shakespeare’s life and art. It’s the best account I know of Shakespeare’s inner life. I’ve read and re-read it many times. When I get to the end, I start at the beginning again.

Some other favorites include Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom. A great book about “Macbeth” is Garry Wills’ Witches and Jesuits. James Shapiro’s books are excellent: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, and Shakespeare in a Divided America. For theater makers, Michael Pennington’s “User’s Guides” to “Hamlet,” “Twelfth Night” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are indispensable. His book Sweet William: Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare is a treasure trove for actors and directors.

As for films, Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 film “Ran,” based on “King Lear,” is the all-time masterpiece. He might have started a trend toward much better film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 “Much Ado About Nothing” is a sparkling example. Baz Luhrmann’s imaginative “Romeo + Juliet,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes in the title roles, is highly entertaining. Those who prefer a more traditional staging may prefer Franco Zeffirelli’s gorgeous 1968 film, with Olivia Hussey as Juliet. I had the good fortune to see Adrian Lester play the part of Hamlet in Peter Brook’s production. Best Hamlet ever (according to me)! The play was filmed, and is available on DVD, but the live performance is so vivid in my imagination, that I find the film performance disappointing by comparison. Still, it might be the most brilliant Hamlet performance on film. Mark Rylance played the Duke in the Shakespeare’s Globe production of “Measure for Measure.” If you are intrepid, you can find it on DVD.

Well, that’s about it for now.

Happy Birthday, Will!

Getting to see your plays and read your plays and direct them and play some of the astonishing characters you created, including Hamlet, Lear, Edgar, Feste, Ophelia, Cordelia, and two of the three Weird Sisters, has greatly enriched my life. In closing, let’s imagine that we are the Singer and our Beloved Bard is the object of our song:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising)
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

peace, love & poetry

Johnny

Meditation & Mindfulness 4/15/22
2022-04-15 - 2022-05-14
Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

April 15, 2022

As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills

—Gary Snyder
*

Meditation for Ukraine

When the war in Ukraine began, we couldn’t believe it. Then we had to, as an avalanche of headlines, numbers, and film clips came at us from all directions. The old ritual of violence had begun again so soon, so fierce, so inexplicable. All I could do, every morning, was to walk before dawn, then sit alone, ponder, and write. The poems in this book arose in the first 30 days for the fighting, as I tried to look at the obscene events in Russia and Ukraine from oblique angles—big picture, close encounter, root cause, and imagined outcome.

We have been helped in this time by a Zoom group sponsored by Shambhala Online, which each day of the war has convened a hundred or so from around the world for the practice of tonglen meditation. Our custom has included Buddhists in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Holland, Poland, India, Japan, Ukraine, and beyond. We sit in silence for many long breaths, working to inhale suffering and grief, then exhale, as we can, compassion from the heart open wide. Following this practice, we ask Iryna and Sasha in Kyiv, Oleg in Odessa, Andriy in Lviv, and others inside the war how it is for them—days, nights, times of spring sun, and of darkness. “Now I have no fear, or no hope. I have only this time, today.” “I don’t watch the news, instead I go to the subway and see how little families each make a nest of their belongings.” “Humility comes to the front of your life. You see how artificial was life before.”

—from the preface to Sunflower Seeds: Poems for Ukraine (www.lulu.com)

I have explored the “tonglen” practice of meditation in a poem:

Trees Send Oxygen to Weary Citizens

Some Buddhists sit in silence to inhale sorrow,
grief, fear, and all the cloudy darkness of strife
into the infinite open heart, and there transform it
to an exhalation of light, of compassion, a new
chance for all sentient beings to be at peace. In
practice, in fact, how can this miracle be understood?
The last breath of every soldier flies on the wind
over the rooftops of generals and their commanders
faster, more direct than roads or other human tricks
to far Siberia where in ravines and all along ridges
horizon by horizon, valley by valley, peak by peak
the waiting arms of pine, spruce, larch, and fir sip deep
into their green needle tangle a feast of human exhalation
to seethe, turn, and return pure oxygen for wind to freight
around the world, passing all others, to the battlefield
where a girl wears her father’s coat, a boy says his
mother’s name with breath made sacred by this war.

—Kim Stafford
*

If you would like to participate in daily meditations with people in Ukraine at 8 a.m. (PDT), here’s the link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83817903514

*

Jude responds to meditation #11 from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh:

#11 Aimlessness

Buddhist teaching of aimlessness instructs us not to set an object or goal in front of us and run after it, believing that happiness is impossible unless and until we get it. We must do as the flower does: we must stop reaching for something. The flower knows it contains everything within it and doesn’t try to become something else.

This is another instance of word nuances: ‘goal’ and ‘objective’ have negative connotations in this case. They imply reaching for something, usually a material something, not being satisfied with life as is.

But what about the desire, the deep and intense desire, and need, to know and understand others not like you? The deeply felt purpose imbedded in that desire. The belief that knowing and understanding—connection— erases fear and mistrust and must lead to love. What if you call that a goal? Does that make it wrong? In my intense and life changing moment (still ongoing) of illumination in the mid 90s, I knew I must seek understanding of those not like me: I found a deep and long friendship with Skosh who had AIDS; I sat with him when he died. I taught at Jefferson High School with its 80-90% Black student body (and took kids to prom and planted gardens with parents); went on five Habitat for Humanity builds to Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, Oklahoma, etc; mentored rough and tough teenagers for, now decades (and went to three Metallica concerts!). I befriended an Indian woman and her chaotic family (and sat with her daughter while she went through drug withdrawal) for sixteen years; worked in a family homeless shelter for three years; tutored and ‘adopted’ Hispanic adults (and made 200 tortillas with Maria), and up to current times, volunteered in our precious OHOM prison program. Among other things. Everything I have done has been with a part of my world that I had little or no knowledge or understanding of.

I hesitate to mention all of this for fear of sounding as if I’m tooting my own horn; it is not that. It is that I have felt propelled to do this. It is the deep need to know and understand others not like me. It all comes from that experience of ‘illumination’ (at 2:05 pm on March 25, 1994) (more on that later).

Are these “goals?” Is this running after something and not being satisfied or happy until I’ve achieved it? I am happy—no, I am filled with joy when I am living with this desire, this ‘goal.’ It doesn’t feel wrong, but oh so right.

—Jude Russell
*

Here are some excerpts from Michel’s March meditation journal. The numbers refer to meditations from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Your True Home:

March 3, 2022 – #250 Touched By Her Light

This is a beautiful image. Just imagine it; living in a state of constant mindfulness, leading others, through contact, to grow in cultivation of his/her own mindfulness…to become ripples in the pond of human consciousness, spreading mindfulness to ever more people—like an anti-dis-ease, or wellspring of happiness, compassion and contentment with each one. Not only would that be something to behold, but it would be amazing to become part of as well.

Do we not already have this opportunity, and yet how many are touched by the “light” of my life? (Or, yours?) What does it take for any one of us to step up and embrace mindfulness fully, developing our light—let alone touching others’ lives with that light? I find it peculiar that all it takes for me (and you, too) is to sit down regularly and practice mindfulness—to sit and breathe deliberately. That’s it! I only need to want to take the time to sit for a while. Doing this alone can be extra challenging, lonely even. It’s funny how yesterday was about space, leading me to embrace aloneness, and here I am struggling to overcome loneliness in solitary practice—which is fundamentally still a solitary practice, even in a hall with 1,000 meditators at one sangha (fellowship/community). The union of conscious intent, even practicing in “solitude” within a sangha of any size, is the strength to overcome a sense of aloneness or loneliness.

I definitely am more consistent with a group—dedication to other until for self kicks in; and even more so with a personal plan as well. What do you do to get you to the cushion alone, or in sangha regularly?

March 10, 2022 – #251 Many Wonders

This is so apropos for my last few days. I find it curious; when I don’t take even the time to exercise and/or contemplate/write here, it’s as if my experience of life becomes overwhelming to cope with. With the overwhelm comes a flood/flurry of other intensive emotional experiences, which mount challenge after challenge as the day grinds on…to…a halt. I can go no further…

Or, so I thought. Apparently, enough training, experience, or divine intervention reminded me to “just breathe!” As I continued to breathe, not giving in just yet, still plodding forward, one foot in front of the other, perpetually pressing on and striving to keep going—slowly, with help and kind words from others, things started turning back around…unexpectedly.

That is the point I believe Thây makes here: No matter how intense the experience of the self-induced suffering (it all is!) we can fall back on our past practice/training to carry us through. We can also reap benefit from just being open (through practice and training the mind) that we see and experience myriad wonders present in every moment—right there before our very eyes, we only need to be aware enough to look (to go looking for these “wonders.”)

It’s a matter of focal points—positive versus negative; wonders abounding everywhere, or suffering, pain and misery in each and every moment. I know where I wish I would focus and where I want to focus—I even do succeed occasionally as I desire, just not as often as I wish I did. But that’s just it. This is all about our personal power of choice. Each of us makes this choice—often unconsciously or passively.

Results are obvious. You achieve what you focus on and strive for, not what you aren’t paying attention to. So why don’t we choose better? Why don’t parents teach children that there is this option, and that choice is our great inheritance of life power? Why don’t we own what they didn’t know then, and teach/learn for ourselves (and others) now? All I have to do (and you can too!) is make my choice, then act on it. That’s it. There’s no magic pill, formula, incantation, or grotto. I need only grit to stick with the choice and do the “hard” work—(which isn’t actually hard at all, it’s just more illusions I created for myself). What’s your choice?

March 24, 2022 – #256 Mind Creates Everything

Excitement rolled through the dorm building, to a crescendo, as each man anticipated the call to go down to get our feed. Dark clouds collecting at the edge of the valley, rolling out over the plains, building to a full frenzy thunder and lightning display. Just as quickly as the energy built, each was in his seat, eating a giant hero. Some chicken clubs—most, actually—and a few for pastrami. The rains fell, calming all sound with the coolness settling all around. One by one, each finished his meal, moving on to another area. Rains lifted, skies cleared, and all was quiet once again. Each man moaned in soft contentment of satisfaction, having eaten his fill.

Our minds got bored—all people. The mind craves the new, exciting, colorful, flashy, brilliant distractions, not silence within. Practicing mindfulness calms the mind’s desires for innovative and new stimuli. Through training, a mind learns calmness and peace.

TV commercials, live feeds, Twitter, Snapchat, instant access to…every thing. This feeds the chaos drive of the mind. It’s little wonder most people are starving psychically for stillness, calm and quiet. Few know this secret: It all starts with the mind—both the peace and the noise.

Through the mind’s power we can create stories about many things; about peace and harmony, beauty or chaos and disturbances, war and violence, etc. We have power, which many of us don’t know to use, but it’s there. All we need to do is practice mindfulness. With time, practicing leads to consistent behavior, leading to consistent peace within. What are you creating today?

Michel Deforge
*

Alex Tretbar wrote to me that he has begun meditating every morning. I like to encourage people who want to meditate, so I wrote some of my thoughts about meditation to him. I’m lazy. Instead of writing something new for this issue, I’m just going to copy and paste what I wrote to Alex:

Dear Alex

Thanks for your letter and poem. I’m happy to learn that you are meditating every morning. I’ve had a serious meditation practice for more than 50 years, so I’d like to share a few thoughts on the subject that I hope might be helpful to you.

The word “meditation” can mean a lot of different things. For many years, people considered it a kind of oddball thing that Buddhists were into. Many people tried meditating once or twice, found it difficult or frustrating and concluded that it was not for them. In more recent years, meditation & mindfulness—along with yoga—have become much more mainstream and normal. There are meditation apps that people have on their phones. Lots and lots of books about meditation and mindfulness. Health and mental health professionals now routinely recommend meditation and mindfulness for reducing stress and helping with various physical, mental and emotional problems.

Classical Japanese Zen is rigorous and practiced in monasteries by monks. The poet Gary Snyder lived in Japan for eight years. He practiced Zen at a monastery and did zazen (sitting meditation) a minimum of five hours a day.

There are kinder and gentler ways to practice meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, has a friendlier approach. He says you should enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re doing it wrong.

A brief word on sitting meditation. The two essential things are: eyes open and back straight. When your eyes close or your posture slumps you tend to daydream and then fall asleep. This is not a bad thing. Like taking a nap, it’s restful.

Meditation is wakefulness. Attention. A mind quiet and alert.

Rather than thinking of it as a difficult activity, it might be good to think of meditation as “quiet time.” Peaceful time. A time set aside, when you don’t have to accomplish anything. In our culture achievement is at a premium and people who don’t meditate tend to think of it as wasting time. Walt Whitman said:

“I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”

That’s the idea.

If you spend some quiet time every morning, over time your brain and mind and nervous system will gradually quiet down.

One of the things that you learn from meditation is that instead of seeing and feeling and experiencing the world directly, we learned early in life to see and experience and feel the world through a filter of thought and language. It’s like the difference between reading about Multnomah Falls, or looking at a postcard of Multnomah Falls, and actually standing if front of it and feeling the spray.

Meditation & mindfulness—that immediate kind of perception—can inspire poetic expression. All you have to do is find the right words to convey this experience to others. Simple.

In one of our earlier exchanges, you said that the problem for you with meditating, is that you would be sitting there and you’d have an idea, and you would want to write it down before it disappeared—and thus you would have to interrupt your meditation. This made me smile. The thing is: of course you can stop “meditating” in order to write. Writing is a form of meditation. Maybe silent sitting is one of the ways to invite poetic inspiration. Like opening a window, so that you can feel the breeze.

This problem, like most problems, is an imaginary one. First you imagined it, then you imagined that it was a “real” problem. A toothache is a real problem. The Buddhist view is that 99% of suffering is self-inflicted. (“Imaginary” problems are not necessarily less painful than “real” ones.) Meditation is the art of not making yourself miserable.

One of the paradoxes of meditation is that there is no goal. You sit in order to sit. Trying to get something—like peace, or enlightenment, or whatever—is just another way of making yourself miserable. It introduces time and a hypothetical future. There is no future, only this present moment.

Well, that’s enough for now about all that.

peace & love,
Johnny
*

“Whenever you meet a situation that awakens your compassion…
you can stop for a moment, breathe in any suffering you see,
and breathe out a sense of relief.”

—Pema Chödrön – Tonglen, the Path of Transformation

I have been attending a daily Buddhist meditation practice since the early days of the War against Ukraine. Hosted by a group in New York and a group in Ukraine, we gather on Zoom, to give support to those suffering from violence due to the ongoing invasion.

The practice of Tonglen, an extension of Loving-Kindness meditation, is new to me. We begin with a check-in from sangha members in Ukraine. Iryna gives a hello and a weather report if the sun is shining, then a brief update about the latest destruction and pauses in bombing. She speaks in Ukrainian and her friend translates for us. Then others are asked to speak – Oleg in Odessa, Sasha and Ella in Kyiv, Andrei in Lviv, give personal stories from their homes. Seeing them in their zoom boxes, with their windows shaded, is a moving and transporting experience. These check-ins have been both heartrending and inspiring. Also comforting to know that they are alive, these brave humble people who we have come to care for and LOVE over these weeks of war. Sometimes these new friends are away on meditation retreat, or called to army duty, or helping to take care of the wounded or homeless. In Kyiv they are involved with reconstructing a building for those who have lost their homes or have been sheltering in the subways.

Taking a moment to sit with awareness of our feelings, gathering stability and compassion, we go directly into a practice of transforming suffering into compassion. Tonglen – in English called Sending and Taking, is new to me. The essence of it is to breathe in heaviness, sorrow, whatever images may be disturbing us, then breathe out peace, tenderness, lightness, liveliness. Our minds may be overwhelmed by news, or anxiety, but our hearts have a bottomless well of love and compassion.

The Practice closes with a Dedication of Merit sent out to all beings that may be suffering. Then we unmute for an open discussion, questions, poems, or music. The chat box overflows with thanks and good wishes, resources are sent for compassion in action.

Thirty minutes of raising compassion in a group dedicated to non-violence allows us to be supportive of one another in a volatile time. I’m sure the Ukrainians feel supportive, but I am much more aware of the support for myself. It has been a gift; an antidote to the images in the morning newspaper, to the enervating quality of nightly news commentary on the war that I have completely given up.

I had wondered if it would feel like a burden to begin my day up close in a war with strangers. Rather it has been energizing, spiritually creative, and friendly. Here we are greeting one another each day, getting to know our Eastern neighbors with names and faces and stories. I grieve for the children, remembering our own war years and protests, “Where have all the children gone, long time ago?” I draw strength from my Polish ancestors, when I hear stories of the millions taking refuge in Poland’s homes. In Western Ukraine too, every person we heard from had people from Eastern towns staying in their apartment.

Here at home, I recognize a Ukrainian accent in line at Goodwill. Hannah starts weeping when I hug her, so thankful to be listened to; her husband is Russian and supports Putin. Her parents meanwhile are terrified in Kyiv. Her own children are young.

I feel grateful for our experience with you all through Open Hearts Open Minds dialogue and theater and Open Road discussions and readings and reflecting on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings. Being interactive, communicating!, interbeing as Thay says, practicing a common aspiration for peace and happiness, has been helpful for not turning away from the suffering in war.

I muse over these words of Thich Nhat Hanh’s and think about how we might transform, in prison or in a state of fear or in a difficult time of despair over how to help.

The Buddha’s teaching is about viewing the world through the eyes of compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh taught deep listening and open communication with people on both sides of an issue. And taking action to relieve suffering, everyone’s suffering.

He said, “When you have compassion in your heart, you suffer much less, and you are in a situation to be and to do something to help others to suffer less. This is true. So to practice in such a way that brings compassion into your heart is very important. A person without compassion cannot be a happy person. And compassion is something that is possible only when you have understanding. Understanding brings compassion. Understanding is compassion itself.”

Thank you, dear friends, for our ongoing communication, and open hearts. May we be at peace.

Love,
Katie

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 4/10/22
2022-04-10 15:00 - 17:00
This Sunday, April 10th, at 3 p.m. (PDT) the theme for our Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering is Gary Snyder & Friends. Here’s the link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

May all people be happy.
May we live in peace & love

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/7/22
2022-04-07 - 2022-04-20
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 7, 2022

My dad loved the poems of Carl Sandburg. Sometimes I take the heavy tome The Complete Poems of CARL SANDBURG off the shelf, in search of treasures. When I open the book, I always feel that my dad is by my side.

TENTATIVE (FIRST MODEL)
DEFINITIONS OF POETRY

1 Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.

2 Poetry is an art practised with the terribly plastic material of human language.

3 Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, ‘Listen!’ and ‘Did you see it?’ ‘Did you hear it? What was it?’

4 Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes.

5 Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, crosslights, and moon wisps.

6 Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.

7 Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.

8 Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not a number for.

9 Poetry is an echo asking a shadow dancer to be a partner.

10 Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

11 Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.

12 Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between.

13 Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen.

14 Poetry is a sky dark with wild-duck migration.

15 Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and unknowable.

16 Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines or a doorknob with thumb- prints of dust, blood, dreams.

17 Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.

18 Poetry is the cipher key to the five mystic wishes packed in a hollow silver bullet fed to a flying fish.

19 Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.

20 Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches.

21 Poetry is a sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog.

22 Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it.

23 Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

24 Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it.

25 Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.

26 Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.

27 Poetry is a statement of a series of equations, with numbers and symbols changing like the changes of mirrors, pools, skies, the only never- changing sign being the sign of infinity.

28 Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

29 Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, ‘Oh!’ and another, ‘How?’

30 Poetry is a kinetic arrangement of static syllables.

31 Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars.

32 Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts.

33 Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions.

34 Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

35 Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly- wings and the scraps of torn love-letters.

36 Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

37 Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

38 Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.

—Carl Sandburg, from Good Morning, America (The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, pp. 317-319)

Carl Sandburg wrote Rootabaga Stories for his daughters. Here are a couple of them—(reading aloud recommended):

The Potato Face Blind Man
Who Lost the Diamond Rabbit on
His Gold Accordion

There was a Potato Face Blind Man used to play an accordion on the Main Street corner nearest the postoffice in the Village of Liver-and-Onions.

Any Ice Today came along and said, “It looks like it used to be an 18 carat gold accordion with rich pawnshop diamonds in it; it looks like it used to be a grand accordion once and not so grand now.”

“Oh, yes, oh, yes, it was gold all over on the outside,” said the Potato Face Blind Man, “and there was a diamond rabbit next to the handles on each side, two diamond rabbits.”

“How do you mean diamond rabbits?” Any Ice Today asked.

“Ears, legs, head, feet, ribs, tail, all fixed out in diamonds to make a nice rabbit with his diamond chin on his diamond toenails. When I play good pieces so people cry hearing my accordion music, then I put my fingers over and feel of the rabbit’s diamond chin on his diamond toenails, ‘Attaboy, li’l bunny, attaboy, li’l bunny.’”

“Yes I hear you talking but it is like dream talking. I wonder why your accordion looks like somebody stole it and took it to a pawnshop and took it out and somebody stole it again and took it to a pawnshop and took it out and somebody stole it again. And they kept on stealing it and taking it out of the pawnshop and stealing it again till the gold wore off so it looks like a used-to-be-yesterday.”

“Oh, yes, o-h, y-e-s, you are right. It is not like the accordion it used to be. It knows more knowledge than it used to know just the same as this Potato Face Blind Man knows more knowledge than he used to know.”

“Tell me about it,” said Any Ice Today.

“It is simple. If a blind man plays an accordion on the street to make people cry it makes them sad and when they are sad the gold goes away off the accordion. And if a blind man goes to sleep because his music is full of sleepy songs like the long wind in a sleepy valley, then while the blind man is sleeping the diamonds in the diamond rabbit all go away. I play a sleepy song and go to sleep and I wake up and the diamond ear of the diamond rabbit is gone. I play another sleepy song and go to sleep and wake up and the diamond tail of the diamond rabbit is gone. After a while all the diamond rabbits are gone, even the diamond chin sitting on the diamond toenails of the rabbits next to the handles of the accordion, even those are gone.”

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Any Ice Today.

“I do it myself,” said the Potato Face Blind Man. “If I am too sorry I just play the sleepy song of the long wind going up the sleepy valleys. And that carries me away where I have time and money to dream about the new wonderful accordions and postoffices where everybody that gets a letter and everybody that don’t get a letter stops and remembers the Potato Face Blind Man.”

How the Potato Face Blind Man Enjoyed
Himself on a Fine Spring Morning

On a Friday morning when the flummywisters were yodeling yisters high in the elm trees, the Potato Face Blind Man came down to his work sitting at the corner nearest the postoffice in the Village of Liver-and-Onions and playing his gold-that-used-to-be accordion for the pleasure of the ears of the people going into the postoffice to see if they got any letters for themselves or their families.

“It is a good day, a lucky day,” said the Potato Face Blind Man, “because for a beginning I have heard high in the elm trees the flummywisters yodeling their yisters in the long branches of the lingering leaves. So—so—I am going to listen to myself playing on my accordion the same yisters, the same yodels, drawing them like long glad breathings out of my glad accordion, long breathings of the branches of the lingering leaves.”

And he sat down in his chair. On the sleeve of his coat he tied a sign, “I Am Blind Too.” On the top button of his coat he hung a little thimble. On the bottom button of his coat he hung a tin copper cup. On the middle button he hung a wooden mug. By the side of him on the left side on the sidewalk he put a galvanized iron washtub, and on the right side an aluminum dishpan.

“It is a good day, a lucky day, and I am sure many people will stop and remember the Potato Face Blind Man,” he sang to himself like a little song as he began running his fingers up and down the keys of the accordion like the yisters of the lingering leaves in the elm trees.

Then came Pick Ups. Always it happened Pick Ups asked questions and wished to know. And so this is how the questions and answers ran when the Potato Face filled the ears of Pick Ups with explanations.

“What is the piece you are playing on the keys of your accordion so fast sometimes, so slow sometimes, so sad some of the moments, so glad some of the moments?”

“It is the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters and sing:

‘Fly, you little flummies,
Sing, you little wisters.’”

“And why do you have a little thimble on the top button of your coat?”

“That is for the dimes to be put in. Some people see it and say, ‘Oh, I must put in a whole thimbleful of dimes.’”

“And the tin copper cup?”

“That is for the base ball players to stand off ten feet and throw in nickels and pennies. The one who throws the most into the cup will be the most lucky.”

“And the wooden mug?”

“There is a hole in the bottom of it. The hole is as big as the bottom. The nickel goes in and comes out again. It is for the very poor people who wish to give me a nickel and yet get the nickel back.”

“The aluminum dishpan and the galvanized iron washtub—what are they doing by the side of you on both sides on the sidewalk?”

“Sometime maybe it will happen everybody who goes into the postoffice and comes out will stop and pour out all their money, because they might get afraid their money is no good any more. If such a happening ever happens then it will be nice for the people to have some place to pour their money. Such is the explanation why you see the aluminum dishpan and galvanized iron tub.”

“Explain your sign—why is it, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”

“Oh, I am sorry to explain to you, Pick Ups, why this is so which. Some of the people who pass by here going into the postoffice and coming out, they have eyes—but they see nothing with their eyes. They look where they are going and they get where they wish to get, but they forget why they came and they do not know how to come away. They are my blind brothers. It is for them I have the sign that reads, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”

“I have my ears full of explanations and I thank you,” said Pick Ups.

“Good-by,” said the Potato Face Blind Man as he began drawing long breathings like lingering leaves out of the accordion—along with the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters.

Here are a couple of my dad’s and my favorite Carl Sandburg poems:

THE RIGHT TO GRIEF
To Certain Poets About to Die

TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch off
And get cashed.

Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it’s many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day.

Now his three year old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week’s wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out.

The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box.

They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills.
They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear.

Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, “God have mercy on us all.”

I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine—see?
To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom.

HAPPINESS

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

—Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Since the Potato Face Blind Man plays the accordian, and the Hungarians on the banks of the Desplaines River do likewise, perhaps it would be good to include links to some rockin’ accordian music:

Those Darn Accordians play Jimi Hendrix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzP-G9cVc7k

Flaco Jimenez, Mingo Saldivar, Pete Ybarra, David Farias & David Lee Garza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1ZXm-rFLA

Clifton Chenier & the Louisiana Ramblers play “Tighten Up”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1ZXm-rFLA

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 3/27/22
2022-03-27 15:00 - 17:00
photo by Kim Stafford

This Sunday, March 27th, at 3 p.m. (PDT) the theme for our Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering is: War & Peace & Spring! Here’s the link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

May all people be happy.
May we live in peace & love

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 3/24/22
2022-03-24 - 2022-04-06
photo by Kim Stafford

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

WAR & PEACE & SPRING!

Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations.
—William Blake

March 24, 2022

peace, love, happiness & understanding is two years old!

HURRAH!!!

Our first issue celebrated Spring Equinox. Last year at this time we again enjoyed a bunch of Spring poems.

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-3-18-21/).

So, we want to celebrate Spring…and there are other things on our minds as well. In our last issue people wrote about some of their favorite books. In it, we invited friends inside prison to write about some of their favorite books. Meanwhile, we are also thinking about war and peace and refugees.

It’s Spring!!!

And every day the front page reminds us that bombs are falling on people in Ukraine.

Kim had this to say:

These days I seem to be obsessed with news from the war…and with the little plum tree outside the door of my writing shed. It was only a matter of time before the two started talking to each other in a poem.

Plum Trees in War

How do they do it?—no resistance,
no complicity, simply opening
a new species of light bud by bud
in spite of all that is burned and broken.

Splayed against a shattered wall,
from a stump amid the rubble,
or even from a sheared branch
dusted with ash, petals unfurl.

As enemies prepare to advance
across hills and fields, spring
got there first, took possession
and raised its million flags of green.

From the sky, breath by breath,
the command comes down, so every
soldier says, “I can’t kill today—
I am busy blossoming.”

—Kim Stafford
*

Thomas Bray wrote to us about his favorite books:

I thoroughly enjoyed your latest newsletter with all the book recommendations in it. I read it with great interest. My two favorite books are:

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. This is about a Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned in Auschwitz and how he manages to find meaning in the most dire of situations. I read it at least once a year. I always think the same thing when I read it: that if he can survive that, then surely I can survive this.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. This is another true story of an Australian prisoner who escapes, and flees to India. He lives amongst the “untouchables” for years. It’s a truly riveting tale of survival.

Regards,
Thomas Bray
*

Each spring I read this favorite gem of a poem by Roethke. The last line captures my feeling about the return of spring perfectly. As the blossoms of my daphne waft the delicious fragrance in my backyard portending the return to life of all of the brown stalks and underground plants waiting to burst forth with fullness, I am always filled with a sense of wonder and excitement. Here is the poem that I always read:

Vernal Sentiment

Though the crocuses poke up their heads in the usual places,
The frog scum appear on the pond with the same froth of green,
And boys moon at girls with last year’s fatuous faces,
I never am bored, however familiar the scene.

When from under the barn the cat brings a similar litter,—
Two yellow and black, and one that looks in between,—
Though it all happened before, I cannot grow bitter:
I rejoice in the spring, as though no spring ever had been.

—Theodore Roethke

—Jeffrey Sher
*

Katie talks about some of her favorite books, and then, on the subject of War & Peace & Spring, she includes a poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

that was impossible! and my favorite author lately is Olga Tokarchuk.

“My first thought about art, as a child, was that the artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.”

—John Updike

Favorite books is a BiG topic for a houseful of too many loved books. I do have a shelf of some of my favorite books that I like to have more than one copy so that I can give one away to whoever is here at the time that fits.

On that shelf are these magical books–
The Lives of Rocks short stories by Rick Bass, living out in the Montana wilds.
Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
The Green Child by Herbert Read
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard WW II time: is the great fire war or love?
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
The Plague by Albert Camus, the book I have reread the most often. I highly recommend it in the Covid era.

On the shelf too is Bill’s favorite book. For years he has given most, a book called History: A Novel by Elsa Morante.

Making this list I am aware of how I like to read what is most foreign to me.

Lately I’m wild about the stories and writing of Roy Jacobsen, his trilogy about a family who are the only ones living on their island off the coast of Norway. The Unseen is the first in the series.

I read the heartbreaking Arizona/Mexico Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain. “The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies.” (Then, this line I have posted on my writing desk): “Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.” From Cities of the Plain.

Penelope Fitzgerald – I first read The Bookshop, very English, but then read all her books and liked most The Gate of Angels, about the chaos theory.

When I love a book then I want to read everything else the author has written.

When I first read a book by a black American author I was also in a foreign land and wanted to read all Black Women Writers in America

I first read Sula, by Toni Morrison, then read her others, through Beloved. This led me to Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, then Zora Neal Hurston, then plays of August Wilson and Lynn Nottage.

In poetry too, I love the foreign but also the most current in America. The poems of T’ao Ch’ien, written in the 4th century China, witten in a natural, personal voice of his immediate experience and feelings makes it seem so contemporary. This led me somehow to Buddhist teachings and practice. And the first thing I read by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart, which led me the next week to my first Mindfulness retreat.

Now I’m reading the Polish poets Szymborska and Milosz to stay open hearted and in solidarity with those suffering in the war zone and on the move as refugees and those opening their homes in a safe place. Here is a War and Peace and Springtime poem from the 70’s by Milosz to ease the sorrow as we continue to pay attention and practice peace.

On Pilgrimage

May the smell of thyme and lavender accompany us on our journey
To a province that does not know how lucky it is
For it was, among all the hidden corners of the earth,
The only one chosen and visited.

We tended toward the Place but no signs led there.
Till it revealed itself in a pastoral valley
Between mountains that look older than memory,
By a narrow river humming at the grotto.

May the taste of wine and roast meat stay with us
As it did when we used to feast in the clearings,
Searching, not finding, gathering rumors,
Always comforted by the brightness of the day.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks
Remind us of everything we have lost,
For we have seen on our way and fallen in love
With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

—Czeslaw Milosz
English version by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass
Original Language Polish

—Katie Radditz
*

Milosz’s poem reminded me of this poem by William Stafford:

At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed—or were killed—on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

—William Stafford
*

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

—Michael Deforge
*

My favorite series of books are the Harry Potter novels. They are so rich and full of flavor, each one has its own beginning and end, and kept me enchanted the entire read. A true masterpiece they are.

Spring happens to be my favorite season. It is to me and many the beginning of something. It has the feel of new endeavors and adventures to take on. A new start, rather. So, in a negative sense, the beginning of war—since that is the topic. We humans always find a way to not get along. One day I believe we will have to, or it will be the end of us.

—Brandon Gillespie
*
Here’s are a couple of my recent contributions to the Poetry of Peace:

let’s pretend

instead of pretending that we are afraid
that we must improve
that we have enemies
that the future will arrive someday

let’s pretend everything is sacred
pretend this is Paradise
pretend every moment is precious
pretend we love everyone

pretend our joy knows no bounds
pretend we are the whole wide world

My Foolproof Plan for World Peace

I hereby declare today to be International Love Day.
And a General Armistice.
All hostilities must cease on International Love Day.
Henceforward, every day is International Love Day.

—Johnny Stallings
*

Perrin Kerns sent me a Zoom link to a daily meditation, at 8 a.m. (PDT), with people in Ukraine. In addition to sitting together, there is an opportunity to hear from people in Ukraine and give them love and support. Here’s the link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83817903514

Today’s Yogi Tea bag message:

Live righteously and love everyone, you will build up around you an aura of light and love.

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 3/15/22
2022-03-15 - 2022-04-14
“There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature,
the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

March 15, 2022

(These are some excerpts from Michel’s meditation journal. The numbers refer to sections from Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh.) (JS)

February 15, 2022 #239 Peace Permeates

It’s true! Whatever we cultivate in mindfulness will permeate the life and body. It is also true that physical states (feelings) can affect the mindfulness. This is why I believe there is value in any type of mindfulness practice. Currently I strive to practice during moments on the exercise bike, and do nothing else while I sit there. Maybe formal sitting isn’t for everyone—(it is the easiest and quickest path I’ve learned)—but learning to find some idle time to focus on the breath, while not attending to every thought whim arising each moment, can be helpful. Lately, I’ve referenced recollections of childhood: those times on sunny summer days, laying on a lawn beach, etc., watching clouds pass by. Thoughts can become the clouds. Let them go on.

February 16, 2022 #240 Rest Naturally

I would take Thây’s allusion one step further. I would imagine myself as that pebble sitting down to rest in sleep. These images sound like a very restful contemplation for meditation practice, or sleep—which can be a form of meditation, I’ve heard.

The beauty of this image, to me, is the pebble does nothing. It is acted upon, and eventually comes to a state of rest, all without any self effort. Once at rest, more nothing; it still doesn’t do. It just is. I like allowing thoughts to be like water, flowing by with no affect or input. I think emulating the small stone is valuable.

I wonder: how far this allusion-metaphor-image can be interpreted and applied before the analogy breaks down? Still, I like this idea of imagining myself (my mind?) as the small stone resting as clouds, air, rain, water, a river, living beings (various forms of thought?) simply pass by, while I continue to rest unaffected by all the passersby, or the melee of thoughts passes on without my interaction or attachment.

February 23, 2022 #245 The Sangha Body of Peace

It has been over two years since we last gathered, here at TRCI, for our weekly dialogues and since we’ve been able to function for each other as a sangha. We’ve been doing so remotely. In this two years, several have moved on to their next phase, whatever and wherever that may be. All of us, I’m guessing, look forward to meeting with those of us remaining, and for our dialogues to resume. I wonder what this may be likened to and how we, the remnant or those departed, may feel about being where we are when that happens. Will everyone experience unity of sangha, or some, maybe? I don’t know; it’s a personal experience.

I trust if we remember Thây’s teaching on mindfulness—“I am here for you”—and apply it to be mindfully present wherever we are at the reunification of our weekly “love feat,” then those present (and hopefully those afar, lending their light) will give/receive the most from that meeting of our sangha again. I look forward to that day myself.

With love, be well!

—Michel Deforge
*

in my old age
i have become a connoisseur
of perfect moments

Some people say, “No one’s perfect,” or “Nothing is perfect,” but, if you look at it a certain way, everyone is perfect and every thing is perfect. We’ve all drunk a lot of water in our life, but sometimes we stop and notice that the glass of water in our hand is the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. We are amazed by water. It’s impossible. It’s wet. We are made of water. Without air, without water, without the sun, there could be no life on this planet. Without our body, without our eyes and brain and skin and nervous system we couldn’t see or touch or taste water. We couldn’t know or imagine. When I was young, I knew everything. The older I get, the more bewildered I’ve become. I’m dumbfounded by the beauty and unlikelihood of absolutely everything.

(After writing the above, I asked Mr. Google: “What percentage of the human body is water?” Here is the reply:)

60%

Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.

(From the U.S. Geological Survey website article: “The Water in You: Water and the Human Body.” The article is highly entertaining. Here’s the link:)

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/water-you-water-and-human-body

—Johnny Stallings
*

#302 No Ideas

“When we look deeply, we see that all our ideas about our body and about our mind are inaccurate. We have to practice no ideas…”
“When we can stop every idea in our mind…”
“When we can see the emptiness of each thing…”

But aren’t ‘looking deeply’ and ‘when we can see’ just other ways of saying ‘thinking,’ and having ideas about? Isn’t the very practice of “practicing no ideas” an idea? An act of thinking? A conscious process of the mind? Do you acknowledge that it’s an idea to “practice no idea,” and that it is a necessary step to get beyond to get to emptiness?

We might use a mantra in order to go beyond no idea? But the derivation of mantra goes back to Sanskrit – sacred counsel, formula; and back to Latin – mens: mind. From manyate: he thinks. Hmmm, that sure sounds like mind>thinking>idea to me…

Am I overthinking this no idea/emptiness…idea? Sheesh. I have no idea….Hey! I think I’m getting somewhere with this.

—Jude Russell
*

In life I have done things that were detestable. And in life we have all at times been faced with choosing the path. But which path do we take—not knowing where any of them lead? I had been lost for so long, and lost so much, and so many of those things can never be replaced. But some of them will never fail, and that is the love I have for them—lost and found and kept. Unconditional love is there for those that need it. People are the real treasure in love, and those relationships are what is most important. Love is free and we should always freely give love unconditionally. It is a simple seed and if it is allowed to grow unchecked it is gladly evasive.

—Rocky Hutchinson
*

Old Spruce Sets the Clock

I’ve been running daylight saving time
since I was a sprig, a sprout, a sapling
hoarding every filament of illumination
that made it through these shadows
to find my reaching hands open wide.
Don’t ask me about frenzy–I’ve been
slow-timing for a hundred years, and
look where that has got me, rooted
deeper, yearning higher, greener,
older, thick and sturdy, easy with
root and bud, snow and starlight.
In this war, one could do worse.

—Kim Stafford
*

My meditation lately consists of viewing what I look like by someone else’s eyes and mind. How do I act, talk, walk, sit, eat? How do I treat others? This gives me self awareness. It is sometimes uncomfortable to view myself outside of myself, but it does bring me perspective. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and writings.

—Brandon Gillespie
*

For a joyous and heart opening experience, spend a few breaths looking closely at these spirals (on page 1) of nature’s energy unfolding.

March has many celebrations—International Women’s Day, Spring Equinox, Earth Day, Candlemas and Nancy Scharbach’s Birthday!

As Spring approaches I am delighted by the polka dots of nature—soft rain drops on the pavement, along with pink petals from the cherry trees. Pussy willows in bud, raindrops clinging to the leafless twigs after a rain. But there is also the spiral when I look closely at the ferns sending out their new shoots.

It is also the time of Fasting after a last winter Feast. “Carnival” means going without meat, or food in general, until the gardens are producing once again. Through eons and within all cultures and religions, the need for Lent (or sacrifice, and changing one’s habits to survive) has been a Spring ritual. Blessing the Earth for sustenance.

In Buddhist practice, rather than a forty day fast, the Five Precepts are recited once a week, to help change unkind and unhealthy elements of our “habit energy,” as Thay calls it, with the intent to live a happier and ethical life.

Rather than making these sound like commandments, Thich Nhat Hanh over the years has rewritten the precepts so they help us focus on practicing awareness and kindness, for ourselves, for others, and for the planet.

Here are Thay’s latest rendition with his commentary. You may want to take one to heart for a week or two, then reflect on your own habit energy, and what changes you might see from paying attention. Maybe there is something you want to give up and you would like your community to support.

In peace and love,

—Katie Radditz

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are one of the most concrete ways to practice mindfulness. They are nonsectarian, and their nature is universal. They are true practices of compassion and understanding. All spiritual traditions have their equivalent to the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

The first training is to protect life, to decrease violence in oneself, in the family and in society. The second training is to practice social justice, generosity, not stealing and not exploiting other living beings. The third is the practice of responsible sexual behavior in order to protect individuals, couples, families and children. The fourth is the practice of deep listening and loving speech to restore communication and reconcile. The fifth is about mindful consumption, to help us not bring toxins and poisons into our body or mind.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are based on the precepts developed during the time of the Buddha to be the foundation of practice for the entire lay practice community.

I have translated these precepts for modern times, because mindfulness is at the foundation of each one of them. With mindfulness, we are modern times, because mindfulness is at the foundation of each one of them. With mindfulness, we are aware of what is going on in our bodies, our feelings, our minds and the world, and we avoid doing harm to ourselves and others. Mindfulness protects us, our families and our society. When we are mindful, we can see that by refraining from doing one thing, we can prevent another thing from happening. We arrive at our own unique insight. It is not something imposed on us by an outside authority. Practicing the mindfulness trainings, therefore, helps us be more calm and concentrated, and brings more insight and enlightenment.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings

The Five Mindfulness Trainings represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic. They are a concrete expression of the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the path of right understanding and true love, leading to healing, transformation, and happiness for ourselves and for the world. To practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings is to cultivate the insight of interbeing, or Right View, which can remove all discrimination, intolerance, anger, fear, and despair. If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva. Knowing we are on that path, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or in fears about the future.

Reverence For Life

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.

True Happiness

Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and stop contributing to climate change.

True Love

Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future.

Loving Speech and Deep Listening

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.

Nourishment and Healing

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations. I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.

—from Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices by Thich Nhat Hanh (pp. 35-38)
*

Some quotes on Jeff K’s mind lately:

’’Be patient, your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are”

—Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others, p. 278

”Found a dollar and had a slice of pizza… One day closer to death’’
&
”We come into this world alone… Then we die alone… But, in the meantime… Snacks.’’

—Adult Swim

Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you. Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

—Ted Chiang, Exhalation, p. 57

”Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives.”

—Joseph Campbell

—Jeff Kuehner

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 3/13/22
2022-03-13 15:00 - 17:00
Beloved Bibliophiles! It’s Women’s History Month! This week, Sunday, March 13th, at 3 pm (Pacific Daylight Time), our theme is “Women Authors and Women Fictional Characters.” Here’s the link for the Zoom gathering:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 3/10/22
2022-03-10 - 2022-03-23
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

March 10, 2022

Y’know how when you read a really good book, you want all your friends to read it? That’s the idea here.

I asked some friends (at the last minute) to write about some of their favorite books—books they read recently, or a long time ago, books that changed the way they see or experience or understand the world, books that they’ve read many times: their favorite books!

This can be a conversation between people outside and inside prison walls. Our next issue (March 24th) will feature some of the favorite books of friends who are “on the inside.” If you are an Insider, please write to me about some of your favorite books. And if you would like to read any of the books that are talked about here, let me know which books you’d like to read, and we should be able to send them to you.

Kim was the first to reply to my email. He wrote:

When I was seven years old, on a second-grade field trip to a local church, I stole a hand-sized New Testament someone had left on the pew where I sat in the back. The cover was black, pretend leather. I liked the feel of it in my fingers. The owner’s name was written on pale blue paper on the inside cover. I tore off the blue paper bit by bit until the book was mine. My own book. It fit in my pocket. I couldn’t read it yet, but I knew it was important. I knew my grandmother would love it. Her minister husband had died, but she still prayed sometimes. What I didn’t know was how to share it with anyone, show it to anyone. It had to be my secret until I was old enough to know what was inside.

—Kim Stafford
*

Hey Johnny;

Fun!
Here is my top 10. What’s yours?

10) Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates
9) Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
8) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
7) Spring by Ali Smith
6) The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
5) No one belongs here more than you by Miranda July
4) Townie by Andre Dubus III
3) Zone One by Colson Whitehead
2) The Powerbroker by Robert Caro
1) Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishigurio

—Pat (The Dad) Walsh
*

A wonderful, thrillingly great book that is relatively under-read is INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Haldor Laxness of Iceland. It weaves the development of Icelandic society into a story of hate and love between a daughter and a father. It is an intimate epic, good enough to hurt your heart, and then to heal it, but not without leaving a scar.

—Ken Margolis
*

Oh, so many books. How can I even choose? But of course I will, and then regret what has been left out. But such is life.

Current faves:

1. Circe by Madeline Miller
I just finished Circe, a retelling of the Greek goddess, mostly known as someone who captured and loved Ulysses on his way home. This new story of her life is monumental, mythic and utterly real. Years and aeons merge into one another, the stories are told from the women’s point of view, sidelined characters are given full lives and we find ourselves alive in a world of magic and beauty. I can’t even begin to say how much I loved it. When I finished Circe it wasn’t even possible to start a new book…how could I step out of this world of enchantment? Buy it, borrow it, read it–you too can participate in this meditation on the meaning of mortality and divinity.

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See creates a world deeply immersed in the one we live in and yet somehow it expands and deepens our knowledge of another world. It is the story of two children, one from Paris and one from Germany, during WWII. The quiet details in their interwoven stories lead into a world where people are haunted, as are we, by both love and violence. Long after finishing the book these characters will live with you, tell you stories, unveil secrets.

3. An American Sunrise; Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings–both by Joy Harjo
Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the United States, the first Native American woman to hold that position. Her wild, direct, illusive poems speak from another world to us, and they continue to stand firmly on the ground of the country’s original inhabitants. And yet she is utterly modern and relevant, creating poems you only wish you could write.

4. New and Collected Poems by Czeslaw Milosz
Milosz won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his enormous and profound body of work. From a childhood in rural Lithuania through Nazi occupation, World War II, Soviet rule, and eventual exile and career as a professor in California, Milosz saw himself as a conduit for all the silenced voices he knew, and he recreated world upon world, all the time pondering the reasons behind what he experienced. Monumental and touching, this is a book you can never finish.

—xxoxo Deb Buchanan
*

Pretty short notice! So if I don’t have synopses and astute commentary on any or all of them, it’s because of…pretty short notice!

The numbering is not in any particular order of best to last.

1. Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns into compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes.

2. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous is a nonfiction, ongoing story of a person who has had relative success in a career but has a difficult family past, including a mentally ill older brother and a father who cannot disavow his son, no matter how he hurts other members of the family. The protagonist also experiences a wrenching divorce with child issues, which lead her/him to seek out community on Twitter. Let’s call her ‘she,’ although that is never clarified. She finds that her difficult personal life translates unwittingly into a compassionate Twitter figure, and she develops a following who look to her for solace and advice. Her gentleness, wit, and compassion for others draws people from all over, including Lyle Lovett. This is all true! MUST READ!!!

3. The True American by Anand Giridharadas (nonfiction). Days after 9/11, an avowed “American terrorist” named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into a Dallas mini-mart and shoots Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant, maiming and nearly killing him. Ten years after the shooting, Bhuiyan wages a campaign against the State of Texas to have his attacker spared from the death penalty. The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions.

4. Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy novel A Russian nobleman takes advantage of a young woman, gets her pregnant and then deserts her. He forgets about her until years later when he discovers that she is in court for stealing, and she has become a vagrant and wastrel of a figure. He has a change of heart, mind and soul, and determines to save her by devoting his life to that purpose. His persistence and her resistance take them into uncharted waters.

5. Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle. An upper middle class Southern California couple encounters a Mexican undocumented man living in the arroyos near their gated house. The story deals with the husband’s run ins with the Mexican while on his (the husband’s) ‘nature walks.’ At first aghast and uncomfortable, then curious, then understanding, and finally compassionate and a life saver, the husband finds his world changed.

6. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (fiction)

7. Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (nonfiction)

8. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (nonfiction)

9. Nicholas and Alexandra, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great all by Robert Massie. The most readable and fascinating history writing, from one who has always had difficulty reading history.

—Jude Russell
*

Here are five books that had high impact on me,

The Sacred Pipe, Black Elk—One of the first books that showed me how some people live a totally spiritual life without a distinct religion.

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris—This was the first book that helped me understand our animal origins.

Lao Tzu—Still a faithful companion, one that doesn’t waste words but covers Life pretty completely.

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac—This put into words what a lot of us were starting to sense about life in modern America.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn—A broad perspective on how our human history has developed over the last few millennia, forging delusions of separateness and mastery and privilege in us.

This brief list perforce needs to omit Mad magazine, the great Russian novelists, and many other wonderful writers like Shakespeare and Tolkien who have influenced or entertained me over the years, but these five are books I find myself still thinking about years after reading them.

love and peace,

—Bill Faricy
*

Great question on books. I decided to list those that, after several book purges, are still on my shelves and ones that I come back to over and over:

Trickster Makes This World Lewis Hyde
Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Jung
The Water of Life Michael Meade
Irish Fairy Tales James Stephens
Coyote Was Going There Jarold Ramsey
The Red Haired Girl from the Bog Patricia Monaghan
Good Poems Edited by Garrison Keillor
The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston
Go Down Moses William Faulkner
Irish Folk Tales Edited by Henry Glassie
Returning to Earth Jim Harrison
The Nutmeg’s Curse Amitav Ghosh (I just read but it, but it will be on my shelves a long time.)

Thanks for doing this, Johnny.

—Will Hornyak
*

The two books that I have read/listened to on Audible are both by Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns, which travels with the Great Migration from the South and highlights/follows the lives of three people who made the migration. While I intellectually had an understanding of Jim Crow, Wilkerson provided an emotional understanding in a very moving way. I also valued her later book Caste, which looks at how caste systems provide a powerful framework for understanding race and other social issues. This work is less personal than the earlier book but the tandem is quite compelling.

Cheers,

—Jeffrey Sher
*

I’ve recommended Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Somé to lots of my friends. When we think about different cultures, we have the idea that they do things a little differently than we do, they speak different languages, and they have different beliefs. But Malidoma’s Somé’s book gave me the feeling that he lives in an entirely different world than I do. He has seen things that I’ve never seen, and never will see. Even if I went to his village, I couldn’t see them. Each one of us lives in our own world—the world as we imagine it, as we describe it and explain it to ourselves. His book, more than any other book I know, shows me that there is not just one “reality”—there are as many realities as there are human beings. (And that doesn’t take into account the realities of moles, goldfinches, dogs, lizards, elephants, gnats, whales, et cetera.) A different culture is a different way of being in the world.

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is a poem, not a book. Although it’s long for a poem (56 pages in my Signet edition of Leaves of Grass), I’ve memorized most of it. It changed my life, changed the way I see the world, changed the way I imagine who I am. It is, I think, the strongest expression in the world’s literature of the mystic’s feeling of being one with everything. Because it’s a poem, and not a lecture or an essay, it has the power to alter our sensibilities. It has made me a more joyful person, made me more free, given me the feeling of limitless love for everyone and every thing. The poem is a corrective to the ascetic and life-denying aspects of much religious literature. What saint or yogi would say?:

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say:

“Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.”

Walt abolishes dualities, like body and soul, that are characteristic not just of most spirituality, but of thought and language. It is a giant YES! to Life. And to Death. And everything in between.

My two favorite short stories are Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Tenth of December by George Saunders. I read the first one a long time ago, and realized that the narrator had the same ridiculous dream that I have—the dream that we could all love each other. I’ve performed a version of this story from time to time. Jason Beito recommended the George Saunders story to me. Thank you, Jason!

I’m always reading more than one book at a time. At the beginning of each day, I usually read from certain inspirational texts. These are books that I read again and again. When I get to the end, I start at the beginning. My current repertoire includes Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics by R. H. Blyth, A Year With Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky, The Poetical Works and Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne. Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh and The Only Revolution by J. Krishnamurti. Alan Watts is another stalwart early morning companion. I’m currently reading Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks 1960-1969.

I love to re-read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass from time to time. And Huckleberry Finn.

I learned a lot from Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin, and For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller, and Magical Child and Evolution’s End by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and from many books by Ken Wilber. Joseph Campbell is a personal favorite. I like his lectures best, especially as audio books.

William Shakespeare is my favorite writer. He’s the greatest poet in the English language, and the greatest playwright in any language. Endless delight! My favorite companion volume to the works of Shakespeare is Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being by Ted Hughes.

Three of my favorite novels: The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Zoo Where You’re Fed to God by Michael Ventura, and Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater.

Although Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake are wondering why I left them out, that’s enough for now!

—Johnny

Bibliophiles Unanimous! 2/27/22
2022-02-27 15:00 - 17:00
Woman Reading at a Desk (c. 1910) by Thomas P. Anshutz

Beloved Bibliophiles! This week, Sunday, February 27th, at 3 pm (PST), our theme is “Favorite Fictional Characters.” Here’s the link for the Zoom gathering:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87614013058

I hope to see you there!

peace, love & happiness

Johnny

peace, love, happiness & understanding 2/24/22
2022-02-24 - 2022-03-09
Photo #12 Bee in lilac blossoms, May 17, 2020 (photos by Abe Green)

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

February 24, 2022

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

—from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

As promised, here are more pictures and texts from Abe Green:

Photo #13 Mouse friend, May 7, 2019
The wheel turns ceaselessly—birth and death.

“Birth is not the beginning,
Death is not the end.”

—Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) (370 BC – 287 BC)

Walt Whitman says:

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

–from “Song of Myself”

Photo #14 Robin eggs, May 19, 2020

Photo #15 Campfire at Fresno Lake, (North Central MT.), July 24, 2020

I once wrote a lengthy story about campfires. This is the last paragraph:
So here I sit by my campfire, don’t want to “do” anything with it; it doesn’t have to be huge or roaring, just be itself—warm and friendly.
I want to hear its special language of hisses, snaps, pops, and crackles—it’s a language made for my spirit.
I want to smell its earthy, woodpitch scent.
And I want to stare into its inferno-like heart, knowing what I see is a glimpse of the blazing glory of my own human heart.
The same bursting energy that fires the universe.

Photo #16 Showdown Ski Area, (Central MT.), October 27, 2020

I just love this photograph, (though I did not take it). The juxtaposition of the dog and an awaiting ski area clothed in deep new snow—two very experiential loves!

Photo #17 Eye painted on stone, December 28, 2021

I found the rock, an artist friend painted the eye at my request. Live, the piece is dynamic. I call it: “The observer being observed”! It reminds to not only witness what surrounds me, but to also authentically witness my “self.”

Photo #18 Fall colors on Aspen trees, September 26, 2021

“It’s the job of wise people to encourage us to perform thought experiments to challenge us about things we take for granted, to imagine in new ways.”

—J. Stallings quoted by A. Green

Photo #19 Grizzly Bear release, (photo: MT. Fish & Game), October 17, 2021

I included this picture of a grizzly relocation release as an opportunity to speak of the plight of so many of Earth’s habitants. When I see a bear or bird or beetle I see no less than the same spark of life that resides within my breast. How can I wish to experience life while denying it to other life expressions? For that’s what is really going on here, we are all—every plant, every animal, and every mother’s son and daughter—expressing the “gift” in our own way.

Photo #20 Bent tree regrowth, October 24, 2021

Lessons from a Tree

Seed split. Root sprout. Leaf bud.
Delve deep. Hold fast. Reach far
Sway. Lean. Bow. Loom.

Climb high. Stand tall. Last long.
Grow. Thicken. Billow. Shade. Sow seed.

Rise by pluck, child of luck,
lightning-struck survivor.

Burn. Bleed. Heal. Remember. Testify.
Nest. Host. Guard. Honor.

Fall. Settle. Slump.
Surrender. Offer. Enrich.

Be duff. Enough.

—Kim Stafford

Photo #21 Sleeping Giant Skyline, Beartooth Mtns., (Southcentral MT.), November 4, 2021

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.

–Wendell Berry

Photo #22 Broken Objects, December 16, 2021

Though sometimes unseen, there are extraordinary possibilities in everyone. If today, I’m a good enough example, if I shine my light bright enough, just maybe…I can change the world! But the world is so big. Better to focus on those I encounter in my little corner of life.

–Abe Green

Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue 2/15/22
2022-02-15 - 2022-03-14
Dear Beloved Community,
With a deep mindful breath, we announce the passing of our beloved teacher, Thay Nhat Hanh, on January 22 (January 21 in USA), 2022 at
Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at the age of 95.

Open Road Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue

February 15, 2022

Thay has been the most extraordinary teacher, whose peace, tender compassion, and bright wisdom has touched the lives of millions. Whether we have encountered him on retreats, at public talks, or through his books and online teachings–or simply through the story of his incredible life–we can see that Thay has been a true bodhisattva, an immense force for peace and healing in the world. Never diluting and always digging deep into the roots of Buddhist teaching, he brings out its authentic radiance.

Now is a moment to come back to our mindful breathing and walking, to generate the energy of peace, compassion, and gratitude to offer our beloved Teacher. It is a moment to take refuge in our spiritual friends, our local community, and each other.

—From the Monks and Nuns of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing

“At the moment my front yard is flush with brilliant winter sunshine slanting to earth beneath the clouds and at the same time it is raining gently. This paradox makes me feel that Thay is right here with me, showing how I can feel grateful for his life as well as deep grief for his passing. We will dearly miss his personal presence, but we have gained so much from his writings, stories, teachings and inclusiveness that we now carry with us. Thay calls his birth and his death day his continuation days.

At a Teacher’s passing in the Buddhist tradition it is honorable to address your teacher by calling his/her name, and saying a short phrase of appreciation and best wishes. Please write to us all or say silently to Thay what is on your heart.

Let us each resolve to do our best over the coming days to generate the energy of mindfulness, peace, and compassion, to send to our beloved Teacher.

Dear Thay: I am so grateful for the way you and Sister Chan Khong have shared the Buddha’s teachings and how they have touched my life as well as the life of those around me with kindness and clarity. A lotus to you.”

—Katie Radditz

“I think of Thich Nhat Hanh as my friend. He said things that have been very helpful to me in my life. I love his sweetness, his gentleness, his friendliness. I know of no one more compassionate, more peaceful, more happy, more free. I love his idea of “interbeing.” I love him. He left an extraordinary legacy of books and YouTube videos that we can revisit again and again, and share with each other. Thank you thank you thank you.”

—Johnny Stallings

Valentine’s Day wishes to you and all your loved ones.

Make a True Home of your Love – (this is a Valentine from Thay)

Every one of us is trying to find our true home. We know that our true home is inside, and with the energy of mindfulness, we can go back to our true home in the here and the now. Sangha is our true home.

In Vietnamese, the husband calls the wife “my home.” And the wife calls the husband her home. Nha toi means my house, my home. When a gentleman is asked “Where is your wife?” he will say, “My home is now at the post office.” (with a sweet chuckle) And if a guest said to the wife, “Your home is beautiful; who decorated it?” she would answer, “It’s my home who decorated it,” meaning, “my husband.” When the husband calls his wife, he says, “Nha oi,” my home. And she says, “Here I am.” Nha oi. Nha toi.

When you are in such a relationship, the other person is your true home. And you should be a true home for him or for her. First you need to be your own true home so that you can be the home of your beloved. We should practice so we can be a true home for ourselves and for the one that we love. How? We need the practice of mindfulness.

In Plum Village, every time you hear the bell, you stop thinking, you stop talking, you stop doing things. You pay attention to your in-breath as you breathe in and you say, “I listen, I listen. This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.” My true home is inside. My true home is in the here and the now. So practicing going home is what we do all day long, because we are only comfortable in our true home. Our true home is available, and we can go home every moment. Our home should be safe, intimate, and cozy, and it is we who make it that way.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Rich Land Between
—for Perrin

In a forest wilderness many years ago
you appeared to me, and I appeared to you —
two birds in separate trees singing to the sky.

We looked down to find the ground between us
illuminated by a story we wanted to live. I could
see it with your eyes, and you with mine.

Since then, we have explored the land between —
every crumb of earth, every stem golden by day,
withering by season, sprouting again and again

until it’s hard to tell where your song ends
and mine begins. The land between, crisscrossed
by our devotions, has revealed how in our life

the gifts are many, and the price is everything.

—Kim Stafford

#206 An Act of Love – A work of ART can help people understand the nature of their suffering, and have insight into how to transform . . . . Writing, making a film, (performing a play), creating a work of art can be an act of love. . . . that nourishes you and nourishes others. Michel sends a deep reflection on the effects of music – years of playing the piano- and a painting that he loved, gifted to him by a friend who loved to paint. “There was a time when one of the Group Dialogue member’s father came to play a cello for us. And the Oregon Poet Laureate, Kim Stafford, came to share his art. Each time the artist loved his art form. I believe also that each shared love with the audience for that brief session. Even our Theatre Troupe and directors (all of them) share not only love for this art form but are sharing love through it as well – both for us in prison and for our audience. . . . . What might our world look and feel like if we were more aware (open to) as both givers and receivers of art forms – of this opportunity to love one another deliberately?

#212 The Heart of life – Through accepting – even embracing impermanence I find hope. Hope helps endurance through the distresses of life. So I wish everyone a dose of hope to help bolster you through distress on your journey to luminescence. May you shine brightly as the stars revealing a way for others to find their hope too.

#217 Beyond Labels – As we move into 2022 I hope for everyone I know, past and present, that each learns to accept and release the hold of memories of past events as well as letting go of judgements of “now” going by moment by moment. May we each find love and freedom in our own right. And, may we share that love through understanding and compassion for our fellow travelers along the way as we learn to see the “other” as part of our own self, interconnected with the life we live now.

With love, to all

—Michel Deforge

#281 Loving Words — “Every time the other person does something well, we should congratulate him or her to show our approval. This is especially true with children….”

For seven or eight years in the mid-nineties I was a mentor in an at-risk youth program in Portland, OR. Our kids were each 14 yrs. old, ready to enter high school, and in danger of dropping out —doing drugs, skipping school, acting out, being promiscuous, failing at most everything. We had to work with parents (all of whom were behaving in pretty much the same way as their kids, except they had dropped out of school long before) as well as our youth.

My girl, let’s call her Amy, lived with her father. She was very bright; at 14 she did all the accounting for her dad’s used car sales business out on 82nd Av. (I’m sure he handled the side business of drug dealing accounts). She was affectionate and attentive with me. She had all the potential to be a strong and capable young woman.

Her dad, let’s call him Gerald, however, saw a different picture. When we met, with Amy sitting there, Gerald told me ‘the problem.’

“She’s a whore, just like her mother! She’ll never amount to anything, I guarantee you. She lies and can’t be trusted about anything. She sneaks out at night to be with men—all the time. She’s screwing off in school, when she goes, that is. Just like her mom, she’s dumb and she’ll drop out of school, I know it. Maybe be able to get a bartender job like her mom, if she’s lucky, but…”

I was so shocked to be hearing this, needless to say. I told him this was a different Amy than the one I knew. The girl I knew was extremely smart – didn’t she do the accounting for his business???- and she was caring and dependable, and a lovely girl. He couldn’t even hear me. He’d constantly go back to his well-practiced rant while Amy sat there stoney-faced and silent.

This went on for a couple months, with me politely (and carefully, given Gerald’s demonstrable anger and burly presence) defending Amy, until one evening when I stopped to pick up Amy for a meeting.

She was in tears, crying so hard I could hardly understand her. The gist was, Dad must be right, and you and I are wrong. I’m just going to give up; he’s so sure he knows me, so I must be that bad… or words to that effect.

I was speechless and stunned—but not for long. Gerald had gone out to his favorite biker bar. I knew where it was. Beyond furious, I sped out and spun my Honda into the lineup of a dozen Harleys with the ape-hanger bars. You know there’s that adrenalin thing where you can pick up a car by its bumper to save a child trapped under the wheel? Lifting a hundred times your weight as if it were a paper placemat? That’s the way I was: I barreled into the bar, spotted Gerald and charged over to him and his buddies. He looked up and started, “Hey, hey, what are you..?” But I grabbed him by the collar and jerked him backwards and bellowed, “Gerald, you are going to get out of here, and go home, and talk to your daughter! You are going to tell her that she’s a fine young woman, and she’s smart and talented and you are proud of her!!! I will be right there listening so you’d better say it really good, so that she believes you! GOT it?”

He started whining a little, but one of the guys mumbled, “Hey Jer, maybe you better go on home like the nice lady says…” I yanked his shirt again and barked, “Hear that??? Now move!”

I gave him a shove and out we went. And he went home and I listened to him tell his daughter that she was smart and helpful to his business. I glared at him, and he added, “And you’re a fine young woman …and I’m proud of you.”

Amy should’ve said, “That’s bull—-, Daddy and you know it.” But she didn’t; she threw her arms around him and told him she loved him.

That’s how easy it is with a child.

—Jude Russell

Voices in the Forest

Wind sighing in the trees, boughs rocking and
whispering a story, the world telling us who we are.
The world a song, and we sing with the wind
and trees, our voices trembling in the dark.
The sun lies down behind the trees in twilight
blue, stars shining, moonlight rippling rivers.
Birds call, squirrels and rabbits rustle
their way to bed. We sing to our babies—
You too, you too, time to sleep, the stars will watch,
close your eyes, the wind breathes our song—sleep, baby, sleep.
Owls awaken, wings whoosh overhead, feathers
a blanket, the sky a bed, we lie down with the wind

—Deborah Buchanan

Can the New Year really be a New Year?

The beginning of February is a New Year celebration – in Vietnam ( called Tet) as well as China and other east Asian countries. It is a celebration of the Lunar New Year.

Often we feel that a “new year” can provide us with a chance to begin anew with ourselves – to put into action our deepest aspirations, and to better care for ourselves and the world. However, many of us have also experienced that a new year does not automatically bring us closer to our aspirations.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us how to truly begin anew with ourselves. Below is a written excerpt from his talk, with guiding questions for your reflection:

Dear beloved community,

“To begin this year anew, we should reflect on these simple questions:
· What have I done during the year?
· Have I been able to produce feelings of joy and happiness during my days?
· Have I been able to take care of the painful feelings during the year?
· Have I been able to handle them, to calm them down, so that I will not be a source of suffering for myself and for other people?
With mindfulness, we can produce a feeling of joy whenever we want, because we are a practitioner. We can produce these feelings for ourselves, and everyone we love. Have we done that this year?
We can learn how to calm down painful feelings, and even transform them into something better, like compassion, friendship and forgiveness. Pain and pleasure are all organic, like love and hate. If we do not know how to handle love, it can turn into hate or anger. If we know how to handle hate and anger, we can turn it back into understanding and love. If we do not know how to handle painful emotions, we are going to repeat that in the new year, and the new year will not be very new.
The value of the year depends on the value of acting, of our way of life. With mindfulness, we can improve the quality of our life, of our days, our months, our years.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Winter Poem

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and I loved
it so much and I kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
I reached to love them all
and I squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and I stood perfectly
still and was a flower

—Nikki Giovanni

One of Thay’s favorite Meditations –

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower
Breathing out, I feel fresh.
Breathing in, I see myself as a Mountain
Breathing out, I feel solid.
Breathing in, I see myself as a Mountain Lake
Breathing out, I am calm and reflective.
Breathing in, I see myself as the Sky or Space
Breathing out, I feel free.

Three poems by Heather Cahoon

1.
Counter balance
To his curiosity
The magpie’s tail

2.
The shallow v-shape
Of conviction opens
Where wing becomes body

3.
Getting firewood:
Blaring chainsaws
Give way
To thurderous crashing
From the fallen trees
Black ants pour out
Like blood

—From Alex Tretbar

No day is ever the same, and no day stands still; each one moves through a different territory, awakening new beginnings. A day moves forward in moments, and once a moment has flickered into life, it vanishes and is replaced by the next. It is fascinating that this is where we live, within an emerging lacework that continuously unravels. Often a fleeting moment can hold a whole sequence of the future in distilled form: that unprepared second when you looked in a parent’s eye and saw death already beginning to loom. Or the second you noticed a softening in someone’s voice and you knew that a friendship was beginning. Or catching your partner’s gaze upon you and knowing the love that surrounded you. Each day is seeded with recognitions.

–John O’Donohue, from “To Bless the Space Between Us”

peace, love, happiness & understanding 1/20/22
2022-01-20 - 2022-02-23
Photo # 1 Yellowstone, August 28, 2018 (all photos by Abe Green)

THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding

January 20, 2022

Photo #2 Yellowstone, August 28, 2018

Photos 1 & 2

Yellowstone River (Paradise Valley). In 1806, the Core of Discovery, upon leaving Astoria area and re-entering Montana split up—with Lewis traveling via Marias and Missouri Rivers, and Clark the Yellowstone. I often bring DeVoto’s edition edition of Lewis & Clark Journals along on floats here to read aloud by campfire to my fishing friends.

Friends!

I feel like I’m a member of this fantastic community of humans engaged in the fine art of self-realization! Like Stretch Armstrong (remember him?), I’m trying to stretch myself beyond the social, cultural, and religious structures that permeate our modern world.

The big question is: “What the hell is really going on here?”

The big answer: Well, stay tuned. I know as I read the pages of peace, love, happiness & understanding and Meditation & Mindfulness Dialogue, listening to the discourse therein, that we are helping one another.

And we are going in a good direction. I read somewhere,

“Walk in a good direction, end up in a good place.”

I thank you all—staff, contributors, and readers. My spirit prospers as a result of your earnest endeavor to be authentic.

As a parting gesture, I would like to suggest two books that have had an influence on my thinking and how I do that thinking:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch

Peace and Wellness…

Abe Gren
2022

Photo #3 Northwest Montana

I see this often during Winter and Summer. The view is looking east into Glacier Park from the top of Whitefish Ski Area. In Summer you can ride the lift with your mountain bike, get the same scenery, and then trail ride down.

Photo #4 Spring Crocus with bee

Dew & Honey

Sip by sip in thimble cup
the meadow bees will drink it up
then ferry home to bounty’s hive
flower’s flavor, hum and thrive
to show us how through word and song
by gestures small and patience long
in spite of our old foolish ways
We may fashion better days.

So, my friend, come sip and savor
syllables as crumbs of pleasure—
by honor in each conversation
we begin a better nation.

—Singer Come from Afar by Kim Stafford

Photo #5 Storm over Fresno

Weather cell moving east after furious rain/hail storm at Fresno Dam (North Central Montana)

Rain

The Beauty in the rain is expressed
as wildflowers on the hillside.
The gift in the rain is accessible
as the bounty of our table.
Bemoan not the lack of sunshine
but rejoice in rain’s gift of life.
For without the rain you and I do not exist.

—From the Other Side: Poetry and Stories by Neall Ryon

Photo #6 Beartooth Mountains peak (South Central Montana)

Since you’re not merely a body, it is inestimable how much of the cosmos lies within the folds of your mind. I wonder if you know how much light, love, and peace you carry around.

—Love & Blessings: The Autobiography of Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati

Photo #7 Clouds over Bearpaw Lake (North Central Montana)

Nature offers up gifts of incredible beauty every day.But first we have to be there with eyes and heart wide open, to witness in order to receive these precious gifts. Doesn’t matter where you are: backyard, county road, mountains, city park, even a prison yard! They’re for everyone, with no barriers of color, gender, economics, or religion. She says, “Come one, come all.”

Photo #8 Hiking Glacier Park in August (Northwest Montana)

“If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness.”

Photo #9 Cutthroat Trout

I see in this fish, in the grass, in a bird, a tree, an ant, and in myself the identical notes and words of a song played and sung across the cosmos.

Photo #10 Reflection

All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. What we think and what we believe creates the experience we have in life. As sure as the cart follows the ox, we are what we think.

—Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, c. 520 BC

Photo #11 On Big Horn River (North Central Wyoming)

Finding delight in the moment, no matter what the circumstances! One of my most favorite photographs.

To be continued…

Abe sent 22 photographs, with accompanying texts. Look for the rest in the next issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding. (JS)
