A Poetry Share

Naomi Shihab Nye – 1952-

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.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.

“Listening means forgetting yourself completely — only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening — you don’t listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes or no — but you are not listening. When you listen you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb.”
– Osho, The Transcendental Game of Zen

Slow down and take notice of every place in your life where a thank you could be just the recognition someone you know may need. Have you appreciated something someone has said or done but offered only a surface expression or nothing at all? Perhaps you let the thanks pass without verbalization. It’s not too late to say it now or to say your thanks at a much later date when it peeks out to be remembered. You can send thanks for something from years ago if it crosses your mind.

Say your thanks for things, for thoughtfulness, for listening, and for presence. Let yourself feel the resonance with anything large or small that reminds you to feel thankful and share that with others to let them know you appreciate them. Say your thanks with enthusiasm and love. Watch the people around you light up with being seen!

A poem from Mary Oliver:

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 your 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.

Presence does not have to look a walking meditation or a lotus position at a mindfulness retreat. Presence is a way of life that captures you many times each day, maybe even many times each hour!

I was eating lunch when the purple cabbage slaw juice met my cantaloupe. That’s all it takes for me! The colors individually and together. The little universe that lives within just that moment on my plate. That’s all it takes.

Beauty

Awareness

Be there, IN it- With it

Breathe

Striving in the sense of making a great effort towards something is not a bad or good thing; we often associate it with desirable character traits and outcomes.

Striving in the sense of struggle with the body, mind, or emotions can be a point for release. When striving produces an internal or external conflict, when you become at war with parts of your experience, then non striving and acceptance can be the path to relief. Even if what you face is bodily pain, sitting with the pain and accepting it for what it is may bring you a result you didn’t know was possible. This works in the mind and the emotions as well.

Becoming intimate with instead of avoiding is a practice in non striving. Coming home to your body, shining a light on your mind and emotions without judgement is a way to practice non striving. Allowing information to flow in, sitting with acceptance of whatever that looks like, and holding the space required is practice in non striving.

What in your day can be met with a shift to receive, allow, and let be?