Mark Nepo's Blog, page 16

Care

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

It’s a recurring lesson that, try as we do, the things that matter can’t be prepared for, only met. In this way, preparation requires being fully awake and present, more than anticipating every possible outcome. Meeting life over anticipating life lets us be surprised by care.

 

CARE

It used to be so

complicated: going

where I’d want

without a word

as if telling anyone

made me less free.

Or coming into

a relationship

like a bus station,

checking fares and

destinations

before boarding.

It used to be so

confusing: needing

to be touched

while wanting

to be left alone,

and still it’s hard

to let all I am show

in the presence

of strangers or

intimates who’d

like me to change.

 

But when I’m

stopped or stalled,

I spray the plants

and they shine for me.

I laugh in public

at what music does

to my notion of silence.

I touch your wrist

and something flows.

A Question to Walk With: How guarded are you with others? How does this help you? How does it harm you?

 

The Purpose of Fishing

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Fishing is a great way to relate to the unknown. It’s compelling and surprising that we always return to places where we’ve caught something to wait, when there’s no reason to think that anything will ever break surface in the same place twice. But we wait and try to sense what is under the surface.

 

The Purpose of Fishing

It’s hard to say. We gather the rod and

bait and clean the line, the way we get

degrees. Then cast our line the way we

cast ambition. Then we wait. Until we

think it’s all for nothing. If lucky, we out-

wait the glare of failure. Now it seems just

being here, rocking in the stillness, is the

catch. Once we stop waiting, we can hear

our heart beat like a small drum between

the gusts of wind. And then, and only then,

some big, shiny, armless thing might break

surface. But the lightweight rod is sleeping

out of reach. So we grab for what moves in

the deep with our hands. All of this, to get

us wet in a baptism no one can name.

 

A Question to Walk With: Discuss with a friend what you think the metaphor of fishing is opening up here and what it might be saying about how we find meaning in our days.

Meeting My Selves

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We are all blessed to live more than one life within our one life. All of us challenged to grow out of one self and into another. I am not the same person I was ten years ago, nor was that self the same as the one I inhabited twenty years ago. We blossom and outgrow selves the way butterflies emerge from cocoons. Except that being human, we have the chance to emerge from many cocoons. This poem tries to look back at the many selves I’ve lived in.

MEETING MY SELVES

I came upon a younger me. He was pressing

against everything. Seeing what would hold

and what would give way. What gave way he

thought weaker. What resisted he thought

oppressive. I was embarrassed at how little

I knew. Then I stumbled on an artist obsess-

sed with the fire of creation. He thought it a

sacred obligation. He threw everything into the

flames. Those close thought him an arsonist. I

felt guilty for those I burned against their will.

Midway I found a fish-like man whose chest was

pried open like a ragged shell. This was me tossed

ashore by cancer. I felt grateful for the cracking of

my stubbornness with time enough to be. Along

the way I dreamt of the old holy man. I can’t say

he was me but I have met him many times. He

stays in the world though he faces the interior.

Whatever the difficulty, he stops to bless what-

ever is near. When I was near death, he stopped

to bless me. I have searched for him ever since.

When I close my fear, I feel his hands entering

my hands. When I close my worry, I feel his

eyes parting the curtain of my eyes.

A Question to Walk With: Describe at least one former self and how you have grown from that into the self you are right now.

Tendencies

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We are all born with tendencies, inclinations toward different ways of being in the world. Some of us like to put things together. Some of us like to take things apart. Some of us like to have everything in order. Some of us are suffocated if everything seems too neat. Some of us feel completely who we are when with others. Some of us only feel this thorough alone, in nature. The ancient Hindu notion of karma speaks to the law of tendencies. This profound view of life is often misunderstood. This reflection explores the notion of karma and our human tendencies.

The popular understanding of karma is rather like a westernized cartoon of a very profound aspect of the spiritual condition of being human. Often oversimplified, karma is rendered in broad strokes by westerners as living many lives under the threat that if you’re bad in one life, you’ll be punished in the next—or the reverse. But let’s look more closely.

The word karma comes from the Sanskrit root kri, meaning to do; kri, in turn, is from the Pali, kamma, meaning action, effect, destiny, the work of fate. Weaving these notions into their largest meaning, the original Hindu sense of karma refers to the sum of all the consequences of a person’s actions in this or a previous life. We must consider the phrase “previous life” in various ways: literally, as well as referring to different passages within a single life of transformation on earth. With this in mind, we are responsible for the impact of our actions over time. Once we’ve formed our tendencies to act, we have the option of following them or resisting them.

This freedom to follow our tendencies or not resides in the well of what the Hindus call atman, or the breath of spirit and consciousness within. Our surrender to God is believed to be essential in dissolving the bonds of destructive tendencies. And so obeying the breath of spirit and consciousness within (our atman, or the God within) is believed to be instrumental in creating life-nourishing tendencies. Given that what is not integrated is repeated, destructive tendencies, if not faced and dismantled, repeat themselves, not only throughout one life but throughout many lives. This is the psycho-spiritual dynamic at the heart of karma. And no one is exempt from it.

So the challenge for each of us centers on understanding our own eternal journey in terms of which of our personal tendencies are life-nourishing and which are destructive, which are we upholding and which are we resisting. Paradoxically, only being human on earth can offer up the experience of spirit necessary to alter our tendencies.

My first encounter with facing my own tendencies surfaced abruptly when waiting for surgery to determine if I had brain cancer. Four or five of us were all lined up in the anteroom of the operating room, and  one  by  one  the  masked  angels  of  this medical underworld were hooking us up. My fear kept building. I thought I might explode. Next to me was a young woman, a poor, innocent, inexperienced being. She was terrified of the needle that would make her sleep. So terrified, she moaned before the needle touched her skin. Her moan was piercing. I reached for her but was tethered by my own IV. But this was her karma. The needle wouldn’t take, and they had to try four, five, six times until it settled in a vein. I lay there on my back, my last pouch of innocence torn. And I thought, “Who will suture this?” I watched her moan and thought, “What on earth is my karma? What do I fear and need to relinquish so deeply that I am here?”

I had always needed closure, had always planned the days minutely in advance, but as I struggled with cancer, it became clear—there would be no closure. It made me wonder if there ever is closure or is it just a fabrication like time, a rope of mind which humans need to braid and knot in order to get by. But there I was. The terrified young woman was wheeled off. And then they came for me. As I was rolled into the operating room, as I began to drift, I remember pressing the question: is lack of closure my needle, which—because I fear it—must be thrust at me four, five, six times until it settles in my spirit’s vein?

Up to that point in my life, I had thought of hardships as inexplicable events happening to me and others and viewed strength as the ability to endure these unwanted circumstances. Such endurance is certainly a strength. But for the first time, laying there next to this terrified young woman, waiting my turn, my sense of all this changed. Suddenly I understood strength in another way, as the character revealed by facing what comes our way—until our tendencies and habits are revealed to us, until they wrestle or dance with us, until we are worn into who we are born to be.

A Question to Walk With: Describe one life-nourishing tendency you have and one life-draining tendency you have. What can you do to encourage the what is nourishing and what can you do to lessen what is life-draining?

 

The Ethic of Wonder

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The great Jewish philosopher, Abraham Heschel said, “ We will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation… What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder…” Wonder is the feeling that overcomes us when we enter life and not just watch it. Here is a reflection about wonder.

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

—William Wordsworth

 

Let me share three stories about wonder. First, there was a little boy, no more than five, who lived in a cottage near the sea, and when he slept, night after night, the roll and rush of the sea kept washing over his head. The boy grew up to be the pianist Michael Jones whose music always sounds like the sea. Michael says, “I carry a sense of playing and being played.” When asked, the pianist with the sea in his head says, “We have two glorious tasks: to be a good steward of the gift we are given and to wait upon that gift. This calls for deep and constant listening, the way a wave listens to the deep.”

The second story comes from my dear friend Megan Scribner, who grew up in the Northwest, in Walla Walla, Washington, which bears the name of the Native American tribe indigenous to that region. That part of the country is laced with a network of underground springs which surface into a system of fresh rivers. This deep presence of water, connecting everything below the surface, affects the way of life in this region. The name Walla Walla, which means place of many waters, is a reminder of this unseen connection. It approximates the sound that the many waters continually make if you close your eyes and squat near the rivers… walla walla walla walla walla walla walla walla… In naming things this way, the tribe and town bear the ethic of wonder, which is that things worth honoring are named twice. The Kooskooskie River is another example. The word koos means water and its repetition implies an emphasis on very clear water. In Idaho, this river is known today as the Clearwater River.

Simply and profoundly, things that matter are repeated as a way to bring our full attention to them, as a way to meet them. Such naming through listening is the beginning of prayer.

The third story comes from my friend Allan Lokos, who has devoted years to playing the Native American flute. There are many versions of the flute’s origin, which essentially go like this: All the creatures had found their song, but the human song was missing. So the Great Spirit spoke to his friends. In time, a tree branch was hollowed by the long spirit, erosion, and holes were pecked in it by the small spirit, woodpecker. Then the big spirit, weather, caused the hollowed, pecked branch to drop in the path of humans. A young man came along and while holding the branch, a bird flew overhead and offered its call. In that moment, the young man thought the birdsong came from the hollowed branch. When he realized what was happening, he closed his eyes and, breathing across the holes, prayed for the birdsong to return. To his surprise, he birthed a song of his own. In this way, the long spirit, the small spirit, and the big spirit caused humans to discover their song.

The ethic of wonder is how we listen to the Earth: waiting for the gift until things that matter repeat themselves through our love, until we kiss the hollowed things put in our way. All this leads us to our song.

 

A Question to Walk With: What is your first memory of wonder? Tell this story. How do you feel recounting this?

 

 

Blessings I Have No Words For

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

This week’s poem is about what we hear in the spaces between all the noise. All meditation practices and all beginnings of art start with such a listening.

But I will try. Sometimes my

heart trembles like a butterfly

in a jar and I’m afraid to let it

out. Yet there are days my heart

is a mountain on which my life

grows. Sometimes when deeply

alone, I can hear the bead of

silence renewing the beginning,

a drop from nowhere enlivening

each moment. This is where my

questions live, in the quiet center

that illuminates our eyes. I believe

the heart-breaking music that pries

us open is the sound of the world

turning on its axis. I believe the

souls kept in the heart become a

tribe. They drum our memory of

them into a sweetness that joins

life and death. No matter the

passage, trust the process you

are in. Receiving the down-

pour, we rise with the stream.

 

A Question to Walk With: What kind of process are you in right now? What is the world saying to you? Where do you sense you are being led?

Attendant Spirits

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The modern use of the word “genius” refers to someone with a remarkable brilliance in one aspect of their capacities. We think of Mozart or Einstein or Michelangelo. But the original notion of the word genius meant “attendant spirit.” This was not reserved only for the gifted. Rather, it was believed that everyone has an attendant spirit. Everyone has a genius. This is where the word “genie” comes from. So each of us has our own genie, our own soul to guide us, if we dare to look for it, to listen to it, to stay in relationship with it. This poem speaks to this.

 

The angels around us, the ones

I’ve seen when too tired to think,

the one who twitches in my dog

when she sleeps, the one who rides

the sun through the fork in the oak,

the one who weighs the angry hand

open, the one who like a breeze lifts

the curtain of my eyes, the one who

flits like a dragonfly in the back of

my throat telling me it’s ok to cry—

they don’t come to help us out of

here. They quietly wait for the

storms of paradise to crack, for

the dreams we lean on to topple.

They soak up light and wait like

dew on grass for us to notice.

They slip in through our

smallest sigh.

 

A Question to Walk With: How would you describe your attendant spirit and how it speaks to you?

The Cherry Tree on Willett Street

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

Life can be harsh and beautiful by turns. Often, it seems unfair. Why can’t the beautiful openings last longer? I learned one spring that this movement from fullness to bareness is the inhalation and exhalation of the Universe. The rhythm is what keeps us alive. It keeps us growing. My teacher that spring was a cherry tree.

 

The Cherry Tree on Willett Street

For three glorious years, I lived on Willett Street in Albany, New York, in an old brownstone on the edge of a beautiful park, which I could see year-round from my bay window.  Across the street was a very old cherry tree whose surprising blossoms burst for only a few days in early May.

The first year I called my dear friend Robert and my wife Susan, and we stood arm in arm beneath the tree, staring up into a swaying thicket of pink. Since it bloomed before everything else, the miracle of flowers sprouting from wood was shouting quietly. From that day, I watched the cherry tree intensely, in awe how quickly and easily it would let go of all its apparent beauty, as quickly gone as it had come.

There were times in late fall or winter when I felt as sudden in possibility, and as quickly bereft. I would go out in the rain or snow and place my hands against the trunk, as if asking for its counsel. And it always seemed to say in silence—neither the fullness nor the bareness lasts, but we return.

By the second spring, we anticipated the days of blossom. At first sign, we gathered and read poems to the tree and to each other. After the second blossoming, I saw the tree’s bareness as a remarkable, enduring strength. Knowing this softness would return, and sprout from its woodiness, became a guide.

Susan and I now live in Michigan, but each spring Robert goes in silence to stand beneath the thicket of pink. And we call to hear how the tree has burst again in its fullness. We close our eyes as he tells us the story we want to hear, and we feel possible all over.

—excerpt from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe a tree or plant or flower that has special meaning for you.

 

Physics of the Deep

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

There are spiritual physics that govern how we move from surface to depth and back. I think one is that experience wears or cracks us open, which can be painful and difficult. But most times, that wearing or cracking open lets something sweet in us out in the open, the way a coconut dropped and cracked by a storm lets its sweet milk drip into the world. This poem speaks to this.

 

I’m a big, old fish now, gumming

at the bottom, happy to feel the

light dissolve around me like sugar.

Each of our lives unfolds this way,

a sweetness dissolving over time into

all that it touches. Each of us: a hard-

ness carrying a softness, a determina-

tion carrying a gift, a thickness carry-

ing fruit. It’s hard to bear. And so, we

run into experience and each other:

to crack our hardness, to break our

determination, to get through our

thickness. Each of us destined to

shatter the container we live in,

so the sweetness can escape.

 

 

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a time when running headlong into an experience cracked your stubbornness or determination and what softer side of you came out.

 

 

Cezanne in Snow

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Sudden, deep feelings are often teachers that we resist or turn away from, because of their intensity. Instead, we are often asked to enter these deep feelings, the way we might enter a field after a long walk through the woods. This reflection speaks about such a feeling I walked into one winter morning.

 

I woke this morning at a loss that it had stopped snowing. I don’t know why. I thought of Cezanne in his grey apartment in Paris staring at the apples on the table, not sure where to start, trying to eat them with his eyes. The last few days I’ve been feeling that old ache that lets me know I’m alive and tethered to everything; feeling that invisible thread floss my heart like fishing line. No one’s pulling it. It just moves like ocean tides when everyone’s asleep. Like mountain trees that creak and sway without witness. The thread of everything tugs and pulls, making us ache for no reason. Though I still search for what makes me feel this way and that. Last night I dreamt I was flipping through the seven hundred channels bouncing off the satellite and one had all the people I’ve ever loved behind the screen. They were walking toward me. I could see them up close but couldn’t touch them. Then I woke at a loss that it had stopped snowing. I don’t know why. I feel like the oak today, leaning leafless in the winter air, glad to be out in the open, ready for something tired to land on me. I wish it would keep snowing. And the sadness in my heart, which is falling like snow, keeps saying, Be thankful. You’re going to wake. And the sun slipping through the trees stuns me with its assurance, You are awake.

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe the feeling you have that lets you know you are fully alive. Describe the last time you felt this.