Dear Theresa,
Thank you for this. I am taking it into the morning practice here at the 9-day Practicum in Snowmass, CO. Thinking of you with gratitude.
Warmth, Lynn
Lovely, Lynn. Thinking of you with warmth and smiles, Theresa.
My Class Eight is next week and as appropriate for beginning the series, this seems fitting for the last class as well!
Thank you so much for this, Lisa
I have this poem taped up above my kitchen sink, so that I can wake to it (early) every morning!
Who Are You When You Are Not?
1
Who are you when you are not playing the character you have created? Who are you when you are not imitating, impersonating, or pretending to be someone that you are not? Who are you when you are not trying to please or impress someone else? Who are you when you are not obsessing with what to say, or with the right words to use? Who are you when you are not striving to be perfect, wanting to be someone that you are not?
2
Who are you when you are not thinking about what you like and what you dislike, what you want and what you don’t want? Who are you when you are not wanting life to match your expectations, wishing the world and people in it to be as you would like them to be? Who are you when you are not daydreaming pleasant fantasies, or daymaring scary dramas? Who are you when you are not plotting how to satisfy your cravings?
3
Who are you when you are not who you think you are? Who are you, really?
~ Piero Falci
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I have heard a poem about “allowing” at the recent MBSR in mind-body medicine and the 9 day Fundamentals Training but did not get it in any of the poetry packages. Anyone able to help with either posting it or pointing me towards the poet? Kindly Andrew
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Here is the one I am familiar with:
Allow
By Danna Faulds
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes
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Thank you, much appreciated
Simple gratitude !
Be Thankful
Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?
Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.
Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.
Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you’re tired and weary
Because it means you’ve made a difference.
It is easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are
also thankful for the setbacks.
GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles
and they can become your blessings.
Author Unknown
I love this poem…Thank you !!!
A poem I wrote for our MBSR course…
Dawn All Day
May
Our neighbors get a rooster,
an orange-faced thug at the new farm nextdoor.
The rooster crows each day at 6 a.m.
5 a.m.
3 a.m.
11 pm.
And any other random hour and minute I might seek quiet.
We lose sleep and patience, each of us.
My children want to start a coyote farm,
or to change the direction in which they practice archery.
We cannot put the rooster on ‘vibrate,’
an alarm no one set in this Right to Farm town.
June
I learn to breathe.
Mindfully, I notice the sensations
in my pinky toe and earlobe.
I watch my thoughts drifting
from my resume to the laundry to the itch in my earlobe,
which was imperceptible
two minutes ago when I tried to notice it.
Lying down, I scan each nerve,
sometimes without falling asleep.
I stand up and the cat is missing,
escaped to prowl the yard.
We search under every bush, finding him
under a bed, startled by a door slammed by the wind.
I was not practicing cat mindfulness, I tell my husband.
“It’s ok,” he says. “You were just being mindful of something else.”
My earlobe.
I haven’t noticed the rooster in weeks,
his crowing just another wavelength.
July
I learn to sit in stillness.
With awareness, I listen to sounds
of the dog’s jingling collar,
the cat’s claws on our carpet,
the hawk that lives atop the dead tree out front.
I listen to the jingling thoughts that send my mind down tangents,
clawing at the fragile threads of my best microsecond of mindfulness
and I try to watch these thoughts like that hawk
But watching thoughts is like trying to towel off
while you’re swimming
In this quandary, the rooster crows.
bringing me back
To this moment,
my breath,
my body.
Without judgment, he crows.
Without judgment, I am present,
listening closely, seeking his next call for my awareness.
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So descriptive, I connected visually with this, thank you for sharing !
A great Thanksgiving poem…
A QUIET LIFE by Brian Wormser
What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn’t as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
take it out on you, no dictators
posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
that came from nowhere.
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Hi,
I’m starting a mindful yoga class for unaccompanied teen refugees (14-18 years old) tonight at a Belgian Red Cross integration centre. If anyone of you has some mindful poetry appropriate for that age I could use, I would be very happy to receive it.
Wishing you all the best,
Caroline
Ill just share a little something I wrote…
Roots
A tree may void it’s color, leaves fall upon the ground;
but trust me friend, come spring, life will again be found.
A tree may drop some branches, result of weathered storm;
but nothing time and sustenance can’t bring back to it’s norm.
A tree may rupture at it’s trunk and crash to the earth’s floor;
but resurrect, the tree still may, sprouting from it’s core.
A tree will overcome most anything, returning much the same;
for it’s roots define its essence and no time’s squandered casting blame.
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Almost a koan in it’s paradoxal effect; I do love
Kobayashi Issa’s Classic Haiku
"If my grumbling wife
were still alive I just
might enjoy tonight’s moon.”
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Just in time to greet the winter winds dancing across the prairie, I was intorduced to this poem by Wallace Stevens.
The Snowman
BY WALLACE STEVENS
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Thanks to all that post poetry here for all of us to share and pass on.
Ellie
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The Generosity of Sharing One’s Pain
The Generosity of Sharing One’s Pain
Thank you for sharing your pain
And for taking me to that place I have prohibited myself from visiting
That place where my sadness resides
Thank you for sharing your pain
And for allowing me to shed tears with you
Not only for your suffering, but also for mine
Thank you for letting your pain out
And for revealing a escape route for my own
And for sharing your story, ‘cause it’s my story too
And for reminding me that, in the end
We are all the same on this never-ending journey of change
Thank you for sharing your pain
And for reminding me that although this being human is not easy
I can find great consolation in knowing that I am not alone
That, in the most silent of all silences, we hold each other in love
And that is enough
That is enough
~ Piero Falci
Petaluma, California
February 7, 2017
Dedicated to all those gardeners who plant seeds of mindfulness
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My first posting…Hope you all enjoy!
Wendell Berry: Words
What is one to make of a life given to putting things into words, saying them, writing them down? Is there a world beyond words? There is. But don’t start, don’t go on about the tree unqualified, standing in light that shines to time’s end beyond its summoning name. Don’t praise the speechless starlight, the unspeakable dawn. Just stop.
Well, we can stop for a while, if we try hard enough, if we are lucky. We can sit still, keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore, the river, the stone call themselves by whatever they call themselves, their own sounds, their own silence, and thus may know for a moment the nearness of the world, its vastness, its vast variousness, far and near, which only silence knows. And then we must call all things by name out of the silence again to be with us, or die of namelessness.
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Delightful! Thank you very much for posting such a poem. Opens to the oneness of all.
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