rumiquote

o this is so my life. here and now.


Love flies without limits.
Cuts through all veils.
Rejects the life you knew without looking back.
Gives up on feet entirely -- much too slow!
Sees right through appearances.
Ignores obsession and addiction.
My soul remembers its source:
I was in the potter's hands while
he mixed clay and water --
a new home for me, I think.
The kiln is hot. I'm trying to escape!
Willing, unwilling -- what does it matter?
No longer resisting, I get kneaded and molded,
just like every other lump of clay.

--Rumi

re: juvenation

For...Raven...continued healing, continued journey.
And hope you'll forgive a bit of plagiarized correspondence.

from left ocean's edge
from renewed acquaintance with abundance
you wrote of time and you stretched out together
catching up with yourselves again
loosing hours and expectations
breathing sweet oceanic ions
watching kids and flowers blooming
on their own mysterious calendars

your reach for consciousness
so consistent and commendable and alive
always stretching in and upward for advances
but these tides do have their ebb
necessary regression to bring up
new life from unseen depths
and Love might ask us now and then
to go in over our heads, right,
only for the deepening of our hearts?

you also wrote about showing kindness
to those kids, as to yourself
I titled a reply "re:juvenation"
then saw the word wake and arc into
its playful sleeping components
not only "to recover" or "recharge"
but also "to become young again"
what a miracle
time's neither one-way nor unstoppable

here's to now being wise and wide and spacious
time in all ways open, so much more than linear
here's to finding that sweet secret again
and letting it stretch luxurious into all it loves

time does seem to be playing with us now
draw us backward with its unexpected tidings
lose us in spacious intermissions
making and unmaking, growing us young
slowing when we think it should accelerate
and also, joyfully, the opposite
inviting us back to when we
didn't know too much
returning us to beginnings
and -- such grace --
beginnings to us

2 links to the good work

Two links to my Portland lifetime that I wanted to share. Both of these blogs are clear and articulate windows onto the life of the Catholic Worker movement, and perhaps how it fits into the larger realm of justice, anti-militarism and peace work. I'm so glad these guys are out there!

http://www.catholicworkerportland.blogspot.com/
http://hastingsnonviolence.blogspot.com/

elevating craigslist

Okay, I'll be honest: this was a late-night, split-two-six-packs conversation (and the others can drink a lot more than I can). But I think we've got something here. My sister, her travelling companion and I were talking about all the improvements we'd make if we could hijack craigslist for a day, just for fun, and take its already-useful categories of communication and connection to the next level. Incite people to think about where our shared potential could take us if we really got outside of our shared boxes.

I know some like to laugh at craigslist. And sure, plenty of the site's readers use it less-than-intelligently. To further their own shallow wishes, petty rants, and stuck-in-the-material perspectives. But surely there are many of us out here who also see its potential for collective progress. It's already a beautiful expression of the anarchist/personalist paradigm: let's ask each other directly for the things or the help that we need. Let's get free of our structures, of hierarchy, of money. And we could get even more free together, if we took the conversation further into Reality in all its aspects. Explore mystery. Practice radical honesty. Disarm with humor. Share wisdom, intuition, dreams, and other forms of travel.

So here are just a few of our ideas. Some in fun and some sincere. Wanna add any more to the list?

women seeking unavailable men (or women)
low-confidence men seeking critical women
strictly codependent (for those ready to be honest about it)
life swap (my unfulfilling 9-to-5 for your starving artist struggle...)
gratefully-missed connections ('you have no idea how lucky we are that we didn't meet!')
alternate realities (a discussion forum, a travel share?)
dreamshare (a forum, or a search for partners in lucidity?)
can you help a fellow human out? (not with money, but insights, connections, or introductions)
free ideas (outgrown perspectives, unneeded anxieties, crackpot theories)
listening volunteers (I have time to hear you out unconditionally; let's meet up!)
blessings and affirmations (a counterpart to 'rants and raves')
misplaced objects (a forum for locating all those odd items you lost when you moved out of your last apartment)
will barter for love (enter your suggestion here)

quote

(The crazy philosopher/genius Mr. Saramago does not use punctuation or line breaks in his dialogues. I have added these to make this taste of him a little easier to process.)


"'Does that mean that something could still happen?'

'Not just something, everything.'

'I don't understand.'

'It's only because we live so sunk in ourselves that we don't notice that what is actually happening to us leaves intact, at every moment, what might happen to us.'"

-- Jose Saramago, All The Names

eviction

What's the opposite of "invocation"? A sending away rather than a summoning? That's the intention here. And these words aren't for any person, but for the leftover critic voices that stay after the people leave. Those residual carcinogenic energies shared by all the people in my life who ever thought it was their place to judge or categorize or find me not good enough. I'm just sick and tired - really - of giving these voices free rent in my head. Maybe "eviction" is the type of prayer I'm looking for here?


You
have
no power
over me

and you are overrated
but neither am I over you
thanks to your too long overstaying
your already tenuous welcome

you do not make me
the same Love makes and
unmakes us both
in the arms of infinity
without reservation
and you will not make me any less
any more

you never knew me
as I am known
by the One All
by the knowing completeness
by the beautiful Unity of Love
you thought it fine
to appraise a broken shard of me
to undo and uncomplete me
to take me, apart
to analyze and separate me from my Source

enough this taking liberties
that were never yours
they're my liberties
enough borrowing voices
not yours to begin with
you're no deity or even guru
or even friend
enough obstructing Life
which never finishes with us
I recreate myself and am
re-created entirely
Love and Mercy never stop their
vast creative liberation

damn this condemnation
banish all this separation
sweep away this alienation
would you just let me BE
bless the embracing regeneration
that speaks peace in every moment new
including if you'd let it
to you too
I let it count me IN
imperfect and in transit as I am
and I will not let you count me
any more

and from that grace alone
I say go
but also may you truly
rest
in
peace