Daily Archives: August 17, 2013

What Ties Me to the Earth Is Unseen

Posted on August 17, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

This was a busy day. We head out for the evening shortly to spend time with friends. We ran around to get ourselves organized a good part of the day.

Mark Nepo wrote this lovely poem which is a reminder of the need to slow down and find the silent space of sabbath. The lake offers me a place to light down similar to the heron and find the quiet needed to rejuvenate the spirit. This quiet finds its way into my life without a full awareness sometimes. It just appears and I embrace it as it helps me weave my life together.

My heart was beating like a heron awakened

in the woods, no room to move. Tangled

and surprised by the noise of my mind,

I fluttered without grace to the center

of the lake which humans call silence.

I guess, if you would ask, peace

is no more than the underside

of tired wings resting on the lake

while the heart in its feathers

pounds softer and softer.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, Uncategorized and tagged creativity, Mark Nepo, Mindful Practice, poem, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer, What Ties Me to the Earth Is Unseen. Bookmark the permalink.

Chaff and Grain

Posted on August 17, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

This is a simple photo that I probably would pass each day without paying it a lot of mind. Combined with the wonderful poetry below it comes to life. I will never see a wheat field the same again.

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Pure Relationships

Posted on August 17, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Today, as I read, I came across this passage from the work of D. H. Lawrence. It is not a poem, but the words have a poetic quality to them and allow me to consider what life is all about. Life is relational and that is not limited to people. I live in relationship to everything I come in contact with. In the busyness of life, this is a gentle reminder to acknowledge the relationships consciously. I witness pure relationships in these acknowledgement, these accomplishments.

The passage has a Zen quality, but it reminded me that until about 300 years ago our souls were inseparable from our physical being even in western culture.

“If we think about it, we find that our life consists in this achieving of a pure relationship between ourselves and the living universe about us. This is how I ‘save my soul’ by accomplishing a pure relationship between me and another person, me and other people, me and a nation, me and a race of men, me and animals, me and the trees or flowers, me and the earth, me and the skies and the sun and stars, me and the moon: an infinity of pure relationships, big and little, like the stars of the sky: that makes our eternity, for each one of us, me and the timber I am sawing, the lines of force I follow; me and the dough I knead for bread, me and the very motion with which I write, me and the bit of gold I have got. This, if we knew it, is our life and our eternity: the subtle, perfected relation between me and my whole circumambient universe.”