“I have worked hard to give up a place ordained by others in the world….” — Mark Nepo
“I have worked hard to give up a place ordained by others in the world, for this always leads me into noise, confusion and gruffness.”
— Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
My aim in teaching is the same for my students as it is for myself: to give up the place “ordained by others” and step into my own particular place in the world. The world cannot find me if I don’t find myself. I begin class with more than an idea, more than faith: it is the experience that each student who shows up has a gift — a gift that no one else has. The contemplative atmosphere in the classroom cultivates work that is distinct to each student. In our recent class in Taos, New Mexico, all the students worked with the same structure, tools, book form, and alphabet — and yet delicious creations arose that are unlike anything or anyone else. (Images from students below).
Art as Devotion
I had the doors and windows open so that birdsong could come in. I heard the high trill of a melody that comes only in spring, repeated over and over with the passion of a love song. I went outside with my binoculars to investigate. A bird less than half the size of my hand stood in the branches of the tulip poplar, singing his blue heart out.
Indigo is the wrong name, at least now, in the breeding season. He is an impossibly brilliant mix of turquoise, ultramarine and cobalt that covers his entire body. The only indigo is on his wing tips and around his beak. Regardless of what color he is known by, the indigo bunting is dedicated to singing until someone answers, until someone responds to his call. He waits to be answered, and sings and sings. When he sings, it is with every feather; everything vibrates, down to the tip of his tail. He holds nothing in reserve. This is devotion.
Desert Stories
Our class at Ghost Ranch was inspired by the splendor of the land, and the sense of being away, away, away. The quiet of the desert and the expanse of the horizon in every direction, and the intuitive inner imagery stimulated by working with Barbara Griek, the Tarot, writing and painting. I fall short, every time, of conveying what the students bring…to each other and to me. I fall short of conveying the depth of experience felt in the classroom, and all that goes into the making of their journals.
In Taos, I had the privilege of teaching with Paul Maurer and Nancy Culmone…..
What gorgeous thing
I reached for the bacon and found a poem.
It’s Sunday morning; I am making our weekly brunch in the kitchen: southwestern grits with cheese and salsa. Yellow grits that need the final garnish. I open the freezer, and when I reach for the bacon out falls an envelope addressed to no one. Inside the envelope is a sheet of paper with a typewritten poem beginning I don’t know what gorgeous thing the bluebird keeps saying. The poem is accompanied by a tiny songbird feather, smaller than my little finger, that floats down to my feet. The delicate feather of a bluebird fallen from an unaddressed envelope with a poem found next to the frozen green beans.
Wherever the poem with its bluebird song, and a feather, wherever it came from (no one has yet confessed to putting it in the freezer), the day was permanently altered by mystery and gratitude. I consider it another blessing, regardless of how it came to be beneath the bacon. And why not? There is the continuing story of our bluebird house — it sits in full view of our kitchen, and I am thrilled each spring when the pair returns. But last spring the bluebirds were chased off by the house wrens. This was after they had laid four beautiful blue eggs. When the house wrens took over we grieved the bluebird eggs until the day we found a fledgling struggling alone on the ground. This baby bluebird, whose vanquished parents would not return, died in my son’s open palm. We buried his feathered body with its tiny feet, and its lovely beak that will never sing, with my father’s ashes. Three generations in love with winged things.
Delight
“The more stuff you love the happier you will be.”― Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
The nature of synchronicity* is surprise and delight. Those moments when the gods seem to collude in unexpected ways to make astonishment manifest. All kinds of things happen without any apparent cause, conspiring to make the impossible possible. It’s the feeling that something outside you has unexpectedly touched and answered an inner yearning.
You have all had moments of synchronicity, moments that confirm the connection between the inner and outer world. Something that has no causal explanation. I find I am often more open to this while traveling, wandering, or being in a strange place. Generally when I am away from my long list of things to do. I am not trying to get from A to Z. It happens when I am no longer expecting to know what I will find, but just noticing things. Transitions are a good time for synchronicity.
Repertoire With Invisibility
This quote comes to mind:
Every journey has secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. — Martin Buber
I woke up this first morning at Ghost Ranch to the dream voice proclaiming: Take stock in invisibility. Take stock? One of the definitions of stock is repertoire. A repertoire with invisibility. I feel the power of darkness in the desert; there is nothing but starlight up here on the mesa. The imperative of trusting what I cannot see. Waiting for what wants to come. Taking stock in the unknown.
Here in New Mexico in the dark of the moon, the desert sky is dripping with stars. Just standing beneath such vastness brings back an immensity, a gap, a pause. A shooting star. A recognition of something you have always known.
First Song
In the beginning, before writing, all speech was song. It is said, in the beginning was the word, and in this story, the word is a song. Even before your first breath you were given a song. Finding the note that belongs to you is a remembrance, something you have always known, but forgotten, a recognition as close to you as your own face. Something no one else has, and or will ever be again. When you hear that song, it strikes yes in your heart. You belong. Everything belongs. You mount whatever horse is waiting.
Through song, somehow all your efforts and wrong turns are rearranged into a new shape that has always been. Waiting. Grace is this intervention, the silence between notes, banishing thought. Recognizing your own place in the world, finding and being found. The song is not singing to you, but to that place inside that knows who you are.
Pause at the Threshold
I decided to take to heart this idea that the gods want to know that you are serious. What you are reaching for will be supported by your undivided attention and fervor. So I packed a suitcase and some supplies, shut down my email, and found a retreat in easy driving distance….
We aren’t alone. It is a relief when I remember that there are intelligences that are non-human. Other voices are trying to reach us, to teach us, to guide us. Sometimes I need to get away from busyness and my usual routine in order to hear. All of you have had moments when the veil briefly lifts and there is a timeless moment of clear perception. This joy, this moment of belonging to everything … isn’t that what we all reach for? And what human can take credit for this?
“It could have been better.” — Joan Armatrading
I have been thinking about perfection — not as that human reach toward the ever-distant horizon, which we must strive for — but as the frozen thing that stops us from moving forward because we get discouraged, embarrassed, self-defeated or afraid. The never good enough feeling that assails us. The most recent assignment in my writing group was to watch a video of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire put to the music of Joan Armatrading’s It could have been better. It brought to mind how we stop ourselves by thinking I could never do that, and alternately, the transformation that can happen with vulnerability and courage.
“Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing.”— William Stafford
My attention turned to sound when I heard the great horned owls calling this morning. I went out before dawn, as if they were summoning me, and listened. One was a tenor, the other a bass. Back and forth they sang, with long pauses. Once the tenor came in early, blending their voices together in harmony. The owls were hidden in thick shades of green, and the air a moist medium of song. When it began to get light, I thought surely this is the last verse. But the sun rose, the songbirds chimed in, and still the owls continued their duet.