“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward. ”
–Joseph Campbell
What fills me with awe?
Seeing flowers in the garden that weren’t there the day before
Seeing babies of almost any species
The extreme acts of kindness and helpfulness that people are capable of
The extreme acts of insensitivity that people are capable of
Every night when I look at a finished blog entry after the initial trepidation of a blank screen
So many pieces of art and music and writing. The creative mind is a wonderful thing and I have been so fortunate in being exposed to the creative talents of so many.
Love in all forms
Appreciation for the things that I do from people.
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I have a friend who talks every month of his long walks talking with the full moon. He speaks of his relationship with Mother Luna. The first time he spoke of this I was taken a bit aback until my mind shifted a bit and I realized how cool it was. Since then I have built my relationship with as many parts of nature I can. When I walk the dogs I feel the breeze or the rain with every inch of skin I can and embrace it. I too have listened to the moon’s wisdom and to what the rain could teach me. I have always felt the ocean gives me calm and direction when I sit by her. I have found my world lit up by a baby’s smile and by the touch of my partner. These simple miracles of which I have only listed a few here keep enriching my life and my spirit. What common miracles do this for you?
Blessings, G
“You haven’t yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior’s way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability–to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I’ve shown you by example that a warrior’s life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior’s sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.”
― Dan Millman
What do you use for armour? I have used humour and I have used anger. I have used words, sorrow and resignation. Each of these offered me various degrees of protection. They protected me from love. They protected me from awareness. They protected me at times from realizing that things were not as frightening as I believed they were. They protected me from exposing myself to my whole being. Now this warrior is weary. Piece by piece I dismantle my armour. I realize that even if battle killed my form that this is merely a suit of clothes that I wear. I have worn others in other lives. If I become hurt, then I will learn the lessons of pain and I will grow stronger. I will lead with my love and my thirst for understanding as open as I can and I know that no matter what transpires I will triumph.
Blessings, G
“Be in love with your life, every detail of it.”
― Jack Kerouac
How do you love the parts of your life that seem hard or that you fight or that you wish never were? When I was growing up my older sister used to complain about the shape of her face. My mother would advise her part by joke and part by rote. “I love my nose. I can’t change it so I will love it and accept it. I love my chin.” She shared this with me years later and while at first I laughed at the cheesiness, it made me think. What if I took it beyond the physical? “I love my frustration. I love my irritability.” When something bothered me about my life that I felt I couldn’t adequately address I started telling myself how much I loved it. It was amazing how empowering surrender could be. By being aware of these negative emotions or circumstances not in a confrontational way but in a loving way I found myself becoming less frustrated and less easily irritated. That’s not to say these traits have left me completely but at least they are loved rather than used as a means to kick myself.
“A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does”
― Dan Millman
Finding the love in what you do is easier sometimes than it is at others. Obvious yes but still how often do we miss the obvious because it doesn’t fell like it is worth stating? I love making art. I love writing poetry. I love thinking about thing I have never thought of before or thinking of an old thing in a new way. I love walking in nature. I love meditating. I love reading. I love talking to really amazing people both online and off and learning from them. I love music. I love exploring the nature of the All and of love. It has brought more joy to me than I can say that I’ve been able to do so many of the things that I love this past year or two and I feel like I have been touched by a unique grace.
Then there are the necessities, the things we don’t necessarily love that we have to do. Like cleaning the bathroom or washing the dishes or laundry. You can add to the list dealing with loved ones when they’re cranky or having serious questions with people who don’t want to climb out of their box even to look into mine. Yet still with some effort I can get those done. While cleaning I can engage in a conversation with myself about myths or legends or the nature of love. I can listen to an audiobook or I can make a game of the cleaning. Just how clean can I make that toilet? I can write an ode to the leftover pasta sauce on the underside of the bowl I can think of the faces of all those I love or recite a theme song to a 60’s television show. I can find the joy or the love in what I do. Oh its not always easy. You know what else isn’t easy? Anything you fail to try to do.
Blessings, G
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.”
“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”
“A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.”
“A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.”
“When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.”
“A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.”
“So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse
When I was a boy I was lucky enough to have a few special relationships with trees. There was an oak in my next door’s neighbours yard that I would sit beneath whenever I had something deep or painful on my mind or when I wanted a bit of quiet. The neighbours who were somewhat elderly (maybe about 15 years older than I am now) and if they noticed a thin young kid with his face buried in a book leaning against their tree than they did not object.
The old Oak showed me the changing of the seasons. It invited me to climb and perhaps helped me overcome my fear of heights a bit. It was always there. Friendships came and went and returned and the tree was always there. My parents got separated and divorced but the tree was there. My older sister became a teenager and had less time to hang out but the tree was there. I even shared her diary with the old oak that I borrowed to read one day. I learned Change and constancy from the tree. I learned how to stay grounded and how to appreciate quiet and a small breeze.
Blessings, G
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
― Oscar Wilde
I love listening to people’s melodies. Either alone, one voice quietly singing then getting stronger as their confidence grows until they are belting it out. Sometimes in groups in a brilliant symphony and cacophony , dramatic counterpoints , like a mad opera, each voice unique and each voice loveworthy. We all can learn to hear each person’s song. We just have to listen with our hearts..
Sometimes the melody jars with our own but then the best music sometimes comes from melodic tension. I would love to jam with the world.
Blessings, G
Gary Johannes-Rosenberg: Cool, don’t forget to write all views welcome
Chris Topher Harper: You guys go ahead.
Behind the humor;
There lies the implication that this is not love already.
Do you see?
Gary Johannes-Rosenberg: Well you know, as someone or other said, we see things not as they are but as we are….
Can’t you be called to something you are already doing?
Chris Topher Harper: Why ask that?
The whole premise of the idea that it is all love negates the notion of the uneasiness that we have to strive to be, or go somewhere that we already are.
Which is the whole premise for Rumis work in most cases, speaking to someone that needs some kind of relation like that there has to be something better than this. Some kind of greener, sweeter grass.
It is the whole idea behind romance, to sweep someone off their feet, and be their eternal lover knowing that they already know this, the tingles provide a similar connection, and leave the reader wanting more.
Oh sweet love, why is it that I can’t be happy without you in my presence? What must I do to ever get you to accept my hand?
All the while, the talk is usually from Rumi’s conscious self to his unconscious self. He speaks of things He would tell himself, to beckon himself to stop whatever he is doing and go. Which is subservant to the lesson at hand.
One of my favorite quotes of his is; “Your task is not to seek for love, but to remove your barriers against it.” Rumi
Which is almost a direct opposite to this quote. Don’t worry about the love to find. You worry about why you are not seeing it right now. DOn’t expect to go somewhere, look to know yourself and why you are not fully immersed in it now…
Gary Johannes-Rosenberg : So in this quote you see a seeking implied? Contemplating something is not the same as seeking it… or is it the idea of ‘the call to’ and the ‘running to’ that you object to…
I don’t find that inconsistent myself with removing the barriers against it at all, if anything they go hand in hand
Have you ever sat down to create art and contemplated the finished piece either before you began, while you were working on it or both
I find so much of art, contemplating the finished piece and removing everything that does not belong
Chris Topher Harper: I would say that we are always seeking love, in everything we do.
Until we understand that we are it.
And that it is everything.
Just in that understanding, there leaves no reason to not be aligned, but a desire of our choosing.
It is the seeking that is part of that love, it is the being that is part of that love.
It is the creation of art that fllls us with the idea of spreading something that everyone already has…
Gary Johannes-Rosenberg: YES… the greatest sculpture is that of our own being
Chris Topher Harper: So, the first two lines, were pretty solid.
I just passed on the needing to go anywhere.
We are already there, man, already there…
Gary Johannes-Rosenberg: Yes, but sometimes we need to journey to discover that we are already home…
Island in the Storm by G A Rosenberg
