Kate Vogt's Blog

EGRET – return movement

As you fill with wisdom,
and your heart with love,
there ’s no more thirst.

There ’s only an unselfed patience
waiting on the doorsill, a silence
which doesn’t listen to advice
from people passing on the street.

Sanai
Translated by Coleman Barks

 

Road Closed.   I was bewildered when I read the sign posted on a barrier that stretched across a quiet back street.  My confusion was in part because the closure seemed to have appeared without prior notice.  Admittedly, I had been so immersed in the ...

A FLY – unexpected messenger

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat
says, “I know you’re tired,
but come. This is the way.”

Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

Zzzzzzzz.  Zzzz.  Zzzzzzzz.  Quiet, then once again Zzzzzzzz. Zzzz. Zzzzzzzz.   On its own, the repetitiveness of the sound was akin to a joyful hum, seemingly celebrating the deep pulse of life.  It had its own rhythmic pattern of rising and falling, circling into and back out of itself like the eternal cycles of existence. As a simple...

FLIGHT – explorations of reality

Knowledge always deceives.
It always limits the Truth,
every concept and image does.
From cage to cage the caravan moves,
but I give thanks,
for at each divine juncture
my wings expand
and I
touch Him more
intimately.

Meister Eckhart

Several kilometers above the earth, I’m sealed in a metal tube along with another hundred humans.  I’d say we are soaring through the heavens, yet nearly everyone near a window has closed the shade, hiding any visual reference to signs that we are actually in the s...

SQUIRREL – messenger of ancient values

If you want money more than anything,
you’ll be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,
you’ll be a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth:
whatever you love, you are.

Rumi
Trans. by Coleman Barks

Wildlife often grazes on a hillside outside our kitchen window.  Yesterday, as I was eating breakfast, a squirrel romped across the hill and then scurried up a tree.  After a few minutes, the squirrel darted back to the ground and began digging up and moving some of its stashes.  I am sure that...

WILDFLOWERS – messengers of joy

Silently a flower blooms
in silence it falls away;
Yet, here now, at this moment, at this place,
the whole of the flower, the whole of the world is
blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

Zenkei Shibayama
Translation by Sumiko Kudo

I invite you to join me in celebrating the beginning of the 7th year of these new- and full-moon tributes to abiding keepers of wisdom.  This invokes a more revered use of the word wisdom, r...

SPACIOUSNESS – treeless landscape

I ask all blessings,
I ask them with reverence,
of my mother earth,
of the sky, moon, and sun.

I am old age: the essence of life,
I am the source of all happiness.

All is peaceful, all in beauty
all in harmony, all in joy.

Navajo Wisdom

 

Treeless.  Wherever I visit a part of the world, I feel most at home in landscapes, particularly ones that are naturally open and spacious with few trees and buildings.  Within the last month, my journeys have taken me above the tree line to a volcano referred...

VOLCANO – timeless lovingness

Mountains are steadfast but the mountain streams
go by, go by,
and yesterdays are like the rushing streams,
they fly, they fly,
and the great heroes, famous for a day,
they die, they die.

Hwang Chin-i
Translated by Peter H. Lee

“There she is!”  That was my common refrain the last few days.  I had been on a short trip to a place where I had once lived in the western part of the state of Washington.  On clear days, the area sparkles with the sunlight glistening off the multiple waterways and snowy...

SOIL – sacred foundation

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
and a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
and Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Upside down.  That is how days begin here with this body on this part of the planet in an area called San Francisco Bay.  Literally, the day begins with taking my feet toward the sky and my head toward the earth, in a sort of modified head stand.  This little gesture began a few decades ago with more of an intent of instilling confidence and trust into th...

JASMINE – grace of trust

Let this be
my last word,
that I trust in
Your love.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rustle, rustle, rustle.  That was how my mind felt as I closed the front door and headed toward a neighborhood trail.  There were no particular thoughts or storylines happening in my mind.  Instead, there was a just a general connection with layers of contemporary unsettledness.  In going for a walk, I trusted that likely some experience along the way would invite my mind to quieten and surrender into its  deeper and long-...

HORSETAIL – ancient belonging

In some Native languages
the term for plants
translates to
“those who take care of us.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer

It’s a fiftieth anniversary!  That was the thought that crossed through my mind as I hiked up a wooded hillside trail.  I let the thought pass and walked onward, immersed in the surrounding sounds forming their own rhythmic conversation.  Far beyond the grasp of words, everything belonged – the stones in their silence, hawks in their soaring, streams in their rippling, and my boots in thei...