Month: March 2015
Posted with BlogsyWhat Is This?
Last night I was watching an awesomely violent programme on tv which featured both physical and psychological torture, yes it did, and I was enthralled … I LOVED it. (“Blacklist” starring James Spader, for the record.) This may come as a surprise to some of you, who may have a certain picture of me from some of my other posts, but … Well BUT.
Wishing to spare my husband the noise, it being late, and we being in bed (I'm enjoying my taste for violent law-enforcement on my ipad …) I reached for headphones which were hopelessly entangled.
OK so it's late and I'm tired, and you know how it is, you put something with cables down for five minutes and it will tie itself in knots. Someone should study this, it's uncanny … I wrestled with the entanglement for less than a minute before I began to swear. Not just little polite expletives, oh dear me no, but the full nine yards. Oh boy! Did I let go.
My teacher, Richard Rohr, invites the thought that how you are at your worst, is how you really are, and so it is.
I am not a good person. This won't come as news to anybody, though you might be a bit surprised that my viewing tastes don't run to gardening programmes and ETWN. I am however, a profoundly happy person.
A Roman Catholic who meditates on and off, mostly off, and studies the Dharma. Both of these streams are sources of joy, because both help me to know who I really am – a spiritual being having human experiences: joy and sorrow, praise and blame, fame and ill-repute, gain and loss, all in about equal measure over my lifetime, when all's said and done. This is how it is, and knowing this brings acceptance and peace. The universe isn't out to get me, quite the reverse, I'm out to get it, and I'm loving the ride!
I have just finished listening to a Dharma talk by Jack Kornfield in which he tells the story of a Zen master, who had a bit of a reputation for eccentricity, addressing a group of Bhuddists following a prolonged Mindfulness Retreat. He banged his stick on the floor and proclaimed, very loudly as Jack tells it:
“Mindfulness in NO GOOD! Ask, WHAT IS THIS? WHAT IS THIS??'
(Mindfulness IS good, by the way, but that's not the point.)
The Zen master was referring to life. What is this LIFE.
Sorry folks, I don't know the answer to that one. I do, however, invite you to the question.
Was there a point to the revelation about Blacklist and the outburst of obscenity? Yes, there was. I know what I'm like, I look upon myself with patience and compassion and as I do, I know what God is like too.
The challenge that this wonderful life offers to this particular spiritual being having human experiences, is to reveal the patience and compassion of God to others. Here goes …
Before I forget!
Today, this grey day alive with the promise of
Spring, and things, delightful, to come …
(Despite the rain).
I am minded to remind me (and you, as you’re here … )
That I am a POET!
Prose is very good, in its way, with it’s straight lines
And proper grammar, but you know, and I know you DO,
That straight lines are not me, and grammar is for
Writers who know how it goes …
But ME? I have an oversized ego and
An enormous sense of self.
I like to make words turn cartwheels and dance inside your head
Which lets face it, is a lot more fun than pricking open a paragraph.
I can pick you up in a handful of syllables and
Turn you upside down. Because, you see,
I’m a poet, and I was there when you caught meaning in a sunrise
And watched the slip of a moon rise over above our heads.
See. I KNEW it! You WERE there!
Just For The Fun Of It
It's a few years since I completed The Open University 'Creative Writing ' course, amd I only mention it now because I learned one or two useful tips that I am happy to pass on:
1. Writing is seriously hard work, and I'm too idle to make a career of it.
2. Poets NEVER make any money unless they're REALLY good.
This looks on the surface like bad news, but, curiously enough, it wasn't. Having learned that writing is never going to make me rich or famous, I relaxed and began writing just for the fun of it. I DO enjoy reaching into my cerebral cortex, having a bit of a rummage, and popping down on the screen what I find there.
Well there's a thought. As soon as I became aware of my thinking, it stopped happening. No, hang on, here comes a walk in an Alpine meadow in Romania and the discovery of a grass crown. That was something I can tell you, a grass crown being the highest award to a Roman general. Who made it? Weaving and plaiting an intricate and beautiful artifact with such enormous historical significance then just leaving it there – a gift to an English woman who knew it's significance. I left it too: some objects are too sacred to own,
And here I go again, hanging upside down on a fairground ride convinced I'm about to fall out of it and die. I'm sixteen and beside me is William The First, who later became known as The Bastard, but it was oh so long ago, and I did so much more with my life than he did, so we'll call it quits.
Finally, because I can go on like this all day, here I am drinking a glass of Three Choirs 'May Hill' white wine and eating a fish pie we made together. My daughter Kate and I, last Thursday, enjoying a few special hours together, just because they were there.
Fairgrouds, meadows and fish pie: some inconsequential things out of this one beautiful life, the living of which is such a glorious adventure.
Lucky eh? I should say so.
Dancing Across The Cosmos 