INSPIRATION

OVERVIEW

Every day I see something that

more or less kill some with delight

- Poet Mary Oliver connecting with the sublime in nature and wonder in mundane aspects of daily life

Poetry is one of the arts that continues to inspire and stimulate me. Poetry is also a feature of many Mindfulness and Compassion based courses. I share some of these below.

Light, color, landscape, architecture, dance and ordinary life situations, delight me also. Thet find expression in my photos and movies: some of which are uploaded on this website

Connecting to the world around me through direct experience and art is part of my daily living and experience. As poet Mary Oliver writes: “every day I see something that more or less kill some with delight.”

This enables THE DELICIOUS DELIGHT OF LIVING.

I hope you will enjoy them.

Enjoy more photos, movies, poetry readings and other ideas at Instagram and Facebook

HOKUSAI SAYS

This poem refers to the eminent artist Hokusai. He lived in Japan in the 18th and 19th centurery, Common Era. His art depicted the natural world and the lives of common people.

Hokusai says look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.

He says keep changing,

you just get more who you really are.

He says get stuck, accept it, repeat

yourself as long as it is interesting.

Hokusai says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says everyone of us is a child,

everyone of us is ancient,

everyone of us has a body.

He says everyone of us is frightened.

He says everyone of us has to find

a way to live with fear.

Hokusai says everything is alive–

shells, buildings, people, fish,

mountains, trees,

wood is alive.

Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,

or write books. It doesn’t matter

if you saw wood, or catch fish.

It doesn’t matter if you sit at home

and stare at the ants on your veranda

or the shadows of the trees

and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength

is life living through you.

Hokusai says don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

- Roger S. Keyes

FOR LONELINESS

When the light lessens,

Causing colors to lose their courage,

And your eyes fix on the empty distance

That can open on either side

Of the surest line

To make all that is

Familiar and near

Seem suddenly foreign,

When the music of talk

Breaks apart into noise

And you hear your heart louden

While the voices around you

Slow down to leaden echos

Turning silence

Into something stony and cold,

When the old ghosts come back

To feed on everywhere you felt sure,

Do not strengthen their hunger

By choosing fear;

Rather, decide to call on your heart

That it may grow clear and free

To welcome home your emptiness

That it may cleanse you

Like the clearest air

You could ever breathe.

Allow your loneliness time

To dissolve the shell of dross

That had closed around you;

Choose in this severe silence

To hear the one true voice

Your rushed life fears;

Cradle yourself like a child

Learning to trust what emerges,

So that gradually

You may come to know

That deep in that black hole

You will find the blue flower

That holds the mystical light

Which will illuminate in you

The glimmer of springtime.

- John O'Donohue

TRUST THE DARKNESS NOW

 If you are lost.

If nothing makes sense anymore.

If all your reference points  have collapsed.

If the old life is crumbling now.

If the mind is foggy, tired, busy.

If the organism is exhausted and longs to rest.

Celebrate.

Trust.

This is a rite of passage,

not an error.

You are healing

in your own original way.

Contact the ground now.

Breathe. In, out.

Make room for the visitors:

The sorrow, doubt, fear, anger.

An ancient emptiness -

They just want to be felt.

They just want to pass through.

You are a vessel, not a separate self.

You are a sky, not the passing weather.

An old life is falling away.

A new life is being born.

Others may not understand.

But trust anyway.

Celebrate.

Contact the ground.

- Jeff Foster

SACRED EXHAUSTION

Your tiredness has dignity to it! Do not rush to pathologise it, or push it away, for it may contain great intelligence, even medicine.

You have been on a long journey from the stars, friend. Bow before your tiredness now; do not fight it any longer.

There is no shame in admitting that you cannot go on. Even the courageous need to rest.

For a great journey lies ahead. And you will need all of your resources.

Come, sit by the fire of Presence.

Let the body unwind; drop into the silence here.

Forget about tomorrow,

let go of the journey to come, and sink into this evening's warmth.

Every great adventure is fuelled by rest at its heart.

Your tiredness is noble, friend, and contains healing power... if you would only listen...

-  Jeff Foster

MARY OLIVER FOR CORONA TIMES

Thoughts after Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese

This poem relates to the Covid-19 situation and how some people may be responding to it. It is called:

"Mary Oliver for Corona Times Thoughts after the poem Wild Geese)" by Adrie Kusserow.

The second is the original poem of Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”, that Adrie Kusserow interprets.

You do not have to become totally zen,

You do not have to use this isolation to make your marriage better,

your body slimmer, your children more creative.

You do not have to “maximize its benefits”

By using this time to work even more,

write the bestselling Corona Diaries,

Or preach the gospel of ZOOM.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body unlearn

everything capitalism has taught you,

(That you are nothing if not productive,

That consumption equals happiness,

That the most important unit is the single self.

That you are at your best when you resemble an efficient machine).

Tell me about your fictions, the ones you’ve been sold,

the ones you sheepishly sell others,

and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world as we know it is crumbling.

Meanwhile the virus is moving over the hills,

suburbs, cities, farms and trailer parks.

Meanwhile The News barks at you, harsh and addicting,

Until the push of the remote leaves a dead quiet behind,

a loneliness that hums as the heart anchors.

Meanwhile a new paradigm is composing itself in our minds,

Could birth at any moment if we clear some space

From the same tired hegemonies.

Remember, you are allowed to be still as the white birch,

Stunned by what you see,

Uselessly shedding your coils of paper skins

Because it gives you something to do.

Meanwhile, on top of everything else you are facing,

Do not let capitalism coopt this moment,

laying its whistles and train tracks across your weary heart.

Even if your life looks nothing like the Sabbath,

Your stress boa-constricting your chest.

Know that your antsy kids, your terror, your shifting moods,

Your need for a drink have every right to be here,

And are no less sacred than a yoga class.

Whoever you are, no matter how broken,

the world still has a place for you, calls to you over and over

announcing your place as legit, as forgiven,

even if you fail and fail and fail again.

remind yourself over and over,

all the swells and storms that run through your long tired body

all have their place here, now in this world.

It is your birthright to be held

deeply, warmly in the family of things,

not one cell left in the cold.

- Adrie Kusserow

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountain and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

- Persian Language Poet Rumi, English interpretation