compassion

Beauty in Broken Things

/ LaNell / 2 Comments

There is a beauty in broken things.  The Japanese call it Wabi Sabi.  I call it life.  

The imperfect nature of each of us gifts us with unique ways to see the world and express ourselves for the benefit of everyone.  When we add our uniqueness to the whole, we create openness within ourselves and within the world for even more expression, creation, and compassion.

No matter who we are or how long we live, each of us contributes to the ever-expanding consciousness where our ancestors live.  Someday, we, too, will be called ancestors.  Let us be worthy of the prayers and pleadings.  Let us pave the way for our descendants to live their own lives of free will.  

We can start this daunting task with a simple understanding.  

Understand that the shattered pieces of our broken hearts, minds, and bodies shine like prisms.  Every new crack brings a brighter light.

Our brokenness does not stop us from seeing beauty and being beauty herself.  In fact, it is the reason beauty exists and is seen at all.  Imperfections may be precisely why we see so differently than everyone else.  These are gifts that need to be shared.  

Our imperfections have the power to give us compassion for all life – if we can love this brokenness within ourselves.  Compassion that can change the world must begin within and for ourselves.  

Life on this planet is short-lived; each being is a different expression of creation and consciousness, whether a flower, a rock, a human, or another animal.  It is imperative to share your uniqueness and your way of seeing and speaking with the world.

For what other reason have you been created?

video of poem

The Two-Headed Calf

By Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature,

They will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother.

It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard,

The wind in the grass.

And as he stares into the sky,

There are twice as many stars as usual.

A note to readers: I have increasingly been writing about consciousness, cosmos, and spirituality. For that reason, I have a new blog called anahatanada.online. If that is of interest to you, please check it out.

With gratitude,

LaNell

Is It Possible?

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  1. Is it possible, I wonder, to be whole in our spiritual lives without being intimate with death?  Is it possible to truly be at one with Spirit and with our own sacredness without healing this fear of physical death?  Isn’t death part of the divine Möbius strip of creation and dissolution and creation? 
  2. How can I set on fire my passion for Spirit and the divine without this healing?  Otherwise, won’t my ability to live my true purpose be subverted by this fear of death?  Death of loss.  Loss of those I love. Loss of a job, a home, a future.  Death comes in many forms and our fear may just be derailing our true expression.
  3. Perhaps the only way to heal this fear is to become intimate with it and to truly let ourselves feel the feelings that arise when we see it in our own lives or the lives of others.  Too often we numb ourselves by staring at our screens or indulging in food or substances that dull our feelings.
  4. What if instead, we allowed ourselves to sink down into the darkness of our grief?  What if we gave ourselves that gift? Or what if we held someone else’s hand as they sat in their own darkness?  What would emerge from the darkness? 
  5. Perhaps an open heart would flower.  Or compassion for ourselves.  A conversation with Spirit.  What might come from the ashes of this burning? 

THE HOLY LONGING

I praise what is truly alive,

What longs to be burned to death.

A strange feeling comes over you

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught

in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making

sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,

now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced

this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth.

~ Goethe, trans. Robert Bly

Blessing for Coming Home to an Empty House

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I realized that I had not posted much lately. I am in the homerun stretch of graduating from the apprenticeship program at The Guild for Spiritual Guidance, which has carried me through the last two years in community and love. After this Sunday, I will be a graduate and will dive deep into my writing and sharing with you here in this space. I very much look forward to posting more.

In the meantime, I came across this poem by Jan Richardson. I hope it brings you comfort.

Blessing for Coming Home to an Empty House

I know
how every time you return,
you call out
in greeting
to the one
who is not there;
how you lift your voice
not in habit
but in honor
of the absence
so fierce
it has become
its own force.

I know
how the hollow
of the house
echoes in your chest,
how the emptiness
you enter
matches the ache
you carry with you
always.

I know
there are days
when the only thing
more brave than leaving
this house
is coming back to it.

So on those days,
may there be a door
in the emptiness
through which a welcome
waits for you.

On those days,
may you be surprised
by the grace
that gathers itself
within this space.

On those days,
may the delight
that made a home here
find its way to you again,
not merely in memory
but in hope,

so that every word
ever spoken in kindness
circles back to meet you;

so that you may hear
what still sings to you
within these walls;

so that you may know
the love
that dreams with you here
when finally
you give yourself
to rest—

the love
that rises with you,
stubborn like the dawn
that never fails
to come.

—Jan Richardson

Bare

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This feeling of grief after a loss, I feel is a sacred time. I have vowed to let myself feel the depths of this pain. To sink down into the wisdom of this darkness. It is an ebb and flow of dark and light. And what we bring back into the world can be a healing balm, a calm acceptance, a way of walking gently on the Earth and loving this transitory life.

“No, it’s not emptiness that is felt now that you are gone from this world. What is felt is the fullness of your absence. A space laid bare, pregnant with the light of your humor,

The light of your love,

The light of your soft breath,

Your light,

You,

Light.”

Photo by Olya Kobruseva on Pexels.com

Kindness

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When I first heard this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, I viscerally felt the truth of it in my body. The truth I felt is that great suffering is the door through which kindness enters and becomes the only thing that makes sense in this world. Kindness to each other, the earth, animals, every living thing.

The one line that stopped my eyes on the page, and that I kept going back to over and over again is the line about the Indian in a white poncho being dead on the side of the road. I thought, why this line in such a beautiful poem? What does this mean?

Even though we walk through life thinking we have time, things like this won’t happen to me, I must admit to myself, that really, it can all be over in an instant. This man on the side of the road could be any of us on any given day. So what matters most in this transitory world? Where life ebbs and flows, in and out of existence? I wonder if Naomi Shihab Nye might have found the answer.

Click the picture for the video or read the poem below.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

The Witchery of Living

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A poem by Mary Oliver. This is an excerpt from that poem. I plan on uploading a video of the whole poem in the near future, but I find this section particularly meaningful at this time in my life.

Click the picture for the video or read below.

To Begin With, The Sweet Grass

Mary Oliver

The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
   still another.

Night Work

/ LaNell / 1 Comment

Yesterday, I lost a beloved pet to cancer. Today, I walk in the dark world of grief. It is becoming a well-worn path. Yet, I know that it is necessary to be fully engaged with my feelings and to let them come to the surface in order for them to shift into something that will help me in this world. And something that will lead me back to a deeper love for another.

I know I am not alone in feeling grief in these times. So, I want to share with you a short excerpt from the book by Francis Weller, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow.” He is an elder of our times who understands and teaches about the sacredness of grief.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

Click below for the video.

Excerpt from The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Prescription for the Disillusioned

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Too often, we only have indifference, neglect, or even contempt for ourselves. Yet it is self-compassion that opens our hard shells to new beginnings and out of the illusion of futility. It is imperative in these times that we show ourselves the compassion we wish others would show to the suffering. Who among us is not suffering at times and who among us is not worthy of compassion?

Click the picture for the video or read below.

Prescription for the Disillusioned

by Rebecca del Rio

Come new to this day.
Remove the rigid overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud your vision.

Leave behind the stories of your life.
Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.

Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty,
the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you,
new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.

– Rebecca del Rio