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Vineyard Beauty
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The Infinite
I continue to learn new tricks- click above to listen to my song, The Infinite.
I wrote this song many years ago shortly after having a miscarriage. The day of the loss, Jonah and I drove out to Lucy Vincent and sat on a rock, watching and listening to the waves come in. While the ocean couldn’t explain for us why, or what for, we did find its presence comforting.
The Infinite
The Infinite is my Beloved,
this ocean is my reminder.
And I’ve walked this shore restless,
near a thousand times,
my head full of measurements, my soul divided.
The green waves that rush in and back again,
wind in the dune grass, million grains of sand,
crickets at dusk, stars in the night sky,
all call me back to my love.
They sing, “You are not the sum of your suffering,
you are not all that you have done.
you are not even the thoughts that you think.
You and we are one.”
When I bring my sadness to the sea,
and I look to the horizon.
From where I stand to eternity,
everything’s so beautiful.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
From the album, Savor The Days
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On my way to vote this morning, I stopped by Lucy Vincent Beach. It was serenely beautiful, with the most gentle waves caressing the shore. I invite you to watch this video, and imagine the fretting of your mind being soothed, and your natural well-being restored. It works for me!
The Tug of Autumn
At noon I stood in stillness
amidst a cathedral of browning oaks~
chin up, mouth agape, watching
leaves languish from the trees.
It was raining and the tug of autumn
was surely here.
I would like to be wiser, calmer,
more at home in the world.
I’d like to give my days
the delighted artfulness
of courtship, merging, lingering,
bearing witness, offering praise.
I want to hold what holds us.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
Lately I’ve been considering this question from the Zen poet Ryokan, “If you point your cart north when you want to go south, how will you arrive?” I think I might do this often- second guessing myself, my deepest calling- trading in the inconceivable for the conceivable, which is often too small. Does this ever happen to you?
I’ve been doing a bit of walking lately, and asking myself some good hard questions, like “Is it God I converse with on my trail, or my own wide and mysterious life?” and “Is it a visitation I wait and long for, or the awakening of an awareness?” Must a distinction be made? Must I choose? Could it be both/and?
These kinds of questions prompt two desires: the first is to escape into the arms of a lovely sleep. And the second is to lean into the mystery, and see how I am held.
Today I awoke
into a poem.
Everywhere I look,
another verse emerging.
Glint of sun, shimmering leaf,
dusty road along the woodlands.
If I feel a moment of sadness,
I will allow myself to feel sadness.
If I feel a moment of merriment,
I’ll give thanks for this as well.
It seems that I
can do nothing
to stop this poem
from unfolding.
~~~~~~~
I wrote the above poem as I was beginning to feel a new energy flow into my life. Rose has been away at college for a few weeks, and I must admit I built much of my world around her (and Jonah and Bella.) As with a break-up or separation, it’s quite an unravelling- quite an adjustment in the Mothering journey to have a child venture from the nest. She seems to be doing very well. And I am doing much better. In the first week I was surprised by how I would be overcome with emotion at any moment. There was no sense in repressing this- it felt very necessary and life affirming to let it move through my body. With the poem below, I invite you- I offer tender permission- to let some of your own sorrows out.
Sometimes We Must Let the Weeping Come,
to bring its soft relief
like a dry summer’s rain;
a small brook flowing
amid the reaching ferns.
Sometimes to confess
the sadness we’ve been holding
makes way for a lightness again,
or at least the hint of an opening.
If the heart, like a cup, is too full,
we must spill some sorrows out ~
to make room for the possible gift
of something new, or fresh, or healing.
WOMEN’S RETREAT ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD ~ November 12-14th 2010
If you are longing for a weekend of renewal, refreshment, inquiry, sisterhood, and a lot of wonderfulness in between, check out this women’s retreat that I will be co-facilitating with Anne Colangeli and MJ Bindu Delekta. We will gather at MJ’s Sacred Circle of Yoga, and allow the weekend to unfold as it will, depending on what our hearts yearn for.
Connect to your deepest self through yoga, poetry, laughter, play and relaxation…
Life has Loveliness to Sell song and slide show ~ This is a pretty Sarah Teasdale poem which I sang on my album Savor the Days. I used pictures from my blog, mostly of the Vineyard, for the slide show.
This post is inspired by a quotation I clipped from the top of the Vineyard Gazette newspaper, and which I have had pinned to my wall for many years as wonderful words to live by:
To let no bird fly past unnoticed… to have the mind a storehouse of sunsets,
requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.
~G.K. Chesterton
Here are a few summer photographs from life here on the Vineyard, mixed with quotations from my One Hundred Fortunes Collection.
We are not separate from Being. We are in it. ~Plotinus
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
D.H. Lawrence
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. ~Goethe
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau
In every human being, there is a special heaven
whole and unbroken.
~Paracelsus
At the center of your being you have the answer.
You know who you are
and you know what you want.
~Lao Tzu
The only wealth is life.
~Henry David Thoreau
There is a lotus on our fishpond. In the morning, it opens its petals to drink in the sun. In the evening, it folds its petals in again, like hands in prayer.
This has helped me to consider the naturalness of my own rythms- how I open my petals sometimes, and how I fold them in when it is time to rest.
Rose and I visited Blackwater Pond the other day. The water lilies were magnificent. The pond stretched out with such peaceful being, and birds poured out their music. We are so grateful to the Martha’s Vineyard Landbank for preserving pockets of beauty throughout the island for all of us to enjoy.
