For Thanksgiving Day

 

 "You think this is just another day in your life, but its not just another day.  It's the one day in your life that is given to you.  Its given to you, it's a gift,  the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.......

Look at the faces of the people you meet.  Each face has a unique story, a story that you could never fully fathom.  And not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors is there.  And in this present moment, in this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here......"

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast

Remembering the importance I feel about  November 1st and Samhaim, the last Harvest Festival of old,  I  see that I've failed to remember that  November is also the month of Thanksgiving, at least, in the United States.  And our tragic national story of pilgrims being greeted by generous, but ultimately doomed,  Native Americans with corn and wild turkeys aside, and things like "black Friday" sales events  entirely perverting the point.........still,  there is a perfect cyclical and spiritual rightness to this ending of November being about thankfulness.  How can we talk about the closing of the year and the final harvest festivals, going "into the dark" as the Planet turns as well as honoring our ancestors  ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE?

I was looking for the perfect "Thanksgiving Day" card, and found this perfect video, a brief TED talk by Louie Schwartzberg  followed by the artist's video about Gratitude, which includes his stunning time-lapse photography accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast.  I wanted to share this as my offering for Thanksgiving day.

Learn more about Louie Schwartzberg  and Moving Art at www.movingart.com.

http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

On Grace and Gratitude

I wanted to share  a wonderful reflection on gratitude by film maker Louie Schwartzberg.  He is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose career spans more than three decades.  I found the imagery here inspiring.....it's good to remember, every single day, what a gift the day is. 

 https://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

Thanks Giving

 "Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens, light."

St. Francis of Assisi

"Look, I am living.  On what?  Neither childhood nor future grows any smaller.............Superabundant being wells up in my heart."

Rainier Maria Rilke

"How marvelous is that garden, where apples and pears
are arriving even in winter. Those apples grow from the Gift, and sink back into the Gift.  It must be that they are coming from the garden to the garden."

Rumi

I reflect today on how amazing and abundant and privileged is my life.   I've never known hunger.  I can eat anything I want, whenever I want, including apples that come from New Zealand, mangoes from the Caribbean, and almonds from Morocco, should I chose.  If I'm cold, I can press a button and get warm, or I can turn a lever and immerse myself in hot water. 

At my fingertips is the greatest Library the world has ever known, and I can research any question (with some discernment) merely by typing in the question.  I can board a plane that goes faster than any bird, and surpasses even the farthest reaches of Leonarda Da Vinci's fruitful imagination.........and within a day or so, be in London, Sydney, or Borneo. 

I've lived with so much possibility, so much luxury.  Every time I walk into a Super Market, I have to reflect that what most people take for granted........is, and was, beyond the wildest dreams of virtually all human beings less than a hundred years ago.  No Pharoah ever had such comfort as I, and no Queen could travel like me, eat like me, even be as comfortable as me.  And tragically, my lifestyle is still beyond the means of most human beings living now, those who must live homeless  in the streets of Mumbai,  or war torn deserts in Somalia, or the slums of Brazil, or huddled  in sleeping bags in parks in downtown Tucson.  And the wealth I enjoy comes, as Kalil Gibran tells us, from the continual sacrifice of many other lives on this great Life that is our planet, our Gaia.  

I am among the wealthiest, most privileged generation that has ever lived  upon this beautiful, generous  Mother Earth. 

And I reflect that generations coming after me will not enjoy my freedom, prosperity, or possibility, because the time I live in has taken too much. Gratitude, Thanks Giving, is so much more than a holiday, a single "holy day".  Gratitude, it seems to me, is a way of life, a state of mind upon which to found a culture that might be sustainable.  I'm not the first person to say this - this wisdom is found in many, many places and times, among the Lakota giving thanks to the Buffalo, the Sami living with their reindeer, the Quakers sitting in silence in their Meeting Halls. This understanding of the importance of Gratitude, of Reciprocity, is what we must universally regain, in our bones, in our roots, in our empathy.  

Let it begin today, and all days, the profound re-birth of Thanks Giving.

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said:   "Speak to us of Eating and Drinking."

And the Prophet said:  "Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light. But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship. And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man. When you kill a beast say to him in your heart:

"By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand."  And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart, "Your seeds shall live in my body

And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart.  And your fragrance shall be my breath.  And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard, and fruit shall be gathered for the wine press, say:  "And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels." And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;  let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the wine press."

Kalil Gibran

November and Thanks Giving

I have failed, in the course of pursuing my threads and poetics about November, to add that November is also the month of Thanksgiving. And that makes sense to me ~ how can we talk about the closing of the year, going "into the dark", and honoring ancestral strands ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE? Gratitude is the soil, the enzyme, the only appropriate medium to plant any seed in.

  Starfish
    
by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, "Last night,
the channel was full of starfish."  And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Gratitude and Thanks Giving

 "You think this is just another day in your life, but its not just another day.  It's the one day in your life that is given to you.  Its given to you, it's a gift,  the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.......

Look at the faces of the people you meet.  Each face has a unique story, a story that you could never fully fathom.  And not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors is there.  And in this present moment, in this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here......"

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast

Reviewing  my  threads and remembrances about November and the Day of the Dead, I see that I've failed to note that  November is also the month of Thanksgiving, at least, in the United States.  And pilgrims being greeted by generous, if doomed,  Native Americans with corn and turkeys aside, and things like "black Friday" entirely perverting the point,  there is a perfect cyclical and spiritual rightness to that.  How can we talk about the closing of the year, the final harvest festivals, going "into the dark", as well as honoring our ancestors and beloved dead  ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE?  In fact, now that I think about it, how can one really look at the experience of being alive without finally arriving at Gratitude?

I was looking for the perfect "Thanksgiving Day" card, and found this perfect video, a brief TED talk by Louie Schwartzberg  followed by the artist's video about Gratitude, which includes his stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast.  I wanted to share this as my offering for Thanksgiving day.

Learn more about Louie Schwartzberg  and Moving Art at  www.movingart.com.

http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

The Night Blooming Cereus and other Milagros ....

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Denise Levertov

Here is one of the loveliest secrets of the desert, the mystical Night Blooming Cereus. This cactus only blooms for one night. To encounter a Cereus on a velvet hot night is a magical event...........they were made to bloom in moonlight, to be seen with "night vision", which is very different from day vision.  

Rare, wonderful, how can there be such  "Milagros"?  I remember someone saying to me once "This is it.  It's July 17th, 1996.  This will never come again."  And he was right.......his comment brought that particular day to my attention, both its gift and its loss, over and over.  Even as I remember that day,  I see all the lost  domestic magnificence of a summer day in upstate New York, humid light filtering through red maple leaves, the smell of a barbecue, my ex-husband's voice as he pressed my shoulder and handed me a plate of corn on the cob.  All of that is gone, long gone now, irretrievably gone except within the reservoir of  memory......even "my" husband, who is someone else's husband now.  What, and where,  is the "I" indeed?

Living in this extraordinary time when so much is endangered, and so much is also possible.............I find I have less and less use for abstractions.   The world is too full, and too precious, to waste in abstractions that remove us from the shimmering web of life in the here and now.  I know full well that my own life continues to become shorter, that my sight or smell or hearing will no doubt diminish, that those Goddess given pleasures are, as Denise Levertov wrote, to be "tasted and seen".  Because it will never be July 8th, 2012 again.  "grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh....." All a privilege, all an exchange, all about reciprocity.

I was reading a book someone gave me by Shirley Maclaine called "The Camino".  I found it  annoying..........I appreciate Ms. Maclaine's bravery, and wanted to know what it was like for her to cross Spain, to walk that road.  But most of the book was about describing her ideas of the meaning of life, sex,  and the origin of species in Lemuria and Atlantis, as well as remembering a past life with Charlemagne.  I rarely felt she was just "there", on the Camino.  She also kept having a constant battle with the paparazzi......I couldn't help but think that she needed to  unconsciously create that distraction as well.  Dying her hair brown, assuming another name, wearing sunglasses, and  saying "yeah, people say I look a lot like Shirley Maclaine" could have nipped that one in the bud.  Oh well.  I didn't like the book, but I did learn something from it. 

I've had a dream of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain as a  Peregrino for many years.  My pilgrimage would (maybe) end at the great Cathedral in Compostella, or maybe at Finisterre, "the end of the world", and I think I would not be making it to visit the bones of Saint James, but rather, to follow the ancient path of the Black Madonna.   I would go to Compostella to be "composted".   I don't actually think a goal, or a purpose, is all that necessary to the Way anyway, which is why I loved the recent film "The Way" with Martin Sheen.    The Journey is the Reward. 

It seems to me that extraordinary events are going on all around us, miraculous occasions of great beauty, or astounding mystery, and one is often so busy being somewhere else, preoccupied with "abstractions" about life, that we miss the everyday Milagros, given, and given, and given. These are the days of "miracles and wonder, the long distance call".  I think there is great solace in seeing that, even now, even here,  "on the Camino".

I had an experience I called "Angels in Nebraska" back in 2005.......I've shared it before, but would like to share it again.  If anything, the message gets clearer for me all the time........

ANGELS IN NEBRASKA and a Talking World   (2007)

In an article from his webzine "Warrior of the Light", Paolo Coelho wrote:

"I let my life be guided by a strange language that I call “signs”. I know that the world is talking to me, I need to listen to it, and if I do so I shall always be guided towards what is most intense, passionate and beautiful. Of course, it is not always easy."

I have also have found myself engaged in a "Great Conversation" that seems to be going on all around me, and occasionally I’m stunned to realize I wasn’t listening. The conversation seems to become most lively when I'm in movement, whether walking, crossing a trail, or a state line, or an ocean. Like many Americans, I've been blessed and cursed with restlessness and rootlessness. Between destinations lies a mythic land of migration, a free range for the imagination in the "Bardo" of transit, where I occasionally meet Angels of the Flux.

JOURNAL ENTRY, September 3, 2005.

Stopped in Cozad, Nebraska, home of the Robert Henri Museum.

The Museum has some beautiful paintings of the tall grass prairies by a local artist, and a few reproductions of Henri's "Ash Can School" paintings. They don't have any of the originals. Henri's father, it seems, founded Cozad, but had to leave rather suddenly with his sons and wife when he "accidentally" shot a man in a heated argument. He went to New York, changed his name, started the first casino in Atlantic City, and his son went on to study art and become famous. The boy never returned to Nebraska, although he did go on to live and work in Ireland, New York, and Paris. Cozad is proud of him anyway.

I continue to fret about my commitment to art. My life seems like a tapestry, on my good days, the threads finally woven with some skill into a colorful tapestry, I see that I have achieved some small bit of mastery. And then there are days when so much precious life seems wasted, lost, too many disappointments and wrong decisions and wrong turns. Those are days that are about emptying out, discovering things that once seemed so opaque are now, well, transparent. Unimportant. What really matters?

So here I sit, with a very nice cup of coffee and a sandwich at the Busy Bee Diner, where I have a front row center seat for the First Bank & Trust Company of Cozad.

That got my attention. 

 

 

Thanks Giving

 How marvelous is that garden, where apples and pears, both for
the sake of the two Marys,
are arriving even in winter.

Those apples grow from the Gift, and sink back into the Gift.
It must be that they are coming from the garden to the garden.

.....Rumi

Beautiful little video with quotes about Gratitude from Shakti Gawain, Osho, Rumi, many others.

Renovations and Gratitude........

"The Star - Grace" (1993)

the pink room

Ever since returning from England, I've done nothing but work 24/7 (I even lost 15 pounds in the process).  Settling my mother into assisted living, and renovating her house, which has fallen into great disrepair.  I feel very far away from the realms of art and poetry, although I confess, it's been a lot of fun (and muscle).  I've been learning the mysteries of carpentry, plumbing, and tiling, all that "guy stuff" I never got to learn when I was younger.  It's really rewarding to see broken, ugly spaces become bright, beautiful, and working!  It's actually be very interesting peeking into the worlds of carpenters and electricians, their patience and magical skills, watching these men climb up the roof , or tear open a wall and know exactly what will be behind it.

 The point to all of this is that I need to not only rescue the house, but need to generate some income in the future, and my idea is to find roomates, or  create a sometimes B&B, especially during the winter months here in Arizona, when the gem show goes on and the snowbirds flee harsh winters. 

kitchen with "La Mariposa" presiding

I don't know if this is something I'll actually do, but at least I now have lots of room for friends to visit, and it's time to fill the house with people, conversation, art and poetry, and potlucks.   Soon,  I hope!

patio

Anyway, the end of renovation is almost in sight, and we'll see if I can then recapture some of the more esoteric aesthetic skills I once had. 

Hanging some of my artwork has been interesting - I find myself reflecting that many of the works I most love, that are most deeply important to me...............most people can't relate to at all.
It''s been an irony in my life that the work I consider my most challenging or conceptually successful nobody seems to want, and the things I make for fun, like many of my masks, always sell and people notice. There are times, to be honest, when I churn out yet another Green Man mask, happy that someone will enjoy wearing it, happy that it pays the bills, and yet............

I feel sometimes that the work I'm most proud of sits in a closet, lost or destroyed. The painting above, "Grace", for example.

the blue room

 I remember when I made it, on a dark winter in upstate New York, the snow just outside my window, everything white and infused with incipient magic.  I felt so wrapped in magic that winter, I could just close my eyes, and the visions would come like that painting, and many of the images that later became the "Rainbow Bridge Oracle".   The intensity of that visioning/creating time I can still taste when I look at that painting, the inexhaustible Grace that flows to us.  And yet I've never been able to sell a single print of that painting, and have pretty much given up on the entire series. Never the less, it always hangs above my bed, to remind me that the Earth, and the Universe, is generous, generous beyond anything imaginable.  And to remind me to remember to live with Gratitude.

So, forgive me friends, if I'm not very literate these days............swinging a hammer seems to do that.  But wanted to share the current fruits of my labor, and a wonderful reflection on gratitude by film maker Louie Schwartzberg (thanks again to Charlie Spillar).  He is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose career spans more than three decades.  I found the imagery here so inspiring.....it's good to remember, every single day, what a gift the day is.