Category: poetry

trusting uncertainty

I trust what this body knows
breathing in, breathing out
the way home.

I trust the ground, which I can stand upon–
the earth that rises to meet my feet
and gives gently beneath my weight.

And I trust that ground which I cannot stand upon–
the falling away that everything returns to.

~ Oren Sofer

This week and last I am doing my final round of substitute yoga teaching at my local studio–the last because, in a month, we’ll be moving to the Pacific NorthWest!

I always try to align my yoga teaching with the cycle of the moon. In this way, our practice is about more than being flexible, or strong, or having better balance, but also about listening to and aligning with deeper, natural cosmic processes that we are part of, whether we bring our conscious awareness to them or not…

The first week of subbing was the week of the waning moon–the peak of energy at full moon past, falling toward new moon. We practiced feeling the ground with our body and breath, and inhaling this grounded energy up through the body, we also allowed it to rise to meet us, rising us up to connect with sky energy.

Throughout the practice, we continually returned to this rooted and rising awareness, connecting earth and sky in our bodies.

This week of subbing, it’s New Moon week (June 3rd)–the week of rest, and preparing the ground for new seeds to grow.

Our practice is focusing on trusting the ground that rises up to meet our bodies and not as actively rising up to the sky. We move more slowly, we spend more time on the ground, we spend more time returning and resting.

This is also the stage
Dave and I are in with
our huge moving project.

The peak was a few weeks back when we loaded the truck, working with on- and off-schedule contractors to get our house ready to be staged while we were away, driving half of our Minnesota home to our new home in Washington State.

Since then, we’ve been coming down, back to ground.

Staying connected to breath and ground sustained us (among other things), and now we can consciously follow, as much as we can, the call to return to deeper ground.

We return to life-sustaining rhythms of longer morning practice time, to embodiment practices that remind us of the body’s natural intelligence, to cooking more wholesome and healing meals that nourish and sustain our animal bodies…

And, over and over again, we practice

“trust[ing] that ground which
[we] cannot stand upon–
the falling away
that everything returns to.”

For us, this means continually seeing how we so humanly reach for habits to shield ourselves from the uncertainty, the unpredictability of the process.

Over and over again, we find ourselves grasping at ways to make life more predictable instead of living in the openness of not knowing–the not-knowing of how the appraisal will go, the not-knowing of how the final loading and moving will go, the not-knowing of how we will find our belonging in a new community and a new land.

Buddhist monk Pema Chodron says it this way:

“We become habituated to reaching for something to ease the edginess of the moment. Thus we become less and less able to reside with even the most fleeting uneasiness or discomfort.” (from Comfortable with Uncertainty, p.55)

Out of well-practiced habit, we reach for certainty!

    • In the pleasure we know we’ll get from the perfect dark chocolate (me) or the perfect ale (Dave);
    • In the safety we feel if we create a false sense of control by over-thinking and over-planning the way we think our move should go,
    • In the comfort of weaving our old stories back together again–I’m just a One who needs a certain level of organization… or I’m just a Six who can’t stand this level of unpredictability… 


When we catch these avoidance strategies, we practice, yet again, “trust[ing] that ground which [we] cannot stand upon–the falling away that everything returns to.”

That doesn’t mean we completely drop all our helpful coping habits–we’re fully human; so, sometimes, yes; sometimes, no…

But we engage them with awareness and less unconscious belief that they provide the ground of certainty.

For we know that the true certainty,
the true ground is being able to stand
(and move and sit and rest)
with whatever life is bringing–
with the unknowing, with the uncertainty,
and with the unpredictablity.

Here, in touch with this ground–the ground of being–we find an open, spacious freedom to respond openly and freshly to whatever happens. In each moment, we can choose to return to rest in this. Over and over again.

How do you work with uncertainty?

waves welcome me

Friend, our closeness is this.
Anywhere you put your foot
Feel me in the firmness under you.
~ Rumi

On vacation at Mar de Jade (Mexico) two weeks ago, my morning meditation was being on the beach with the rising tide of waves.

Usually, I was the first one down to walk on the sand, at the intersection of land and sea, contemplating ocean, contemplating waves.

I didn’t do a formal sit. The ocean called me.

I slowly wandered and stood facing the ocean, letting the waves take me. Waves filling up, coming to fullness, to readiness, then spilling over to give, to surrender, to gift the land with their essence, their “waveness.”

Breathing with the waves, taking them in with eyes, heart, body, bodysoul, in awe, in beauty, in wonder.

Touched by the unseen shaping guiding their rhythm and form, a circular flow of rising and forming and breaking and ebbing–a yang giving way to yin–a giving way to giving again. A cycle of giving and receiving, of generativity and rest, of expansion and contraction.

A circle of wholeness, of life.

Foreign territory to me, a land-dweller who grew up in the country, far from the ocean.

I felt a deep, interior call to be with her immensity, her power, her being.

Every morning for about an hour, I would join the confluence of land and sea, waiting for the rising tide to come and splash my feet, my legs, my clothes.

One morning, when Dave joined me, he said the waves were greeting me. Yes, I smiled, it feels like this.

I was being welcomed by ocean waves–Good morning, Katy–let me touch and taste and kiss and splash you in greeting. Thank you for being with me.

I walked and stood in the waves, feeling their wetness, their saltiness, their tickly touch, their caress, and their pull out to sea while my feet were buried in wet sand, holding me on land, and singing my human greeting to them:

Waves, waves, waves, ocean waves,
Great Mother’s waves, welcome me.
Touch and be touched, meet and greet,
welcome the mystery.
Human and wave, matter and sea,
life, love, and me.

Back in Minnesota, I’m not barefoot all day, not feeling the touch of waves and sand so immediately.

But I am feeling the touch of this bioregion–the greeting of Spring–in the earlier light kissing my face as I awake, in the scent of wet earth after the melting of snow, in the warming touch of air on my body, in increasing liquid birdsong.

In the firmness of life continuing to hold me and support me here in this precious eairth.*

How about you?

How are you greeting and being greeted this season?

How do you feel the firmness of life, or what Rumi calls “the Friend,” under your feet, supporting you?

* earth and air as one being = eairth

nurturing & greeting rituals

Image by SofieZborilova on Pixabay

Imagine coming into the presence of a baby. (Or, if it’s easier, a baby animal.)

Eyes round and open, she is awake and alert, expressions flitting across her face.

Would you ignore this luminous presence?

Or would you take in her precious being with an attuned, loving, perhaps even grateful greeting? Perhaps some sweet words, a higher-pitched, maybe even cooing, voice, a soothing tone…

In so doing, you acknowledge that her presence affects you. That she is here and you are here. That you are connected with her. In a way that feels nourishing and contactful to both of you.

What if this were the way we lived our lives?

In contact with each other, with the earth, with the other-than-human beings, and with the rhythm of our lives, all the time?

What would change?

I know I would feel more open, more grateful, more awake, more alive… more present.

From what I understand, our indigenous ancestors lived in this way—in deep contact with themselves, each other, and the earth—and from this deep experience of kinship, in deep gratitude.

Our Native American brothers and sisters, indigenous to North America, continue to carry this relationship of kinship, of respect and gratitude into our modern times. They remind us of what is possible.

As you know, I’m all about practicing presence!

It’s my tagline, afterall: “practice presence for life.” And I’ve written a whole e-book about small, doable rituals you can incorporate into your daily life to feel more present.

But I think there is something else I’m exploring here.

It is what all my presence practice rituals are pointing toward. Like the Buddhist story of the finger pointing to the moon, we don’t want to get fixated on the finger, but to focus our gaze on the moon.

All my presence rituals are meant to support a dropping into this deeper contactful presence.

So, what is presence, anyway?

Right now, I am experiencing it as a full-bodied, full-souled contact with myself and “the other.”

And when I feel it, I feel grateful. Presence and gratitude go hand in hand.

Since many of us don’t often get the chance to interact with a baby—human or animal—how about practicing with an alive being you connect with daily?

    • A partner or child
    • A pet or plant
    • Some other being outside—the snow (a good choice this winter in MN!), the sun, the moon, a tree, or a mountain?

Find a specific living being—human or otherwise—and let that being teach you how to be fully present. (You might also find some of my other presence practices/rituals help prepare you for this. Poetry is one of my favorites, so here’s one:)

Praying by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Here are a few suggestions* for getting started:

    • Open all your senses to this being—sight, sound, taste, scent, touch. And keep returning to your senses when your mind sidetracks you back into thoughts. Take this being in as fully as you can.
    • Receive how their presence affects your whole bodysoul—body, heart, mind, soul. You might experience it as pleasant or unpleasant. Continue to drop thought and come back to body and heart, in particular.
    • Make some sound—words or otherwise—to express your experience. It might be joyful or sweet, or you might feel sad or angry or confused. Express whatever it is with sound.
    • Notice how you feel nurtured having greeted this being.
    • Take some time to receive any greeting in return.
    • Then thank the being for this contact that brings you here, in touch with yourself and the living web of relationship all around you. Use words or sounds or movement or gestures and keep coming back to your body and heart.

Let’s close with a nurturing and greeting ritual:

Place your hands in prayer position in front of your heart with me.

As we bow our heads to our hearts….

We are bowing to ourselves for practicing.

We are bowing to each other for practicing together.

We are bowing to the earth as the ground of our practice.

Namaste.

Notes:
* After writing this, I realized how influenced I was by the recent work I have been practicing. You can find a similar practice in Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin.

I also want to credit the phrase “nurturing and greeting rituals” as originally from Erik Erickson as “daily rituals of nurturance and greeting,” which I found in Dolores LaChapelle’s book Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep. She uses it not only in the realm of humans, but to include all of the natural world. (p. 170+)

Remembering

Remember by Joy Harjo

from She Had Some Horses

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

yes, yes, yes

The sky holds our precious nourishment—air that is inspiration.

The moon recently made her mysterious beauty known with the lunar eclipse on January 20th.

The sun accompanies us every day, rebirthing our world—you might try greeting her in the morning and saying farewell at night.

Your mother and father, regardless of all they did and did not do, created you and brought you into this amazing, interconnected, and life-giving planet earth.

the earth. the earth. the earth.

This whole poem is about the earth.

What is your relationship with the skin that you are?

The plants, trees, and animals that live with us and give us life.

Have you talked with them recently?

The elements—earth, wind, fire, water—all the elements within you, creating you, living you.

How are you guided by them, birthed by them?

“The ageless intercourse between the body
and the earth—this co-evolution—
has shaped the tissues and organs
of our very earthly organism…”
~ David Abrams in Becoming Animal, p. 73

In our human-animal nature–

We are alive poems.

We are alive patterns.

We are alive eairth* in human form.

How are you living
this great poem?

return to the most human

Return to the Most Human by May Sarton
Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.

Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love.

Winter and Spring,

Lent and Easter,

the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys,

the Bodhisattvas, who, once enlightened, choose to stay on earth to accompany us,

the under- and over-world travel of shamans and goddesses throughout time…

This paradox of season and cycle, of rhythmic journey has meaning.

We are again and again invited
to return to the most human—
both in our deep-diving
and in our high-flying.

We go down, we go in, we go through.

We stay. We keep vigil. We are held.

We are shown the way—sometimes
only one step at a time.

The way of being human includes all of this.

Darkness. The torn spirit. The bewildered heart. The angry mind.

Light. The rejoicing spirit. The grateful heart. The blissful mind.

The Unknown-ness. The Mystery. The I-don’t-know-how-ness.

For only in this most human place,

lovingly abiding with our darkness,

can the body be a chalice
connecting earth and heaven,
 so that we can at last arise and act for love.

Savoring Dave, Chocolate & Summer!

something different: a little, rhyming summer poem for you!

🙂

Even though we rarely eat sweets,

Dave’s 60th needed a

treat.

Something summery, simple, and

celebratory

to follow salmon, salad, memories, and stories.

The family in the garden all gathered together,

sipping and supping with laughter and

pleasure.

The chocolate pots cooled to luscious perfection,

We savored each spoonful of blissful confection!

chocolate pot 1200x

To taste these Chocolate Pots…try the recipe!

How are you savoring these precious days of Summer?

Free Heart

May a woman’s heart be a vast open field
upon which wild horses can run.
~ Tibetan Buddhist saying

My New Year’s theme for 2017 is Free Heart.

While i knew clearly that this was my path for 2017, i needed time to understand more and to live into it before writing about it. In collaging this theme and then journalling, i have discovered some gems:

I am the One whose heart smiles and can meet and hold and include all things.

I am the One whose body dissolves into ease and bliss, and whose mind opens to accept and know all truths–even those different from mine.

I am the One whose smile breaks into blossom with the freedom in her heart.

I am the One whose life is a blessing.

I am the One who flies above all heartbreak knowing there is always deeper truth than suffering.

I am the One who sings and sings and sings for the tremendous beauty and truth and preciousness of life.

I the One whose unruly and wild heart serves the truth in all beings.

As we are practicing presence this week in my free 5-Day Online Practice Presence for Life Journey, i am reminded that the only way any of this is possible is when i am present.

My heart does not smile or feel wild and free, or able to to feel and also rise above heartbreak when i am not present.

This past weekend, i got to attend The Holy Ideas Workshop with Russ Hudson here in Minnesota. While the material is breathtaking and Russ’s teaching is exquisite, i had a hard time because of a difficult situation i’ve been managing for the past year or so.

Let yourself breathe and trust.
It is only by a courageous letting go that the heart
becomes free. This is called the wisdom of insecurity.
~ Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, p. 160

I was able to be there and practice by breathing and trusting.

As i breathed and held myself in compassion for the hard time i was having, i also consciously felt the support of the floor, the chair, my body, the teachings, the whole community gathered together. This helped me to also trust and to free my heart from time to time to be touched by these wonderful teachings.

My path this last year is really inviting me into the wisdom of insecurity, as a place from which to be free instead of a place to fear.

It’s hard. My body, heart, and mind all want to grab on, to find secure ground–to know what will happen, when, and how…

And yet, when i am able to return to the groundlessness and re-member my wild and free heart, i am home.

Practice: Haiku-like Mindfulness Verses

One way to nourish yourself in your life, whether you are carrying something difficult with you or just wanting to connect more deeply with yourself, is this practice I learned from Sara Avant Stover on SHE Retreat last year, which we also enjoyed a few weeks ago on this year’s retreat.

Writing in short, Haiku-like verses
can catch the moment
with fresh eyes, and give perspective
about your life in the moment.

You can practice Haiku-like verses any time, but it’s especially helpful when you are processing, working with, or integrating something. I found when my brother passed away unexpectedly in August, that it was extremely helpful to put my feelings into these short verses. It gave them form and beauty, and revealed deeper meaning. It helped me express myself to myself succinctly, hearing and receiving myself with mindfulness.

This past SHE Retreat, I found myself writing them more in the flavor of capturing moments during the silent retreat. You can read those on my blogpost Retreat Practicing.

In this practice, we are not counting syllables like traditional Japanese Haiku verses, so don’t worry about making them 5-7-5! If it pleases you, you might want to make the 1st and 3rd verses shorter than the middle verse, but it’s more important that you follow your own flow. You can read a lot online about writing Haiku—we’re doing something simpler and more intuitive here.

Try this on:

  • Pause and sense into your body and feel into your heart.
  • What’s here in the moment? It could be something outside you or inside you or a combination of both. Often Haiku verses combine something from nature with some internal state, capturing feeling and image.
  • Write one short, pithy phrase.
  • Write the 2nd, perhaps juxtaposing it to the first.
  • Write the 3rd, perhaps showing their relationship in some way.

Here’s one for you that arose as I wrote this practice:
Writing, thinking, clarifying
The trees turning a delicious yellow outside my window
They need no thought to ripen.

Enjoy!! I’d LOVE to read some of your haiku explorations if you’d like to share.

Looking for more practices?
Get 10 Simple Ways to Welcome the Sacred into Your Daily Life!

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The Coming of Light

The Coming of Light by Mark Strand
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

The New Year is almost here—it’s almost unbelievable how quickly 2015 has passed…

Even this late it happens…

  • even when my attention is firmly fixed on closing up 2015
  • even when I am relaxing and enjoying the holy-days with friends and family
  • even when I am reviewing and thinking and envisioning how I want to live in 2016
  • even when friendships fall away unexpectedly
  • even this late…

 the coming of love, the coming of light…
Keep Reading!