Rerun December 13, 2006 (nothing to say but it's okay)

December 13, 2006

From a quiet place, listening to a Buddhiscopalian (I've got nothing to say but it's okay)

Rosanne Cash interview

"... The sun is on the cemetery

Leaves are on the stones

There never was a place on earth

That felt so much like home ..."

(... looking at the sky, speaking without words, reading books ...)

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Listening and seeing (speaking without words)

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"I've got nothing to say, but it's okay. Good Morning Good Morning ..." / Nonverbal communication (-:

Listening

Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen 

The People

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.

Now our minds are one.

The Earth Mother

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

The Waters

We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms- waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of Water.

Now our minds are one.

The Fish

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

The Plants

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are one.

The Food Plants

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting of thanks.

Now our minds are one.

The Medicine Herbs

Now we turn to all the Medicine herbs of the world. From the beginning they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines.

Now our minds are one.

The Animals

We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are honored by them when they give up their lives so we may use their bodies as food for our people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.

Now our minds are one.

The Trees

We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many people of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.

Now our minds are one.

The Birds

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds-from the smallest to the largest-we send our joyful greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

The Four Winds

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help us to bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds.

Now our minds are one.

The Thunderers

Now we turn to the west where our grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We are thankful that they keep those evil things made by Okwiseres underground. We bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

Now our minds are one.

The Sun

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.

Now our minds are one.

Grandmother Moon

We put our minds together to give thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights the night-time sky. She is the leader of woman all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.

Now our minds are one.

The Stars

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send greetings and thanks to the Stars.

Now our minds are one.

The Enlightened Teachers

We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers.

Now our minds are one.

The Creator

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

Now our minds are one.

Closing Words

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

*This translation of the Mohawk version of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address was developed, published in 1993, and provided, courtesy of: Six Nations Indian Museum and the Tracking Project.

Thank you to Mijente for this today.

Sending love and gratitude to blog friends near and far as I learn by being quiet for a time.

Going silent for a little while / 16 years ago and 52 years ago on December 8

Changing of the Guards

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Sixteen years

Sixteen banners united over the field

Where the good shepherd grieves

Desperate men, desperate women divided

Spreading their wings ’neath the falling leaves

Fortune calls

I stepped forth from the shadows, to the marketplace

Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down

She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born

On midsummer’s eve, near the tower

The cold-blooded moon

The captain waits above the celebration

Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid

Whose ebony face is beyond communication

The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid

They shaved her head

She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo

A messenger arrived with a black nightingale

I seen her on the stairs and I couldn’t help but follow

Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil

I stumbled to my feet

I rode past destruction in the ditches

With the stitches still mending ’neath a heart-shaped tattoo

Renegade priests and treacherous young witches

Were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you

The palace of mirrors

Where dog soldiers are reflected

The endless road and the wailing of chimes

The empty rooms where her memory is protected

Where the angels’ voices whisper to the souls of previous times

She wakes him up

Forty-eight hours later, the sun is breaking

Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks

She’s begging to know what measures he now will be taking

He’s pulling her down and she’s clutching on to his long golden locks

Gentlemen, he said

I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes

I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards

But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination

Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards

Peace will come

With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire

But will offer no reward when her false idols fall

And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating

Between the King and the Queen of Swords

Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music

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The sky is exquisitely clear of today after intermittent smoke since the beginning of September.  This morning I took a two-hour walk through the woods, through the beautiful city cemetery, back through the woods, returning refreshed and renewed.

December 8 will be my 16th blog birthday.  I'll be going silent until then, reading your blogs but not commenting and not posting anything here.

Here is my first blog post, written on the 36th anniversary of the day R returned from Vietnam.  A wise and thoughtful person had suggested that I do something different on December 8 in 2006, that I bring something new to a day that had caused me such pain for so many years.  So much has healed since I began blogging.

The last time I took a blog break was in 2011.  Looking at the video I took then, it is shocking to see how green everything was.  We haven't had any substantial rain since last spring.  Many of our trees, deciduous and evergreen, are stressed and some appear to be dying.  We did have a rainy spring.  I hope that we have our usual month of steady clouds and rain in November.

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Sometimes these Bob Dylan lyrics come to me:

Peace will come

With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire

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Sending love always to blog friends near and far.    

Y Más Música / Trust Meditation

When I was born, I know had the capacity to trust.  It wasn't long before I lost that much of that crucial aspect of feeling safe and secure in the world.  I remember being two years old.  Although, I felt that I couldn't trust other people, I must have had some level of trust in myself and my perceptions of what was safe and what wasn't.  I sought safety outside myself and found enough of it to survive.  When I was 6 or 7 years old, I heard something in Mahalia Jackson's voice that I knew I could trust.  A woman singing on television gave me something human to trust.  There was something in certain songs, certain voices singing, that I could trust.   I began to trust the human voices that I heard in books when I learned to read.  I learned to trust myself to find my way home when I went on long walks as a child.  When I was 13 years old, I heard Bob Dylan singing and knew instinctively I could trust that young man's voice.  When I was 35 years old, I heard this song for the first time and took it to heart because by that time I nearly lost the ability to trust myself or anyone else or anything else.  I began to consider trusting myself.

Don’t trust me to show you the truth
When the truth may only be ashes and dust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

(Bob Dylan)

Here are a few more versions:

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As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Take no one's word for anything, including mine -- but trust your experience.

(James Baldwin)

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

(Kahlil Gibran)

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You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

(Anton Chekov)

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

(Maya Angelou)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust.

(George Eliot)

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.

(Fred Rogers)

¡Más música!

¡Susana Baca!

The experience of joy

Today the topic of joy came up in a group of friends of mine.  Just what is it?  How is it experienced?  As I was listening to what everyone had to say, I remembered this YouTube video which brings tears of joy to me every time I listen.  It's been a while since I listened.

Revisiting the littlest birds / Variation on recurring dream / And Addendum (-:

 

Lyrics

Well, I feel like an old hobo, I'm sad, lonesome and blue
I was fair as a summer's day, now the summer days are through
You pass through places and places pass through you
But you carry them with you on the soles of your travellin' shoes

Well, I love you so dearly, I love you so clearly
I wake you up in the morning, so early just to tell you
I got the wandering blues, I got the wandering blues
And I'm going to quit these rambling ways one of these days soon

And I sing, the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

Well, it's times like these I feel so small
And wild like the rambling footsteps of a wandering child
And I'm lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill
Singing these blues with a warble and a trill
But I'm not too blue to fly, no I'm not too blue to fly

'Cause the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

But I love you so dearly, I love you so fearlessly
I wake you up in the morning so early, just to tell you
I've got the wandering blues, I've got the wandering blues
And I don't want to leave you, I love you through and through

Well, I left my baby on a pretty blue train
And I sang my songs to the cold and the rain
And I had the wandering blues, and I sang those wandering blues
And I'm gonna quit these rambling ways one of these days soon

And I sing, the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

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Another left-handed mandala near completion, after waking up from a new variation on a recurring dream where it is getting late in the day and I am alone and not at home.  

This time I was in an airport in a time of war.  People were booking flights out of the country.  There were very few flights left.  I realized that I didn't have any money with me, not even a credit card.  I wandered around the airport, wondering what to do about my situation.  I was not feeling desperation but was concerned.  At one far end of the airport was an unfamiliar man I sensed I could not trust.  When I wouldn't go with him where he wanted me to go, he became threatening.  I ran.  He chased me.  I ran past a man I didn't know and asked for help as I ran by.  The man stopped the threatening man and told him to leave me alone.  I felt immense gratitude.  Even though I knew that the threatening man wouldn't follow me, I kept running until I got to the other end of the airport.  There I saw a man who died, at peace with life and death, last January.  He is an artist.  I trust him and began to talk with him.  He had decided to stay in this country where he is accepted for who he is as an artist.  He said that he knew he wouldn't fit in anywhere but in this country.  As we were talking, his beloved wife approached.  She was wearing a deep yellow dress.  She was frowning at me.  She thought I was trying to take him away from her.  She was wrong but I couldn't convince her otherwise.  I continued walking to the very end of the airport and stopped to talk to an airport employee, a young woman whose job was to keep the airport clean.  She had a calm and peaceful presence.  She wasn't going to leave the country.  It was not an option for her or any of the other airport employees.  I continued walking at the end of the airport where I felt safe and began to suspect that I was dreaming.  I wasn't ready to wake up just then.  I was curious to see what would happen next.  Still, I was relieved to realize that I was dreaming.  I don't remember anything happening next.  

When I woke up, I checked the time.  It was about an hour before I usually wake up.  I wrote down the dream to make sure that I wouldn't forget it.  It is occurring to me that in this dream, I knew that I had a home in this country.  The recurring dream focus had shifted from its traditional focus on getting home before dark.  At the end of the dream, I felt at peace, not alone, in the company of other people who would stay in this country, those for whom this country is home.  My focus was no longer that of trying to get home before dark.  When I asked for help, help was available.  I was misunderstood but it wasn't the end of the world.  I was curious to see what else would happen in the dream and relieved to know I would wake up.

The girl in this mandala is 12-year-old Regina, one of the characters in Rosemary Sutcliff's book, Dawn Wind, which I read when I was 11 years old, identifying closely with Regina.  She was wandering alone in a time of war in Britain in the sixth century.  This illustration shows her at the moment she met Owain, a 14-year-old boy who was also wandering alone.  They became traveling companions.  I'm in the process of copying illustrations from that book, featuring them in my mandalas.  I don't remember how the story of Regina and Owain ends but will find out soon.  

There is a newspaper article on the wall next to my drawing table.  It celebrates the life of the artist who was at the airport in my dream.  He died last January and has been an inspiration for all of my art work this year.  I didn't know he had died or even that he had been ill until I saw his obituary, but it was in those days after he died without my knowledge that I felt a sense of despair, wondering if I would ever do any art work again and sat down at my drawing table and was moved to pick up my 6B pencil with my left hand and start drawing.  

Addendum:

Finished Mandala #72 just now:

These mandalas inspired by the Charles Keeping's illustrations in Dawn Wind are certainly edgy, dealing with old feelings from my childhood, giving my 11-year-old self a place to speak her truth that was silenced.  I've come a long way since I was 11 years old and want to honor my 11-year-old self for the ways she learned to survive what she couldn't understand.