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Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
First Crocus!
As the day follows night,
every winter is followed by spring.
Flowers bloom again, nectar filled,
to sip for new energy,
peace and well-being.
~Ingrid
from The Honey Sutras
Poem: When Joy Returns
When Joy returns from a long journey,
she is carrying a basket of wildflowers;
bread; grape jelly; a book of poems.
“I go sometimes,” she says,
“when I feel we have stopped conversing-
when your love and appreciation wane
and I become another forgotten thing.
I go and I have a good wander.
And then I come back.
You know I always will -
when you light the porch lantern;
offer a quiet prayer;
when you enter your own heart again
and find the field where I go for dancing.”
Softening Toward Sorrow
Ten Thousand Joys,
Ten Thousand Sorrows
Oh, happy living:
plant the seeds for flowers
and not for weeds;
tune the heart and mind toward joy-
and allow your sorrows
to visit when they come,
for this will make you whole.
The joyous life
isn’t a day in which
all sorrows disappear-
but one in which the
weight of your war
begins to soften
and melt away.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
I hope this poem doesn’t come across as too light in the face of the kind of sorrows many of us face every day. The poem, and the words below, occurred to me after speaking in an interview on joy. I felt afterward that I needed to give more space to the simple fact that, most of the time, life is not a bowl of roses, money or cherries… and that to expect, hope, or want it to be otherwise adds more suffering to one’s lifetime.
I’m not joyful all the time, (not radiantly cheerful and exuberant all the time), though joy is there, quietly present, in my life. I have worries and stresses just like everyone else. Today I felt a familiar pain that seems to be held deep in my right shoulder. “You again,” I found myself saying,”hello, you familiar ache.” I am learning as I get older to accept the existence of this ache as part and parcel of the human experience. If anyone ever promises you a formula for a pain or stress-free life, they are offering a life of delusion.
In all my years exploring joy, it was a freeing, liberating, and happy day when I learned that Buddhists teach that rather than try to control life, we instead learn to embrace the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows. A whole life, as it turns out, contains a balance of both, and learning to live with this truth eases a pressure some of us may place on ourselves or others through wishing otherwise. It is fine to appreciate and even hope for the joys of living. It is lovely to create a beautiful and loving life. It is also necessary to learn to accept, and perhaps even to trust the sorrows.
When we allow ourselves to feel our sorrows, they have a way of widening and deepening our experience of living. Through their instruction, we become more whole. This isn’t to suggest we go looking for sorrows- they will come of their own accord.
What I’m still learning is this: it is beneficial to tune the heart and mind toward joy- to plant the seeds for flowers and not for weeds, but we must do our best not to create extra suffering for ourselves and others through the striving, struggle, or disappointment which arise from the thought that life should have no sorrow.
The enlightened life isn’t a life in which all sorrows disappear- but one in which the weight of our resistance, our mental agitation, and our stubborn insistence that life be just the way we want it begin to soften and melt away. Rather than resist a concern, an ache, or a stress- rather than struggle against it, or repress it and wish it wasn’t there, we learn to lighten and to soften toward it. We aren’t passive toward it, nor are we a victim of it- we are willing to meet it. “You again,” we open, “have you come for conversation?”
Tending Joy, Journal Excerpts May 25th 2012
This morning I put the kettle on to boil and then headed out to the asparagus patch to harvest some of its skyward reaching shoots. Jonah and I have been spending a lot of time digging in the dirt this spring. He’s been teaching sustainability. I call it “restoring Eden.”
In the garden, much like everywhere, we don’t know what we are doing. We refer to books for advice and promptly forget their guidance. Standing amid the fertile weeds, we must forgive in advance our failings. It feels like the only way to proceed is to call this not toil but surrender; not labor but opportunity. Anything is possible here. Surely something will grow.
On my way to the asparagus, I pop a single red strawberry into my mouth. I used to save these sweet offerings for the children, feeling double delight in their pleasure. Now that they are grown, I’m learning, once again, how to please myself. I’m surprised that this is a work in unraveling and not simply second nature.
The strawberries are ripening one a day so far, each a sacramental offering to hold on the tongue in communion. Yes, if we relied on this crop we would starve. And yes, if we weren’t thankful for every humble thing, we would also starve.
What do I know of joy ~
except it is a word that I have savored?
A word so much like God,
full of promise and tender relating.
What do I know of Joy,
except it is a gift that I have opened
to find the forgiveness, wonder and welcome
that breathe life into my life?
Next week I will speak to a class on the presence and practice of joy. Today I feel I can’t do this. I have so little to say. For the Greeks, the word Joy is Char, from the word Charis, which means grace. What do I know, then, of grace, except the lovely way it slips in and holds us when we rest in our own unknowing. So I might say,
Get wise:
Give up wisdom.
Give up thinking that
you should always know
what to do; what to say;
what is skillful
or even best.
Humble yourself
until you can enjoy
your own curious and frail
human being.
Feel how freeing
this actually is.
Sure, celebrate your triumphs,
but also, see if you can love
the tender place of unknowing.
Accept how vulnerable you are-
how possible it is
to be wrong, confused,
imperfect and adored.
~
Why do I love, as much as anything, a bowl of apples, a wooden spoon?
~
Savoring the Moments
The weather was so generously beautiful here last Sunday that I had a little walk along the Vineyard Haven Harbor before watching Bella’s soccer game. This boat reminded me of my poem, ONE THOUSAND EVENINGS MORE- a poem that hopes to remind us to savor the preciousness of life. The better half of me writes these poems…the other half forgets… and then feels grateful when remembering comes.
One Thousand Evenings More
What if we had
one thousand evenings more
to step into
like a small boat
waiting at the dock,
or a blank page
and the most exquisite pen in hand
to write the sun dipping hot flames
into the western sea,
the moon and stars rising,
and not have such words sound empty
like the straws on the broom as it sweeps
those last remnants of life
from the room we’ll leave behind?
And what if we had
one thousand evenings more
to walk in the woods,
to share a glass of wine,
to ask our friends
from where their happiness comes…
…to reinvent ourselves as lovers,
forgetting all we’ve learned,
even all that we’ve forgotten?
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
from the book, What Holds Us, New and Selected Poems
I have been loosening some of my “shoulds” lately… that I should be more, do more or have more before I be permitted to breathe deeply of the fresh air, or put my face in the sun, or feel joy tingling in my veins. I hope that you have been too! This world is too beautiful for us to be distracted with the unnecessary, the unkind, the unloving, ungenerous or unimaginative.
Thank you all for your loving comments of late, you have been, to borrow the phrase from another, like “wind beneath my wings.” I feel very nourished, encouraged and healed by your presence in my life. Thank you!