Crowspeak
Monday, January 18, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Yes Yes Yes
"I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish and she said honey, she calls me that sometimes. She said you can do just exactly what you want to.
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I am telling you is
Yes Yes Yes"
Kaylin Haught
Friday, January 8, 2016
Poetry Friday
A
Poem For My Daughter
by Teddy Macker
It
seems we have made pain
some
kind of mistake,
like
having it
is
somehow wrong.
Don’t
let them fool you—
pain
is a part of things.
But
remember, dear Ellie,
the
compost down in the field:
if
the rank and dank and dark
are
handled well, not merely discarded,
but
turned and known and honored,
they
one day come to beds of rich earth
home
even to the most delicate rose.
God
comes to you disguised as your life.
Blessings
often arrive as trouble.
In
French, the word blesser means to wound
and
relates to the Old English bletsian—
to
sprinkle with blood.
And
in Sanskrit there is a phrase,
a
phrase to carry with you
wherever
you go:
sarvam
annam:
everything
is food.
Every
last thing.
The
Navajo people,
it
is said,
intentionally
wove
(intentionally!)
obvious
flaws into their sacred quilts …
Why?
It
is there, they say,
in
the “mistake,”
in
the imperfection,
through
which the Great Spirit moves.
Life
is easy, yes.
And
life is hard.
Life
is simple, yes.
And
life is complex.
We
are tough, yes. But we are also fragile.
Everything’s
eternally perfect
but
help out if you can.
Work
on becoming a native of mind, a native of heart.
No
thought, no feeling, could ever be “bad.”
It’s
just another creature
in
the bestiary of Buddha,
the
bestiary of Christ.
Knowing
this,
knowing
this down to the marrow,
could
save you, dear one,
much
needless strife.
Remember
that wild and strange animals
paused
to drink at the pond
of
the Buddha’s mind
even
after he saw
the
morning star.
No
matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it
is impossible to leave the path.
Let
me say that one more time:
No
matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it
is impossible to leave the path.
Believe
it or not, dear Ellie,
some
folks carefully imagine
hideous
gods tearing at flesh,
clawing
at faces,
eating
human hearts,
and
drinking cups of blood …
Why?
To
shake hands with the Whole Catastrophe,
to
cultivate the Noble Idiot Yes.
According
to their tradition,
there
are 84,000 “skillful means,"
84,000
tactics of wakefulness,
84,000
ways to become spaciously alive,
84,000
ways to be at home in your life and in this world.
And
many of those skillful means are like this one:
enlightenment
through endarkment.
Life
appears to be fundamentally ambiguous.
Wily,
everycolored, unpindownable.
For
evidence of this, spend time with trees.
Over
and over they say,
There
is no final word.
And
big decisions—
decisions
concerning
relationships,
concerning children,
concerning
death—
are
rarely made cleanly.
In
general, be wary—
even
if just a little—
of
talk of purity,
of
goodness,
of
light.
To
love everything, not just parts …
To
love all of yourself, not just certain traits …
To
rest in not knowing …
To
carry the cross
and
to lay your burden down …
To
savor the medicine blue of moon,
the
fierce sugar of tangerine …
To
be a Christ unto others,
a
Christ unto one’s self …
To
laugh …
To
be shameless, wild, and silly …
To
know—fully, headlong,
without
compunction—the ordinary magic
of
our beautiful human bodies …
these
seem worthwhile pursuits, life-long tasks.
By
way of valediction, dear Ellie,
I
pass along some words
from
our many gracious teachers:
Eden
is.
The
imperfect is our paradise.
All
is grace.
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