Category Archives: Photo/Poem Series

Sitting In The Midst

Thank you all for leaving comments pointing to the sections of the video I linked to in my last post. So grateful we now have some time markers to go to although listening/watching the whole things is good too. That gravel voice is attractive in a certain kind of way. Here at 9.16 mins into the video Cohen voices what many of us know about. Namely the intensity of energy that floods ones body and mind while sitting zazen/meditation.  Sometimes refered to as sitting in the midst a fire. Obviously not an actual fire. PLEASE! Later, around the 11.00 mins meditation is mentioned again.

Things arise that are very disturbing and there’s no way around it… you have to sit in the very bonfire of that distress and you sit there until you’re burned away.


What he says does indeed reach the heart. In gassho, Matthew
Thanks to Matthew for this quote. We met, briefly, at Throssel where we, along with many others. remembered Rev. Master Jiyu. The 20th anniversary of her death November 6th 1996. Also thanks to Nigel for his poem, yet to be published here. The video seems to have hit the spot.
altar-for-rev-m-jiyu

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Surrender Unto Dark

SAMSUNG

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.

John O’Donohue

The shortest day
(of daylight)
has been and gone.

Did I mention that
already.
I’m wondering.

21st December
the depth of
winter months.

Rest and take your play in darkness. Harsh lights shine no more. Dwell in velvet-black.

Clarity?  Who’s to tell?

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Sleds and Storks – and the rest

We had heard tell that it was the custom in days gone by to have a coffin (empty) stored in the rafters of rural dwellings. And sure enough there in an ancient house in an Open Air Rural museum outside of Riga was a coffin – in the rafters of a simple home. While there at the museum, we caught a few moments of a Lutheran service in a wooden church with painted ceiling, scratched around, inside and out, of wooden buildings used by farmers and fisherman and crafts people, buildings housing carts and sledges and memorably – a horse-drawn funeral carriage.

But as we toured the countryside taking in sea and sand dunes, a reconstruction of a medieval castle (circular tower and lots of steps) and a Sacred Oak the large bundles of sticks purched  on top of telegraph poles caught my curiosity. Storks nests! The Latvians seem to hold the Storks, now in Africa, in high regard. Never removing nests when poles no longer carry wires and our guides for the day had much to say about the birds in general. Touching actually.

And the rest? After the history and the culture and the national pride, and not forgetting the fancy (many crumbling especially the wooden ones) old city buildings, what remains to mention? A shop where the clothing was sold by weight! The old women begging for money outside of the Russian Orthodox church. Inside the Orthodox church just sitting for a few moments of peace. The way people waited at cross walks for the little green man to light up before crossing. Civic discipline?

And the modern, fresh face, English-speaking young men who will go far. Contrasted with bent over, looking at the ground, old faces carrying heavy history. Theirs and of a nation.

Basically I fly away tomorrow thinking about nationhood. Grateful to have stability in my lifetime, and to live forward with hope.

My thoughts Latvians. Hope on.

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Over and Over, Again and Again

Water Lily - Shetland. 2013
Water Lily – Shetland. 2013

Over and over
Again and again
the sweet dew evaporates.
Yet who knows?
Who cares!

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Bend in the Road

The Rocky Mountains.
The Rocky Mountains.

Bend in the road
chime of a clock
friends call and are gone
the dew of life
evaporates

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