Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.  Mary Oliver                                                          We often try to enter into any creative process by narrowing as we go in, hoping to damp down the consequences of anything we might come across. What would it be like to widen as we go in, and have all the parts of us, especially the parts of us that we feel are not successful or could never be successful, go in together? In simple terms, to build a facility for self-compassion? - David Whyte David Whyte tells us there is a teaching story out of the Northwest Native American tradition that would be told by an elder to a young girl or boy who asked the question, "What do I do when I am lost in the forest?" In other words, "What do I do when I've lost my creative fire?" which is really, "What do l do when I forget who I am?" It has been rendered into modern English in a marvelous way by David Wagoner. Here is the answer the elder gives: Lost Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers. I have made this place around you. If you leave it you may come back again. saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you. You art surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you. - David Wagoner         Growing Good Corn There was a farmer who grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors. "How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked. "Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn." He is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves. So it is in other dimensions. Those who choose to be at peace must help their neighbors to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all. The lesson for each of us is this: if we are to grow good corn, we must help our neighbors grow good corn. - Author Unknown                         Tomorrow’s Child What is hope? It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe - That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual - and in a miraculous and unexplained way, life is opening up creative events which will open the way to freedom and resurrection. But the two – suffering and hope – must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair. But, hope without suffering creates illusions, naiveté and drunkenness. So let us plant dates - even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. That is the secret discipline. It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved by our need for immediate sense experience and it is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints, the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hopes. - Ruben Alves In response to the Mexican Revolution.

The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save.  Mary Oliver          The Sun Have you ever seen  anything  in your life  more wonderful  than the way the sun,  every evening,  relaxed and easy,  floats toward the horizon  and into the clouds or the hills,  or the rumpled sea,  and is gone--  and how it slides again  out of the blackness,  every morning,  on the other side of the world,  like a red flower  streaming upward on its heavenly oils,  say, on a morning in early summer,  at its perfect imperial distance--  and have you ever felt for anything  such wild love--  do you think there is anywhere, in any language,  a word billowing enough  for the pleasure  that fills you,  as the sun  reaches out,  as it warms you  as you stand there,  empty-handed--  or have you too  turned from this world--  or have you too  gone crazy  for power,  for things?  Mary Oliver        The Well of Grief Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. - David Whyte                                               You are what your deepest desire is. As is your desire, so is your intention. As is your intention, so is your will. As is your will so is your deed. As is your deed, so is your destiny. - A quote from the Upanishads.   Beautiful words to live by Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. You were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others. - Nelson Mandela   Conversing with Nature Smile with the flowers and green grass. Play with the birds and the deer. Shake hands with the ferns and twigs. Talk to the rainbow, wind, stars and the sun. Converse with the running brook and the waves of the sea. Develop friendship with all your neighbors, Dogs, cats, trees and flowers. Then you will have a wide, perfect and full life. -Swami Sivananda Saraswati           The Cracked Pot A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole, that he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the House, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of it's own imperfection. And miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you. I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said. The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw. So, I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house. Moral: Each of us has our own unique flaws. We're all cracked pots. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are, and look for the good in them. Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. Remember to appreciate all the different people in your life. Blessings to all my cracked pot friends.           I slept and dreamed that life was joy I woke and saw that life was duty I acted and found that duty was joy -Rabindranath Tagore