branches up, roots down

Here is my offering: Someday Our Peace Will Come - Ellyn Maybe one day poetry dropped from the sky and the animals grew iambic pentameter tails and the people breathed in stars one day music dropped from the sky and the architecture turned symphonic and the people breathed in harmony one day memory dropped from the sky and the past present and future sifted like flour and the people breathed in wonder smoke and ash as distant as two sides of the same coin

Maybe there’s a God above But all I’ve ever learned from love Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you It’s not a cry you can hear at night It’s not somebody who has seen the light It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah Leonard Cohen What is the difference between a romantic and a mystic? Is there any? A few years back, I was seeing a talented psychic and spiritual teacher through a bad heartbreak. In matters of the own heart, being psychic proves no defense. One day, in the midst of tears, she sobbed, “The truth is, I love God the most”. We both took a deep breath and then simultaneously broke into laughter. Eventually this turned to tears all around. Laughing and crying are the same release. Together, they are divine. Could it be that every love affair is with God in some aspect or other? Could it be that every broken heart resides in the same place as the mystic’s Dark Night of the Soul? I am relentlessly romantic. And a mystic. And a Pagan. I guess ...

Morels, spring garlic, asparagus, duck eggs, several bouquets of sweet peas and daffodils. This is what came home with me from the farmer’s market this weekend. Last night I slivered some of the spring garlic, sautéing it along with the morels in butter. Served over a steak along with grilled asparagus, on a table graced with a vase of fragrant flowers, I gave thanks for the season and savored the taste and smell of it. The duck eggs? My neighbor has been baking up a storm – lemon pound cake most notably – from the eggs which I have been blowing out to make psyanky eggs. I have been making psyanky eggs for over forty years, learning the art from a friend in junior high. The practice precedes Christianity and takes a lot of time and focused attention. It is serious spell work. At eighteen, I complemented my wages as a dishwasher by selling psyanky at a gallery in the little town I had moved to on the Oregon coast. I ate a lot of eggs and friends kept me company as I drew symbo...

There are those who would set fire to the world. We are in danger. There is only time to work slowly. There is no time not to love. The day after the reactors in Japan started to melt down these lyrics sprang to mind. Not a day has gone by since when I haven’t found myself singing them, or sharing them with clients or friends.. They come from a poem by Deena Metzger and Charley Murphy put them to music in the 1980’s. It was a song that was sung at my first marriage, the two of us devoted at the time to not only each other, but anti-nuclear work. The past two weeks the disaster in Japan has come in and out of my therapy room. The rain here in our city seems to be relentless, and it feels to many like we might live out our lives amidst a storm that will not cease.. Several clients have mentioned that they have been trying to put together an earthquake preparedness kit only to find out that first aid kits and whistles (which you blow if stuck i...

The wind is fierce and the rain heavy. The avocado tree lashes against the bedroom window. Who can sleep amidst this stormy change? The tree threatens to break into my room And somewhere, there is war, hunger, sudden and slow death I pull the covers close. All I can do is breathe and love, which dilutes the fear. Listening to the hard rain and the pounding of branches I lean into my heart and wait for shattered glass. Have I told you how much I love this world? I wrote that last night amidst the mighty storm here in San Francisco. Today is spring equinox in a world tipped mightily out of balance. I wait for the disaster(s) to come through my windows or doors.. to impact me as so many people around the world are impacted. And yet, my good life continues, and I do sleep through the night in a warm bed, well fed, content with my work, surrounded by beauty and love. Last night I worried about the tree, and my window, and knew I would have to get this tree cut down as it is dangerous to...

"And I'll tell and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin' But I'll know my songs well before I start singin' And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall." Last night, as I was driving from San Francisco north on 101 to Forestville, Dylan's Hard Rain came up on my iPod shuffle. A few lines into it, I was sobbing. The night before the tsunami in Japan I had a nightmare that San Francisco was flooded and I couldn't find my son. I woke to a phone call from a friend back east, concerned that I was okay. She said she'd heard San Francisco was going to be hit by a tsunami. From that moment on, it's felt like I don't know the difference anymore between dreamtime and waking time. Back in the last century, I spent a lot of time fighting nuclear power and nuclear weapons. ...

Mindful Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant - but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentation, Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these - the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass? Mary Oliver