Joyce Barrass's Blog, page 41

I'LL BE RIGHT

That knot in your stomach. You know it. You feel it, too, don't you?
You feed it with worry and fretting about the future. Its favourite diet is 'might happens' and 'what ifs'. It ties itself tighter. It dyes itself deeper into darkness, knitting itself into a jacket with bristly threads.  You try to unpick it with distractions. You try to cast off its stitches but the needles of denial keep clicking.
Suddenly your mind is spinning. You feel shipwrecked on a distant horizon. Life feels remote and you picture yourself all alone, isolated, nervous, jumpy. Your hear an echo of your own helpless voice crying out, sobbing like you did as a child when you once felt abandoned and anxious decades ago.
You come to the end of your rope. You creep, broken, into silence. You let your babbling mind relax. You shush it firmly as it warns and scaremongers. You're Mary Poppins closing the beak of her parrot-headed umbrella.  When it starts to get the message, your mental chatter quietens its chuntering for a space. Just a space, so the silence can break through. Then the frantic little knot, the node of grief and anxiety, smiles at itself being gently acknowledged, and as your soul reminds itself of being one with all creation, you suddenly find the knot itself has unravelled and lost its kinks and snarls. Under all the surface shimmer of dire imaginings, you get a peek at the solid ground underneath.
Then there is a wideness, humming with light. You know for certain the truth that you are not floating in abandonment at all, but tenderly held, perfectly still, in love and security of another kind – the peace that's beyond words, or images or concepts. It waits for you so humbly, while you clumsily juggle with your mind’s plunge into the past, as it tries to recall better times while stopping off to rerun all the worst moments etched unhelpfully, obsessively, in memory; while your thoughts pick nervously at the imagined emptiness of the future, with that sense of undefined, vague and untouchable dread.
I hear from my heart: “I can't help with what you dread in the future. I can only be here with you in this moment. Here we can deal with everything that is, together as one.”
So I choose to be here. Not to ‘stay’ here, because change and impermanence is a given. We dread change too, don't we, when we make it into a choice, or link it to the uncertainty of the future? No. I choose to be here. Only here and now is rock solid liquid reality. Here I am beloved, with a love that is everywhere and everything, that is refreshed to perfection every moment, before that perfection can fall away even for an instant. Only sometimes, when the knot makes itself felt inside, I lose sight of this still centre and I escape into the captivity of mind-buzzing absence.
I've spent so many years of my life caught up in my mind's fantasies. The world of misery was always waiting when I came back to earth.  Like so many others, I've walked through a featureless wilderness of illness during these past few decades. After an initial ‘my life is over!’ moment, when I became so ill,  knees chopped from under me, unable to function from the illnesses that stalked me and ate me alive, I've reached a clearing. 
Clearings give us a new perspective on the surrounding forest with its thickets of thorns and hidden pits. Now I am finding my heart somehow drawn deeper and stiller than ever before. Nearer to silence's lucid clarity than I was, even in those active, fervent years when I was free to serve, travel, and minister wherever I was called to be. 
Nothing can quench that love at the very kernel of life itself. It never goes out and far from abandoning us to grief and cynicism for ever, it waits inside us till we can stop running and shouting and weeping for long enough to realise it has always completely been with us, and within us.
True joy comes welling up. Never pushy, never strident. It's always waiting in the background while the mind is doing its dread and loathing thing, fighting to get away from the truth of eternity that never diminishes or fades away for a moment.
This morning’s headlines in the UK include medicine shortages even before full Brexit at the end of the month after next. I could worry. I could whine. Perhaps I will, again! I've had enough practice! I could stress and resist and identify as poor little me, the hard done-by. But whenever I can summon up the insight not to, I refuse to. I'm unfriending that knot inside. I’ll let my imagination go on a hike, with its worst case scenarios and its personal 'Project Fear'. I’ll be softly in my spirit in the silence, in the midst of it. 
I'll be right here. 
I'll be right. 

R.I.P. Mary Oliver, poet of nature, wisdom, wonder

Such a sad day.

Sad for the natural world on this fragile planet, to which the poet Mary Oliver, who has died today aged 83, lent a uniquely sensitive voice and vibrancy through her words. Sad for poetry itself.

Mary was of the great American nature writers in the tradition of  Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. She loved Rumi, Hafez, Shelley and Keats. I think we are privileged to glimpse the inner life of her heart, rooted in nature, in cadences of pure communication, while she was equally unafraid to call out the unconscious ravaging of the planet by the human species.

Mary herself has been such an inspiration to me and so many others worldwide. She believed poetry 'mustn't be fancy' but put her beautiful heart's simplicity and clarity into every soulful phrase. She somehow carried into her words the deepest silence and stillness of her spirituality, true wisdom and joyous celebration, reverence, wonder and delight. Where Mary the witness ends and where the being of each subject begins, will always be a delicious mystery to her readers everywhere.

She leaves the Earth richer for her having lived here.  The spirit of nature had a beautiful champion in her. Through her poetry, she can never be forgotten.

An article here in the New York Times today, points out that 'perfect' was one of Mary's favourite adjectives.

Bless you, Mary, as you yourself were such a blessing.

May you rest now in perfect peace and rise in glory.

THE MORNING AFTER

The morning after
You have to let your heart
Stay supple to the loveful
Coax and encourage
Flexible and sweet
From this corner of now
Where we're curled up crying
Relax into bless
Though hate blow hurricanes
Buffeting stultifying bitter bane
Open wide tender though petals may be stripped
Remember not
Passing peckles of past peace
Glanced in memory's mirage
Trust today's quiet breath
Its rippling whisper
Centred in passion for compassion
Letting all colours come out
In the wash of welcome
Rooted in patient love
Our deepest longing
Our homeliest hope.
Your heart is so much bigger than
Any of this.

WOODWAYS

SHALL WE SHARE THE CAT-FLAP?

INSTANT MESS

Instant messageInstantly ignored.Frantic text from out of rangeAs you walk out of your life.Screen chock with emailsSeething spam and clickbait.Beep boop!Update alertUrgently touts emptinessOr “positivitay”Missed mixed metaphorsMuted twitteringsBlue light filteredMisinformationCons and connectsUnconscious legionsTo not giving a damn
Status from the small hours (Just in caseKeeping it to yourselfRisks it’s hashtag unreal)Informs the snoozed and snoozingThat this dazzlefestUnder the coversIs keeping you from sleep.

YOU ARE SNOWDROP. I AM ROBIN.

 Your dangling skull fixates on the damp path,
Rooted yet restless, nipped by a node of green,Trapped in last year’s leaf loam from the cherry tree.You are Snowdrop. I am Robin.
Across my dancefloor you throw your chubby shadow.I hear shrill thrill from your syrinxPart carillon, part weeping.You are Robin. I am Snowdrop.
Why dance, pale nodding prisoner of the old soilways?Why sing, blood-breasted fugitive from the rusty kettle?
Apart we know no tie or truck, one with the other.Together we are heralds of the hopes of spring,Pearls on a thread of joy sewn through the frozen earthBirthing winter’s slow melt into blossom and blessing.

MURMURATE

Photo Credit: Unachicalinda at Pixabay

Flooding the pastel palette of skyscapeEbony clouds bubble into blissful blistersOf whirling wingsTarry turbulent tornadoesPulsating throbs of effervescing Energy and euphonyLemniscate haloing heaven
Yet back on earth the glossy swarmShatters into singletonsJerky clowns buzzing like cell phones,Whistling up klaxon and car alarmStomping on scraps stumbling beakyBarking nasal all casual iridescenceThrusting fragmented onto fencesAngular on aerials
Crick-necked we gaze above for inspirationMesmerised by synchronicity's ebb and flowYet rather than gather in graceTo sculpt collaborativeMosaics of mutual miracleWe find ourselves downedSplayed and sloppyGuzzling up garbageEarth-bound mimics of mundane

WAKE-UP CALL

Eyes on the floor, wishing yourself away,You scold yourself,Look up! Get up! Be ‘up’!But rather look withinAnd through your bitterest tearsLet truth draw out toxins from intoxicationFrom staring into culture’s pitted mirror.
See the real you,Breath-taking, beautiful, Your song deep harmony,Your taste delicious,Your scent rich breeze from bee-bathed dazzling meadows,Your heart bliss, uplift, radiance, Precious, exquisite brilliancy will bathe youDancing, playful, in pure light as light,Loving, beloved

DROOPER & THE DRONE

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM  from PexelsDrooper portrait by Joyce BarrassYou might know me as Drooper, from that lass with seed she shares,
She has that little box that takes my photo unawares.
I used to be an egg, you know, dragged up in a messy nest.
I have a wonky wingtip, though I always fly my best.


Now, sometimes when my mates and I are zooming thataway,I see these massive metal birds soar into DSA.*I went to watch the other day, and saw them come to groundAll flashing lights and landing gear and blimey! What a sound!
But just as I was leaving to fly back home for seed,This little bird came buzzing by, which I really didn’t need.He didn’t seem too bothered about resting in a tree,I called “Do Two Coos, Taffy!” but he didn’t answer me!
Then on the ground all hell broke loose with humans everywhere,Army, police and passengers all pointing in the air.“Another blummin' drone!” they cried, and fetched their guns and shields,I got a zap off something, had me flying for the fields!
The little bird’s oblivious, though he seemed in quite a spin,I thought I’d hang around and help the little chap to win.So from a height I aimed at them, and dropped some limey poops“Make your escape!” I tweeted him, “while I decoy the troops!”
They had me on the radar, they had me in their sights.Could hardly get my bearings with the lasers and the lights!They soon forgot about me, once my little mate was gone.The runway soon reopened and I flew triumphant home.
Now I steer clear of the airport, it’s the garden life I choose.The drone-bird never did get caught, but he made the evening news!
*Doncaster-Sheffield Airport aka Robin Hood Airport on the site of the old Finningley RAF military aerodrome in South Yorkshire, about 15 miles northeast of my garden as the Wood Pigeon flies.