At times, so many memories trample my heart that it becomes impossible to know just what I’m feeling and why. That all the ways we’ve been touched merge in the ground of who we are is a blessing, a gift of being human. It is what the sages of all traditions have called peace- the elusive moment when all things become one. That we can’t sort our feelings and memories once the soil of our experience is tilled is the nature of staying alive. That we insist on keeping old wounds alive is our curse. Yet, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us. ‘Our mind of love may be buried deep under many layers of forgetfulness and suffering.’ The difference, I’m learning, is in what we focus on. When I focus on the rake of experience and how its fingers dug into me and the many feet that have walked over me, there is no end to the life of my pain. But when I focus on the soil of heart and how it has been turned over, there is no end to the mix of feelings that defy my want to name them. Tragedy stays alive by feeling what’s been done to us, while peace comes alive by living with the result…..Mark Nepo

language can’t really name our tragedies like the deep long line of ancestral fossilizing of the bones……it’s encrusted like the grooves of old bark…like the deep stoop in our tired bodies…..like the ease that lifts us up when we recognize our capacity for forgiveness…..

Something I’ve not done is following me

I haven’t done it again and again
so it has many footsteps
like a drumstick that’s grown old

and never been used
In late afternoon I hear it come closer
at times it climbs out of a sea
onto my shoulders
and I shrug it off
losing one more chance
Every morning
it’s drunk up part of my

breath for the day
and knows which way
I’m going
and already it’s not done there
But once more I say

I’ll lay hands on it
tomorrow
and add its footsteps to my heart
and its story to my regrets
and its silence to my compass

….W.S. Merwin

where do you lay your compass down…..is it far from the heart?

After a long and arduous journey a young Japanese man arrived deep in a
forest where the teacher of his choice was living in a small house he had made.
When the student arrived, the teacher was sweeping up fallen leaves. Greeting
his master, the young man received no greeting in return. And to all his
questions, there were no replies. Realizing there was nothing he could do to
get the teacher’s attention, the student went to another part of the same
forest and built himself a house. Years later, when he was sweeping up fallen
leaves, he was enlightened. He dropped everything, ran through the forest to
his teacher, and said, ‘Thank you.’

…..John Cage