I Have Five Things To Say

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside of love, the resurrection-place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.
Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.
Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?
Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

-- Rumi

Poem: On Getting Laid Off

(This was written to my co-workers when we got abruptly laid off from some dot.com)

What a GREAT group -- there is no equal,
but is there life after EEX SQL?
There was life before, this I know,
and DR came before Domino.

In fact, keep in mind the Domino Theory,
when sending out resumes makes you weary,
"Something sets off a train of events"
and it's all an adventure -- that's my 2 cents.

It's not fair we couldn't thrive on Desktop Recruiter,
while some dude gets rich off a new scooter.
Is life now half empty, or a full half a cup?
What DO I want to be when I grow up?

Return to an office and wear business clothes?
(No -- I'm NEVER going back to those damn panty hose!)
Open my own business -- but if there's a loss?
Besides, I'd have a real bitch for a boss.

Send prayers to God, Allah, Jupiter, or Juno --
Or forward them on to the One named Nuno!
We do not know our fate in the Great Plan,
(I just hope there's always someone around like Stan.)

Will Trinet cover our vacation pay?
Or will the Labor Commissioner have a say?
Intellectual property and where are the assets?
Need a legal degree to figure those facets.

But what about bills, my mortgage, my Dental?
Will I stay healthy, or will I go mental?
Such serious pondering leaves no room for laughter…
And I must remember in the great Hereafter:

When we all arrive at that Pearly Gate
(and we'll all get there, though some of us late)
Yes, when we depart this world -- when we croak,
St. Peter will ask us: "Did you get the joke?"

--meganthemegan 6/17/2005

On gratitude...

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John F. Kennedy

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Jacques Maritain

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kindness that stands behind the action.
Albert Schweitzer

Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
Leroy [Satchel] Paige

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
William Arthur Ward

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhardt

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.
Lionel Hampton

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer

On voting...

And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.
-- Dan Quayle

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I VOTE FOR YOU FOR GOD

When your eyes have found the strength
To constantly speak to the world
All that is most dear
To your own
Life,

When your hands, feet, and tongue
Can perform in that rare unison
That comforts this longing earth
With the knowledge

Your soul,
Your soul has been groomed
In His city of love;

And when you can make others laugh
With jokes
That belittle no one
And your words always unite,

Hafiz
Does vote for you.

Hafiz will vote for you to be
The minister of every country in
This universe.

Hafiz does vote for you my dear.
I vote for you
To be
God.

Hafiz (Persian poet c. 1320-1389) translated by Daniel Ladinsky

On birthdays and growing older...

Granted, I'm prejudiced, but my son is one of my very favorite people and I love him muchly. As his 26th birthday is coming up next Wednesday, I've been pondering how much I appreciate his integrity and refusal to take anything at face value, how much I admire the way he overcame some big life challenges, and how I REALLY love his sense of humor. And yes, I tripped down memory lane and found some excerpts from his 1993 Mother's Day coupon book, titled "Watch out America -- We're Hippies Raising Teenagers: Trends of the '60s I Swear not to Follow":
"Levitating (or trying to levitate) Government Buildings"
"Blaming everything bad in life on LBJ: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT AWAY WITH THIS IN THE 60's!!!"
"Love-Ins: I swear not to take illegal drugs from people named "Moonbeam" or "Shine" or dance naked to no music and have sex with complete strangers claiming all this is 'helping stop a war'"
"Listening to Folk Singing: Thousands of modern teenagers would have admired your generation if you wouldn't have listened to such annoying music. Joan Baez????"
So, Happy Birthday, Forrest, and here's someone (not Joan Baez) singing a song by Bob Dylan:
Forever Young
...and various words on growing older and wiser:
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It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.--e.e.cummings
*************
Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
--Rainer Maria Rilke
*************
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. --Doug Larson
*************
Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. --Unknown
*************
At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?
--Jules Feiffer
*************
All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old who are strong do not whither.
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.
--J.R.R. Tolkein
*************
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
--Mark Twain
************

Teshuva*

Teshuva*

If weeping were the thing could tender us
we would by now be soft and clear.
Or if rage could bring us round, those storms
would hold us north, and keep us sure.

With every fresh assault our futile tears
run rivers in familiar groove.
But drying salt is hard. Too sharp and strong -
the crystal's fixed; We do not move.

Where only love will serve, the sun in flow,
our need is greatest to be kind.
One way we have not set our faces -- we turn
toward Light, and turning, shine.

--Jeanne Lohmann, Quaker

* The turning to God in Hasidic teaching

Footprints in the Sand (Revised)

Footprints in the Sand (Revised)

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed
he was walking along the beach with God.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of
footprints in the sand: one belonging
to him, and the other to God.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of
his life there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the very
lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he
questioned God about it:

"God, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me."

God replied:

"You know, there are other people in the world
that needed me besides you, and frankly,
I could have used a little help!
Where the hell were you?"

The Holy Longing (Goethe)

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On dealing with sadness...

So much sadness...some words from one of my favorite poets:

*********************************************************

Now is the Time


Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

Hafiz (Persian poet c. 1320-1389) translated by Daniel Ladinsky

On love...

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.
-- Rumi

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One type of love may involve the two partners in each projecting an image upon the other: an image of what the loved object should be like. It may be the image that has come from their own father or mother or from some dream idyll. Having projected this image upon the partner, they then proceed to focus their love upon the image. The image may have little or no relation to the real person of the other; in fact, it may even threaten to strangle, to smother, and even to destroy the true life of the partner…Then, when the struggle for integrity fails and the projected image prevails, neither can be present to the other except in this disguise.
A higher love is two solitudes that protect and touch and greet each other. Each is willing to drop, or at least lower, the projected image and to feel an increasing sense of responsibility that the other should fulfill the mysterious destiny that God has hidden within him whether this shatters the image or not. Each counts it an infinite blessing to be able to live in the presence of the other and to be forever surprised by the joy of seeing the other grow from the deepest inner vision that is hidden in him.
-- Douglas V. Steere (Quaker philosopher) "On Being Present Where You Are"

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Why should we two ever want to part?
Just as the leaf of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water,
we live as the great one and the little one.
As the owl opens his eyes all night to the moon,
we live as the great one and the little one.
This love between us goes back to the first humans;
it cannot be annihilated.
Here is Kabir’s idea: as the river gives itself into the ocean,
what is inside me moved inside you.
-- Kabir

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Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions...
-- Woody Allen

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Men are from earth; women are from earth. Deal with it.
--Unknown

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"Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!"
-- Homer Simpson

George Bush "thinks about Iraq every day"

...I am so glad to hear that. I'm sure the families of these fallen soldiers think about Iraq every day also>>>>In Memoriam

That's the day I realized (American Beauty)

...that's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things,
and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know
there was no reason to be afraid, ever.

My Lord God (Thomas Merton)

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

On difficult times...

Remember, don't get even, get odd.

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A young woman once asked an old woman,
"What is life's heaviest burden?"
And the old woman replied,
"To have nothing to carry."

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Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, one knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. One can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Pure love and prayer are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
--Thomas Merton

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Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
--Mark Twain

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I made some studies, and
Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in
touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle
I found it too confining.
It was just too needful;
It expected me to be there for it all the time, and with all
I have to do --
I had to let something go.
-- Jane Wagner