Take a moment
to follow your breath.
Breathe in Peace,
Breathe out Love.
Breathe in Peace,
Breathe out Love.
Breathe in Love,
Breathe out Peace.
Breathe in Love,
Breathe out Peace.
Allow yourself to be nourished
and awakened by this simple
practice often.
from the book, Good Mother, Welcome
This month I’ve had the most astonishing rest. My family left to visit our relatives in Italy and I stayed home to work- what I have come to recognize as my own pattern of stockpiling and postponement. I’ve often pushed myself in production, with the self-made promise for pleasure and rest later, when all is done. Have you ever noticed that it’s a very rare day in which we find that all is done? In any case, before they left, my shoulder had been bothering me, and by the time my family had departed it was too painful to move my right arm. My body was declaring that it was time for a retreat. And since I was in pain management for the first week, and body compassion for the next, a retreat is what I had.
I couldn’t mow the lawn, so it became a beautiful field of yellow flowers. There were days when all I could do was take a blanket out onto it and lie there. One morning I was blessed to find myself living inside this poem by RUMI:
Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right-doing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each-other
don’t make any sense.
The I in the poem became the Infinite Presence, the you was me, and there we met.
Oh friends, I wrote poems; I rested; I began writing a new book. The days unfolded and so did I…
At the end of two weeks, when I was well enough to enjoy myself, but not to accomplish much with my arm (Still learning the art of being over doing…) I had house guests for a few days. What a joy it was to play with them- not to send them on their way while I worked… We went to the beach, we sauntered the trails, we swam, read, talked and laughed…
I wish you many summer splendors: friendship, beauty, harmony and rest.
When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise,
just an ordinary fellow
who has completed his work.
~P’ang Yun
English Version by Stephen Mitchell
To wander on Wednesdays;
To sit quietly
by the shoreline of stillness;
To drop my mind down
below the surface chatter -
The radio waves of thought
and their compulsive agitations:
The insult channel; the gossip channel;
the channel of panic and confusion.
To drop down into the
deep quiet from which
all wisdom comes.
To rest in awareness
of all that is here.
I do not long for more projects
or lists,
No more doing
or ideas for doing.
I only want this.
This.
The holy embrace of the day.
~Ingrid
(Special thanks to my dear friend Lori, who helped me take out my schedule and block out this time. Tell me friends, how do you make time and space for stillness, contentment, for belonging and for love?)
~