Stand Still - David Wagoner

Stand still.
The trees ahead and the 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 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 bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let if find you.

David Wagoner
original title: "Lost"

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Way to The Woods - Wendell Berry

Sabbath 1985. V

[.....]

What is the way to the woods, how do you get there?
By climbing through the 6 day's field,
kept in all the body's years, the body's
sorrow, weariness, and joy.
By passing through the narrow gate
on the far side of that field
where the pasture grass
of the body's life
gives way
to
the high, original
standing of the trees.
By coming into the shadow,
the shadow of the grace of the strait
way's ending, the shadow of the mercy
of light...

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come in among these trees you must leave behind
the six day's world,
all of it,
all of its plans
and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool,
alone,
expecting nothing,
remembering nothing...

Wendell Berry
Excerpt from: A Timbered Choir

with thanks to Love Is A Place

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Rain Talk - Thomas Merton

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,
in the forest, at night, cherished by this
wonderful, unintelligible,
perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world.
the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,
and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.

Thomas Merton

with thanks to The Beauty We Love
and photo too...

~

As I recall we haven't had rain in months - I miss the sound,
the smell, the comfort...  And we have yet to see our first
snowfall this season.  Very late...  Very dry...  No rain talk...

 

What Can I Say - Mary Oliver

 What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinished story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until it ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

Mary Oliver
from her anthology - Swan

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Aspen leaf floating in a creek

Into The Forest Alone...

"The Forest" traditionally is a threshold symbol of entering
the unknown, the deeper nature, or the spiritual world.  In
fairy tales it usually represents a passage though difficulties
and an opportunity for "transformation" of some kind.  I also
see it as a sanctuary, refuge, a place of deepening.  This
entering the "Dark Forest" happens sometimes when I have
lost (intentionally or otherwise) the framework which gives
structure to my life, when I must find my own way, and be
true to the call of Self,  Shamans, poets, holy men and women
sought refuge in the forest, as a healing place.  Going into
The Forest represents a return to the Primordial Self - beyond
societal, cultural, conceptual and spiritual frameworks.  In a
way, it is like returning to the child's heart of innocence -
just following the longing of the Heart once again; trusting
that I will emerge from "The Dark Forest" with clarity.  As a
child I often went into the forest next to our house as a place
just to sit, to listen and commune with nature, and write
poetry.  It was a place of directly experiencing what I knew
then to be "God."  Now known by other names...

And, since I don't have a "Dark Forest" handy, and I am spooked
by the things that go bump in the night, my Forest will have to
be that interior space of Silent Awareness - navigating the inner
Forest of the Unknown - as well as the unknown difficult
practicalities of everyday living.

I am willing, I say inwardly, to enter the Unknown - the Forest.
To trust Intuition to take me through.  I am ready to step over
the threshold and see where the Unknown takes me...

Care to join me :)  Are you willing...

~

"The familiar horizon has been outgrown;
the old concepts, ideals,
and emotional patterns no longer fit.
The time for the passing of a threshold
is at hand.

You enter the forest at the darkest point,
where there is no path.
Where there's a way or a path,
it is someone else's path;  each human being
is a unique phenomenon.

The idea is to find your own way..."

Joseph Campbell

~

Midway upon the journey of life
I found myself within a dark forest,
for the straightforward pathway
had been lost...

Dante Alighieri
The Inferno

~

Also see my post The Pathless Path

The Forest Knows - Wagoner and Berry

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 bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

David Wagoner
From "Lost"

~*~

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirrings become quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it.  As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Wendell Berry
"I Go Among Trees"

The Way to the Woods - Wendell Berry & Ivan Granger

Sabbaths 1985, V

[…..]

“What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?

By climbing through the six days’ field,
kept in all the body’s years, the body’s
sorrow, weariness, and joy.
By passing through the narrow gate
on the far side of that field
where the pasture grass
of the body’s life
gives way
to
the high, original
standing of the trees.
By coming into the shadow,
the shadow of the grace of the strait
way’s ending, the shadow of the mercy
of light…

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come in among these trees you must leave behind
the six days’ world,
all of it,
all of its plans
and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool,
alone,
expecting nothing,
remembering nothing…”

Wendell Berry
Excerpt from: A Timbered Choir

Something so healing, so earthly — in the most sanctified sense — in this Sabbath meditation by Wendell Berry.

His phrases of the “six days’ world” and the “six day’s field” are references to how we see the world and interact with the world on all the other days of the week, the non-Sabbath days. In the “six days’ world” we work, we do, we accomplish, we acquire. Often it is a world of control and burdens, “plans and hopes.” It is a world of objects and tools to manipulate those objects. Too often it is a world of domination and separation.

An essential reason for the Sabbath is to remind us that that “six days’ world” is not the real world nor is it the whole world, it is only one way of interacting with the world. When we take a true day of rest, and enter a majestic space not made by men — like the ancient, silent woods — we remember that we participate in a larger life, eternal, eternally recycling itself. We are reminded that there is a wholeness to the world we live in, something we can’t segment and sell without harm to ourselves. The Sabbath, the woods, the wilds, these remind us of the sacred, whole, eternal spaces within the human spirit. In true rest and quiet awe, we return to ourselves.

Ivan Granger at Poetry Chaikhana


http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/

Twilight Moon...

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here…

…The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers…

I have made this place around you.
If you leave it,
you may come back again,
saying Here…

Stand still.
The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you…


David Wagoner
Excerpt From: “Lost”
To read the complete poem click here

I walk the maze of moments,
and everywhere I turn to
begins a new beginning
and never finds a finish.

I walk to the horizon,
and there I find another.
It all seems so surprising,
and then I find I know –

Anywhere Is…

Enya
Lyrics from: Anywhere Is

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone…

…To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy
of your surroundings.

Surely…you have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence…crowding out your solo voice…

Put down the weight of your aloneness…
The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink,
the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness
and seen the good in you at last.
All birds and creatures of the world
are unutterably themselves.

Everything is waiting for you…


David Whyte
Excerpt From: Everything Is Waiting For You…
To read the complete poem click here

“At some point there has to be a direct apprehension.
It’s about a visceral taste of this living event…

This is what “being in the Now” is all about.
When the focus on thought stories subsides,
the living happening reveals itself.
There’s just a happening happening -
shifting modulations of a great event.

Clear seeing…..simply reveals what is always
already the case.
It soon dawns that whatever is occurring
in whatever state
is nothing other than a modulation of Life’s creative play.”


Radical Tao

The Matrix of the Practical - A Plumbing Story

No, these are not my new “prayer flags”, although I probably need to get some and string them around the house. These towels are a sign that I’ve been caught in the matrix of the practical the past 2 weeks. And it wasn’t pretty. :) And you thought I had disappeared into the Forest, living a contemplative life. Needless to say, I have not stepped over that threshold yet…

The story begins with a plumbing back up in the kitchen sink on the afternoon of Nov. 5th, a Saturday. Dear Hubby tried to ream out the pipes to no avail, which meant we were without a functioning sink until the plumber came that Monday. So I washed dishes in the shower. :) The plumber successfully reamed out the kitchen pipe that runs under the basement floor, but it took 4 times – as we stood there with visions of having to dig up the basement. There was a clump of roots attached to the end of his reamer. Oh-oh. THEN, he discovered a leak coming down the basement wall at the site of the kitchen drain pipe. Oh dear. Not being “financially stable” at this point (as the Cricket job ended as quickly as it began because certain crickets couldn’t harmonize with each other – chirp) we opted to not have the plumber fix that, as DH said that *he* could fix that. Wifey :) didn’t believe it, but what can one do but to humor DH, and stay out of the way… So for two days DH tackled the job of finding and repairing the leaky pipe.
The dishwasher stood in the middle of the kitchen floor for two days. DH found a crack in the main kitchen drain pipe, right at floor level. And of course the pipe was not a straight line down to the basement. There was a 3 foot section of pipe that had elbows and turns in it to navigate the foundation. He cut out that section and took it to the local HD store. The handy men there told him to use a certain type of plumber’s “glue” – a thick, black, sticky substance – t0 seal up the crack. It worked! I amazingly maintained equanimity most of the time, with a few moments here and there of – what if you can’t fix it! He assured me he could. Oh me of little faith.

Six days later the sewer drain in the basement backed up at 11pm on Sunday night. Photo not available – you wouldn’t want to see it anyway. During the night the furnace went out and we woke up cold. Great – one more thing. My husband said the two were not related. By now I am turning into Eeyore, the poor-me little donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh, with more oh-dears, oh-no’s and what ifs, and how are going to ppppppaaayyyyy for th-th-this... Brain went into stress mode – biologically. The old neural pathways kicked in and I started functioning on automatic mode, the body contracted into a hard ball of anxiety and numbness. I would have liked to have made a different choice here, but I was unable to turn into the laughing Buddha – to see that it was my mind that was contracting around the event, creating stories. DH reminded me that I had become trapped in “the matrix of the practical” – as he coined it – only focusing on the practical problems and not the bigger picture. I had become trapped by my own mental matrix, and sitting in Silence in “The Forest” was the furthest thing from my mind – because – my mind had become entangled. And somewhere in the mental matrix there is still a belief in a separate sense of self that still feels threatened by life’s happenings – blocking the flow of Life through my “pipes.”

So – to continue - furnace guy and plumber guy arrive late Monday morning – fortunately not together. Furnace guy fixes furnace. Thankfully it is under warranty. Plumber guy, not so lucky. This time he reams out the outside access to the main sewer line to the house and can’t find the problem. So he calls the manager plumber with the special fiberoptic camera that looks into pipes. But *he* could not come until Tues at 11am, which turned into Noon. Meantime – no flushing the toilets and no running the water. Campers we are not. Maybe I need to rethink this sojourn into the Forest.

Tuesday camera guy finds the problem: tree roots in a 25 foot section of the main line in five different places. (We have two huge Cottonwoods, and a Walnut tree just a few feet from the house whose roots have infringed on the line.) So he ordered a “Jetter;” a plumber’s version of the “big guns” – a rooter with a cone shaped tip that shoots out forceful streams of water that cut through the roots. “Jetter” guy arrived an hour and a half late. (As Eeyore woud say – “of course” :) But, within a half an hour we are root free and back in business. Ah – life as it is… Never a dull moment. :)

I’ve always thought the “Forest Life” – the life of a contemplative - would be “easier”. Maybe that’s just my fantasy. I’m sure The Forest has its practical problems as well. You can’t escape the matrix of the practical. It’s just life happening the way it does – she says after the fact. :)

Late in the evening, as I prepared for bed, I noticed how wonderfully silent and peaceful the house was after all the chaos. And then I realized that it wasn’t the house that had been chaotic, it was my mind. And it wasn’t the house that was silent, it was the Silence within me being noticed again. The Silence had been underneath the mental matrix all along. I just couldn’t access it because of my narrow focus on the practical problems… I couldn’t see the Forest for the deeply entangled roots… I think I need a “Jetter.” :)

And that's the end of the plumbing tale - hopefully...

~*~

You might find this article in Parabola interesting…

Into The Forest...

For some time know I’ve had the feeling of being at a threshold. In my journal last month I wrote: It is time to enter “The Forest” again, “The Dark Forest” – the Unknown – to go deeper into the Unknown; an indefinable space.

As I meditated on this I heard the still small Voice within unexpectedly say: “How serious are you?” “How willing are you to enter the Unknown?” Whoa…

“The Forest” traditionally is a threshold symbol of entering the unknown, the deeper nature, or the spiritual world. In fairy tales it usually represents a passage through difficulties and an opportunity for “transformation” of some kind. I also see it as a sanctuary, refuge, a place of deepening. This entering the “Dark Forest” happens sometimes when I have lost (intentionally or otherwise) the framework which gives structure to my life, when I must find my own way, and be true to the call of Self. Shamans, poets, holy men and women sought refuge in the forest, as a healing place. Going into The Forest represents a return to the Primordial Self – beyond societal, cultural, conceptual and spiritual frameworks. In a way, it is like returning to the child’s heart of innocence - just following the longings of the Heart once again; trusting that I will emerge from "The Dark Forest" with clarity. As a child I often went into the forest next to our house as a place to just sit, to listen and commune with nature, and write poetry. It was a place of experiencing Awareness directly, although back then I called it “God.”

And, since I don’t have a “Dark Forest” handy, and I am spooked by things that go bump in the night, my Forest will have to be the space of Silent Awareness within – navigating the inner Forest of the Unknown – as well as the unknown practicalities of everyday living… In my imagination it is not a “Dark Forest” however. I see a forest filled with tall, white, straight, pole trees that look like birch or aspens – reaching up through the sky. It is not dark, but light here, and the sense of silence and quiet is palpable. My body begins to relax in this Silent Forest. I can feel its depth, its spaciousness, its welcoming… It’s a beautiful space, this Silent Forest, a vast awareness and aliveness live here. And I am drawn into it…

I am willing, I say inwardly, in answer to the Inner Voice, to enter the Unknown – the Forest – to trust Intuition to take me through. I am ready to step over the threshold and see where the Unknown takes me, while also navigating the matrix of practical realities of every day living… Care to join me :) Are you willing...

“The familiar horizon has been outgrown;
the old concepts, ideals,
and emotional patterns no longer fit.
The time for the passing of a threshold
is at hand.”

Joseph Campbell


“Midway upon the journey of life
I found myself within a forest dark,
for the straightforward pathway
had been lost…”

Dante Alighieri
The Inferno


“Sometimes you have to step into
the void and trust
that the ground will appear.”

author unknown

Bottom Photo: Calendar page from 2004
photographer unknown
copyright 2003

~*~

You may want to read The Pathless Path post
for more context