listening under water

from here to here

I’m listening to you speak of your pain
and what it’s saying to you. As my heart
aches the way a tree splits. And in the split,
I realize that an entire life—decades, a century
if blessed—all of it is a blink in the eye of the
Many-Named God who gifts us great love and
suffering, so that in the split and ache that stuns
us, we might know the full length of time and
how effort turns to grace: in the curl of a wave,
in the flap of a wing, in the first breath of a
child no one expected, in the last breath of
someone who saved us from ourselves, in the
dissolution of the clouds that mute our wonder.
And in that holy pause of heart, life starts again.
I’m listening with no way to convey how beauty-
fully ordinary we are. I just know, when bearing
witness this tenderly, everything matters. Impossible

as it seems, we fall like water from here
to here, giving our selves to everything
along the way.

…..Mark Nepo

like floating quietly downstream, hair falling behind, sky settling from above, current supporting from below….no sound, only waves of peace……

Richard Whittaker:

Socrates delivers people to the unknown, delivers them into question.
Jacob Needleman:
Absolutely. And that’s the liberation he brings. To really deepen a question puts you in touch with another part of yourself that your “answers” usually cover over; this is the freedom from the known, that Krishnamurti and others speak about. The great answer is also experienced as a question when a master delivers it to you. The known can be a slave driver.
The other main thing about Socrates is that he was concerned that a man, a woman, a human being needs to know himself—above all needs to take care of what he called the soul, take care of the true self. The first aim anyone should have was what he called “tending the soul.” Unless that’s your main aim, everything else will lead you astray. Those two things are part of where I think this theme, “The Unknown,” is leading. Take care of your true self, your true consciousness and divest yourself from the things you think you know, not only about the world, but about yourself. These two belong together.

….David Ulrich

finding wild

A reverence for life is a reverence for wilderness. A reverence for life beyond your control. Something you don’t dominate. That is the native habitat of new ideas. Of real humanity—to expose yourself to things beyond your control. And just ride out the consequences. That is what I seek and want to protect. Elements that are beyond our control.
……Doug Peacock