There is great power in expansive stillness. There is great power in the depths.

Lately, I’ve been meditating on the powers of the Lake. This is one facet of the Norse rune Laguz, but mostly, it is what I need in this time, right now. Those who are familiar with me know that I am an instigator, a mover, a goer, a will activator. I tend toward the yang rather than the yin, often quipping that I have one nurturing bone in my body, pointing to the tip of a pinky finger. We all have our tendencies, and our lessons to learn.

For me, so often the holder of the torch of impatience – enjoining all my friends to “Come on! This way!” – to learn the lessons of the Lake is requiring the trust of opening, of softening, a word I barely even know how to write. Each morning I return to these watery practices: slow strengthening stretches in the sun rather than the hard push of lifting weights. Sinking into meditation from there. Allowing myself to float, as though I was resting in a still body of fresh water. To float requires a trust in the stillness within. To float requires both strength and opening.

I have cultivated this stillness, but only as a core for decisive movement. Now I return to it to teach me other lessons.

This week, while cleaning the old sixteen burner stove at the house of hospitality, pressing the rough green scrubber against the tough metal “I love you” rose unbidden to my thoughts. This was not some practice of connecting to the stove, this was connection to the stove. The divine presence was there. I moved with it, continuing to clean. I moved with it, in every interaction. Later, while cleaning the compost bins, I practiced saying “I love you” as I poured the food-filled water through a sieve. Happiness was there, despite the connection to the newer green plastic bins not feeling as immediate as the connection to the stove that had cooked meals for hungry thousands.

Having written and spoken about the presence of divinity in all things, the teaching is finally striking home. It has taken noticing, practicing, returning, and finally, being ready to float upon this water instead of always seeking the more volatile fire and air. I feel grateful, and will keep returning to these spaces, waiting for the lessons yet to come.

What are you learning these days?

Tonight, I will toast my teacher Cora Anderson, who crossed the veil this time in 2008.

Tomorrow, on what I named “International Have Sex With a Worker Day” (Beltane + May Day =…) I will start the festivities by calling in the dawn with the Morris Dancers. Each year, one hundred or so people converge on a hill top in the dark, sipping tea, and listen for the shaking of bells and the clattering of sticks. As the sun lifts from the horizon, we will sing songs of renewal, and call summer to the land.

In the afternoon, I will take to the streets of this amazing land mass, bounded by hills and water. I will walk and sing alongside union members, immigrants, punks, and priests, for that is another tradition – though not quite as old as the Morris Dancers – of long standing. I am Pagan and a child of the working class: I shall celebrate this day of fertility, burgeoning spring, and the right to earn bread under decent conditions.

I wish you joy, strength, and justice. I wish you the glory of flowers and the power of voices raised to the sky.

In the spirit of the day, I leave you with my Walpurgisnacht Manifesto:

Today, I stand for beauty.
I stand for apple blossom and finch.
I stand for sun, and wind, and sky.
I stand for the shaking of the fig tree,
And the growing of the lettuce and the pea.

Today, I stand for beauty.
I stand for music to lighten the soul.
I stand for healing balms to comfort wounds.
I stand for kind words in the tempest,
And a scrap of bright cloth in the mud of war.

Today, I stand for beauty.
Heart open to the world.
Today, I conjure hope. And strength.
With the courage and the love to carry on.
Leap the fire with me,
In Beauty’s name.

Blessings be upon you. Blessings, all.

For me, it is kindness enacted by strangers: The man who goes out of his way to hurl the wayward ball back over the fence into the school yard. The woman who holds the door for the couple with canes. The people donating a few dollars each to make sure a project gets funded. The boy who picks up the dropped wallet and hands it back. The strangers who, together, tried to save a swarm of bees from being run over in the road.

We want to help each other.

When feeling sorrowful, or angry, or isolated, or – the big soul killer – cynical,  can we remember that most often, when faced with one another, people are kind? Sure, our systems get out of control and can cause us to feel buffeted about, torn apart, and trodden down. The systems cause us much bitter complaining, and bewildered confusion. I know. Some days I feel at a loss about what to do in response to the latest churning of these systems. Trying to find a way to re-connect and bring our basic human impulses to the forefront can feel hard when faced with the daily news, or our own pain. But when we remember that we are part of those systems, we can turn our attention to the people, the land, and the creatures right in front of us. We can call up kindness once again.

Let’s look around today, take our earbuds out, lift up our eyes, and set our attention toward noticing kindness. When we set our sights on something, we include a lot more. We enable the universe to surprise us.

Let us invoke kindness, in ourselves and in the world.

You have carried us, these long millions of years,
We beasts, we leafy fronds, we crouching walkers.
The ice has come, the ice has gone again.
Your crust has softened, hardened, cooled, and warmed…

Oh! Unsurpassed in beauty are you, lover!
I seek each day to look upon your face.
Your gentle wind, your raging fire, rain’s torrents,
And underneath, your shifting, massive, plates,

All seem to me a wonder.
Each day brings some new sound unto my ears,
And night, the scents: datura, damp, and steel.
The tattoo of my own heart thrills to you,

To heaving core, the molten, moving iron.
That so often leaves one shivering, or in sweat,
Between your textured surfaces and sky.
And then sometimes I forget you…

Oil gushes from your sandy floor, betrayal.
Chemicals suffuse once fertile soil.
Holes are rent above your southern quadrant,
Mountains blasted open, or felled clear.

And too many like me, on you dependent,
Your body stretched and waiting for a touch.
But solipsistic minds forget this knowledge:
That your skin is ours,

Your oceans saline quick, flow in our blood.
Lover, forever we can say, “I’m sorry,”
But actions speak far louder than strong words,
And we, though brave and brash, are also feeble.

Lover, I fall now to my knees before you.
I will not beg forgiveness, not just yet.
My good friends shall be gathered all around me,
Holding hands, we will make better still, amends.

Together, we will clean, slow down, and listen.
Together, we will sow and reap, and kiss.
We will arc around combusting star in season.
And learn to better love you.

So I pray.

—

I wrote this two years ago, after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, where BP spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, changing the lives of animals, plankton, people, and fish. I reprise it here, for Earth Day 2012. May we learn.

A commentator on my last entry wrote:

“A touching piece about an important question – the question Mario Savio posed, standing on top of a police car on the UC Berkeley in December 2, 1964: when is it that you’ve finally had enough, and throw yourself into the gears, and make the machine stop, because business as usual is completely intolerable and insane, and nothing matters but stopping it, not comfort, or security, or sanity, or even life – it’s just got to stop, and you just can’t let it go on anymore, you just can’t watch it anymore?”

Sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes, no matter what our actions are, there is no way to say, “Yes, this choice, this action, will bring the change we need.” Sometimes, we simply need to find as much strength, love, and compassion as possible and act anyway. Sometimes we find this with our brothers and sisters, sometimes we find the strength within, and sometimes we really need to ask for help.

I was thinking about that at the soup kitchen today as I gave a long time guest a hug. He’s someone who has been up and down over the years, sometimes able to find odd jobs, other times staying with family, other times in jail or back on the streets. He told me today that he knew he wasn’t doing well and was trying to stop drinking. I asked if he had help with that, if he was going to meetings or anything. He said he had been, but was still drinking, so he quit. And now he’s back on the crack. He said he was trying. I said, “But it’s hard to do it without help.” He said, “But I have to do it myself. No one can do it for me.” True. And yet sometimes we really do need assistance. Looking at him, I knew there simply was no help I could offer besides listening, some kindness, and some food.

One hour later, in walked Michael, the guy in the orange shirt who was on the train tracks last Sunday. Thinking back to that day, one of the things he said was that he had graduated from Juilliard. Someone asked where his guitar was and he had replied, “I don’t have one. But I do play.” It came to me: I used to see him busking about town some years ago. What had happened to him? What was his story? Why was he on the tracks in desperation, and the other side of the counter? He is obviously highly intelligent and educated. Why had his life turned out so differently than mine? Was it lack of will, chemical imbalance, or something else?

I asked how he was, saying I’d seen him on Sunday and it seemed the police had tackled him pretty hard. Showing me his hospital wrist band he said, “I just got out of General. They cracked some of my ribs.”

Five police officers just trying to do their job tackled him hard enough to crack ribs. This is the situation we all find ourselves in. What was the right answer in that moment, for the police, for him, and for any of us? Michael’s heart, in its manic moment, needed to take a stand against injustice. The police, in that moment, felt a need to keep him from harming himself or others, and to get the trains running again. Those of us on the platform needed to bear witness to it all. None of us had the “right” answer. All of us needed help. But where could we turn?

One of the teachings from my spiritual tradition comes from Victor Anderson who enjoined us to neither coddle nor punish weakness. I want to help myself, friends, students, and clients toward strength so we can become our best selves, and help to shift the balance of the world toward beauty and wholeness. However, I consistently encounter people who seem barely able to care for themselves, through some combination of circumstance and chemistry. How do we best help? When do we need to be hard, and when soft? And when do we seek out assistance?

Some days I have answers to my questions. Today, I have none. I simply hold them in my mind and heart. I gaze at them as I do the guests coming for salad, conversation, and a place to rest after a long day looking for work, or a long night on cold concrete. Then I ride my bicycle home, gaze upon the apple blossoms, lettuces, and chard and I give thanks for the power of life renewed. I give thanks for the cycles of beauty and pain, the gifts in each encounter, ideas carried on birdsong, for the washing of the pots and the serving of the soup. I know that even when I don’t know the right answer, I can follow the course back to love.

What gives you hope? What keeps you strong? When do you ask someone for help? When do you offer the same?

What gets you through these times?

Coming from a friend’s birthday celebration, bicycle pannier laden with the bounty of leftover strawberries and asparagus, I arrived on the platform happy and contented. Then I noticed a white man in an orange shirt that read “Viva la Revolución” in the tracks on one side of the station. He was speaking to a gathered crowd. Some tried to talk with him, to get him to come up. Others shouted for help from the station agent. Still others were calling emergency services. A woman shouted, “The train is coming!” Looking for a place to park my bike, I ran toward the man, as I watched another man reach toward him. The man on the tracks reached up – the two men’s hands were almost touching – as the train entered the station, bellowing at us all with great blasts from its horn. The orange shirted white man pulled his hand back and ducked beneath the lip of the platform. The train, brakes squealing, halted two feet from his body.

Everything paused.

Then the man on the tracks sprang up again, and began pacing back and forth, telling us why he was there. He was intelligent. Coherent. Cogent. And a little bit crazy. He spoke eloquently of Occupying the train station, of the bail out of wall street, of sleeping on the streets for six years, of the slow wearing down of the working class… When the police arrived, he spoke to them about bringing their guns into poor neighborhoods, of young black men being shot down, and our homeless being ticketed for minor infractions, while the system grinds on and on.

The man in the orange shirt told us his name was Michael.

The system grinds on and on. We feed it. Michael was at his own edge, and certainly at ours. He was in rebellion. The person who had offered a hand to lift him up knelt on the platform. I crouched beside him, hands open and outstretched, taking in Michael’s words, looking into his eyes whenever he passed in front of me. People exited the stopped train. The platform became packed with people filming, shouting, and more police arriving. Some of us just held the space. The man in the orange shirt kept on, speaking an endless stream of words, telling us all what we already knew: some things are not right. Some things must change.

The ugly crack of a ratcheting rifle sounded like a shot in the enclosed space. Michael began to run, chased by police, who tackled him to the concrete. The fire brigade streamed down the stairs, but it was already over.

Except it wasn’t. It isn’t.

The man who had tried to help spoke with me. I said it broke my heart. A young woman came closer to talk, needing to process the pain and worry she felt. We all shook hands and introduced ourselves. Then the trains started moving again. We parted ways.

Some people called the man on the tracks an asshole for disrupting everyone’s lives. Some will only think he is crazy. I feel grateful for him. Sometimes we need a strong reminder to break through inertia. Is it crazy to try to stop a moving train? It certainly isn’t prudent. It isn’t wise. But neither is the train we’re on: the trajectory of waste, greed, killing, alienation, oppression, bigotry, hatred, and despair.

Sometimes we have to decide where and when we stand and say, “Enough.”

photo by Lola Chavez

What boundaries do we draw and whom do we include? Who are our prophets and whom do we ignore? Are we so busy rushing to make ends meet, so overwhelmed by all the urgency of need in the world that we fail to stop long enough to listen for the voice of deep connection that wells up from our souls? When is it time to stop our own train?

When is it time to take the offered hand and climb up from the tracks, to live and try another day?

The world is built one moment at a time.

[What follows is a message that was given to me late January, 2010. It wanted to come forward today.]

Love is the valley in which you wander. Every day, we choose to set our feet upon the path. Again. Every day we seek that which feeds us and find inside that which we can offer. Every day we have to recommit to our lives, our relationships, our work, and our soul’s calling. Cut the ties that bind you to the past. Let the past be carried in cells and memory, not in this constant reliving. You are living now. Breath the sweet air that carries this message: life occurs in milliseconds. Things are born and destroyed in the blink of an eye. The future depends upon how you live today. Make your plans then let them be. Focus on the choices of the moment. Be here now. Live.

Do you choose to live in strength? Do you choose to waken beauty? Let us dance.

“Welcome, stranger.You shall be entertained as a guest among us. Afterward,
when you have tasted dinner, you shall tell us what your need is.” – Telemechos to disguised Athena (the Odyssey)

We cannot know what someone else’s story is just by looking at them.

While working at the soup kitchen this week, I was washing dishes in a sink near the large stove, and talking with some guests in the line. At one point, I happened to glance across the dining hall and saw a face I recognized, but not from the house of hospitality itself. I recognized this person from night clubs. He is often around, handing out postcards for other events, hanging out, talking. A very friendly man. Here he was, eating a bowl of soup and some salad, cup of water in front of him. Giving him his privacy, I figured if he happened to see and recognize me and wanted to talk, he would come over. He did not.

This small event brought several things home to me, one of which was the reminder that we just don’t know the circumstances in which most people around us live. Unless they tell us – and sometimes even then – we are most often making our assessments from superficial cues, including context. One other thing this brought home to me is how grateful I feel for my life. I often give thanks at the kitchen, mostly for the joy of being there, working in community. Some days, when a person comes in who is obviously really hurting – whether from too many drugs and drink, or some internal demons, or simply pain, harshness, and the effort to get by – I give thanks for my life, and the blessings of my life.

The Gods have been good to me. Yes, I’ve struggled. Yes, I’ve been poor. Yes, I’ve felt lonely, angry, ashamed, bereft. Yes, I was raised with adversity. Yes, I’ve had chronic pain and illness. And… Various component pieces – including education, intelligence, some talent, the privilege of skin tone, some ambition, some effort, some hard choices, some help, and some luck – all came together to give me a life that makes me feel wealthy. I never want to forget that grace is part of the package.

Any of us could be eating at our local house of hospitality. Any of us could be looking for shelter. Any of us could be masking pain as we walk into work each day. Any of us could – like Athena in the Odyssey – be a Goddess in disguise, masking our glorious nature from the world.

May we bring kindness to ourselves, and be kind to those we meet. May we offer what we can, but no more than we can. May we remember that appearances may disguise many things: an aching heart, a hungry belly, or some bright talent, as yet unrecognized.

We have all been in pain. We have all been in disguise. We all can shine.

.

“When does a life bend towards freedom? grasp its direction? 

How do you know you’re not circling in pale dreams, nostalgia, 

stagnation

but entering that deep current   malachite   colorado

  requiring all your strength wherever found

your patience and your labor

desire pitted against desire’s inversion

all your mind’s fortitude?”

- Adrienne Rich

(from the poem Movement in the collection Dark Fields of the Republic)

The poet does well to ask. Her words cut to the quick of our fear, exposing our hesitation at taking the very risk that might save our lives.

I felt this so strongly when I was young, having been opened by poetry, captured by words that promised something more than Southern California 1980s suburbia. My scribblings had gotten me through three boring years of high school, and catapulted me up the coast to San Francisco, where poets still roamed the streets.

Sitting in a packed auditorium, all of 20 years old (or so), I listened to the poet speak. My life was set before me. I wanted to be a poet like that. Like Adrienne Rich. Words on fire, or rising from deep water. Wiser than I. Insightful. Fragile. Strong. Feeling that I wanted her to see me, what I really wanted – and what every poet knows – is to truly see myself.

My words have taken a different form in intervening years. The path I have chosen has moved from the careful craft of poetry to the sweet rush of translating the soul so that I and those around me can better understand. The poet does that, too, but differently. We all find our way, and our successes.

What is your success? What is your road? What opens you, exposing your fear, your sorrow, and the spark of your ambition?

What helps you see yourself? How do you hold up a mirror to help the world?

Adrienne Rich affected my heart and soul, and left me with the wish to shape my life. For this, I am eternally grateful. Her words will continue to inspire. In thanking Adrienne Rich for her life, her legacy, her words, I thank everyone who ever helped someone to see, to listen, or to feel. We all touch one another, in large ways or in small. What choices shall we make about our actions and our speech? How will we craft our lives?

May we learn to walk in power and intention. May we listen well, and speak with the strength of poets.

——

Here is the New York Times obituary.

Edit:

Having not followed her career after my 20s, only referencing the books that sat upon my shelves, I had no idea that Rich was thanked by Raymond in “Transexual Empire” which is a book that has done great damage to feminist thought.

Yet I see also that she was thanked by Les Feinberg in “Transgender Warriors” and Minnie Bruce Pratt in “S/he” so it seems that Rich changed her thinking regarding trans women. 

Too little, too late? Perhaps it would have been good had she had spoken out more clearly and strongly (as Joanna Russ has done), but at least she seems to have learned and changed, for which I feel relieved.

We come up against this with artists so often. One example I often think of when grappling with such things is the terrible misogyny of Picasso. Yet Guernica is still an important statement… 

Her poetry lives on. May we learn from her gifts and her mistakes, and from our own.

The sun will be directly above the earth’s equator tonight (or just into the morning, depending upon where you live). Light and dark, day and night, become equalizing forces. And yet, out in the cosmos, the other stars and planets simply go about their business. Do they even feel what happens around our little sun?

How about you? What is being shown to you, coming to attention?  What are you balancing, or what is helping balance you?

We often think of balance as stasis or equanimity, yet sometimes to return to a sense of balance, we must break stasis – expressing that which has been long unspoken, looking at what has been hidden, or awakening that which was asleep. This can give us a sense of being thrown off kilter, simply because we’ve grown used to things being a certain way. That brings up a host of emotions, large or small.

In my life, and the lives of my friends, the equinoxes often dance through like this: enabling new balance by bringing starkly to the forefront things that have been out of balance, large or small. This felt so true for awhile, that one friend used to host a springtime brunch to celebrate “The Day of Hideous Balance.”

I like the equinoxes, even when they cause discomfort, because they remind me to pay attention, to look or listen for that which has been sliding along and requires a course adjustment. This doesn’t always feel comfortable at first, but the energy that is freed up is worth it in the end. Also, it helps me to live more honestly with myself and others, which makes life more aligned and true.

All around us, people of many religions are celebrating, but that doesn’t mean that equinox has to feel good. Honoring the day and night of balance, however, can help serve to make us strong. The power of Sun at equatorial Earth reminds us to hold together those things that we have kept apart, allowing day and night, hope and fear, love and anger, growth and decay, to reflect each other in equal measure. In doing this, our own lives reflect back to us – in our friends, colleagues, animals, flowering plants, in wind, and sky. It doesn’t matter if it feels pretty – no need to dress it up in fancy bonnets – life in all its wholeness is beautiful. The sun and earth are in us. Doors open. Death and life walk hand in hand.

Blessed Equinox, wherever you are.