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And how can I pray? Emmet Fox said not to pray for outcomes, but for serenity and faith in God’s will. Fox also said, paraphrasing the Bible, that we do not receive because we do not ask. He ALSO said that we should pray for peace, believing that God has already provided for our needs. Rumi tells us to hatch out the helplessness.
THE GROUND’S GENEROSITY
Remember: prayer gets accepted no matter how
impure: like that of
a woman in excessive menstration, her asking dense
with blood, so your praise
is full of blood ties, full of how attached you are.
That tangle of limited
surrender is the human mire. We’re sodden in bodiness,
where the clearest sign of
grace is that from dung come flowers, from the bulbous
sludge, buds and then sweet
pears. The ground’s generosity takes in our compost
and grows beauty! Try to
be more like the ground. Give back better, as a rough
clod returns an ear of
corn, a tassel, a barley awn, this sleek handful of oats.
On the promise that he would enter treatment today I placed my wild hopes and dreams of a sober tomorrow. My recovery is not dependent on his recovery, but any possibility of a future full of joy and togetherness lives inside the space of yes or no.
Today was the day and he was going but did not go. He curled up on the couch and put it off. He put it off. He waits there on his couch coffin, putting off the life that beckons him forward.
THIS DISASTER
Why am I part of this disaster,
this mud hole for donkeys?
Is this the place where Jesus spoke?
Surely not.
A table has been set,
but we have not been served sweet spring water yet.
Evidently we came here to be bound hand and foot!
I ask a flower, “How is it you are so wise so young?”
“With the first morning wind and the first dew, I lost my innocence.”
I follow the one who showed me the way
I extend one hand up, and with the other I touch the ground
A great branch leans down from the sky
How long will I keep talkng of up and down?
This is not my home: silence, annihilation, absence!
I go back where everything is nothing.
Excerpt from The Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks
In an attempt to better understand how I became who I am despite poverty and a nearly complete lack of formal education until the age of 16 I have written down the major influences of my life. The boxes of books at the Carnation Food Bank were the treasure chests of my childhood. As I continued and moved forward into the world of scholars and educators more opened. My earliest teachers found me by circumstance. In their dusty, forgotten pages I discovered a world of infinite possibility.
In chronological order of initial exposure from birth to now
The Bible & the Methodist Church
Encyclopedia Britannica
Roald Dahl
Shel Silverstein
Albert Einstein
Richard Kennedy (author of Amy’s Eyes)
Reader’s Digest
Prozac
Carl Sextus (expert on hypnotism)
Walt Whitman
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ralph Ellison
Nina Simone
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Sigmund Freud + Carl Jung (combined for cognitive purposes)
Toni Morrison
Christiane Northrup, MD (Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom)
Tove Jansson (Moomin philosophy)
Rumi
Neils Bohr
Emmet Fox
Bishop Carlton Pearson
Fringe: Rumi sings the song of the modern codependent
Consider the verse presented here. It is the poetic heart-song of every codependent whose love and lover tear them apart. As I say, calling myself Poetreearborist, I claim the right to be ripped “limb from limb”. If they are addicted to their chemical, we are addicted to them. Through complete destruction we are seeking God – but when do we know we have found what was right there all along? Continue Reading
Read this at: Jalopy Love
I recently sent out two emails that caused a smidge of angry backlash from some of the people on my mailing list. In particular, one person was extremely offended and called Rumi (the compassionate poet) EVIL – even spelling it with all caps as if to really emphasize that she knew what she was talking about…
A new blog by your favorite tree groomer has been planted as a sapling on blogger.
Please jump over and check out my ramblings all about love, relationships, break ups and break downs.
Enjoy it my pretties!
Another new web adventure is in the works! Yesterday I launched The Other Child: Expressing Boundless Potential through Eternal Celebration of the Child Spirit
Please stop by and leave a comment. I’m excited to start this new journey. Don’t worry though – if you like the poetreearborist style and content it will continue to live here at wordpress.
Thank you all so much for you dedication and support.
-Rachael
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I was at a women’s bible study just over a month ago where the speaker brought up the topic of women and submission. She said that submitting is a virtue. The crowd fell into nervous silence as each woman in the room waited for some… elaboration.
“Submission is a virtue.” She continued to say that the opposite of “to submit” is “to control” or “to rule over”. When we submit ourselves to another, it is an act of trust. We let go of control and give them power over us. But when that person turns to us and themselves submits, we create together a space of peace and harmony, where unlimited potential becomes apparent.
It is only with humility that submission can happen.
A great pain, a hurt, a wound, a loss + a conscious decision to surrender that pain to God (aka a higher power) –leads to–> compassion of heart and mind for oneself and others —which changes reality—> so that control is no longer seen as the path to power, but a state of humility, of being truly humble, which opens the door to love and /divides anger and ill-intent from character in order to make room for peace and forgiveness in the midst of chaos and condemnation
One must be humble in such a moment to be worth a damn.
When Pastor Rick Warren spoke the word “humility” Obama opened his eyes and raised his head. In that moment, knowingly or unknowingly, the new president revealed his commitment to submit to the people and to submit to that part of humanity that we call God.
Today is a good day.
Our lives are full of hopes. Big hopes and little hopes. I like the little ones best. I hope that today will be warm and sunny. The big ones can be good too. I hope that Obama increases access to medical care.
Little hoping. Big hoping.
There are hopes of the individual, hopes of the family, hopes of the community, of a people, of a generation, of generations looking forward, of the world, of humanity – the big HOPE
There is no difference really. The ability to hope: to be optimistic in the face of overwhelming odds. The ability to envision a new and better future beyond the present moment. Hope in the knowledge of impermanence, in mutability.
Hope is fearlessness and calm in the midst of chaos. Hope is love’s extension of freedom. All in all, it is good to have and to share. We expand in our hopes. We come together in sharing faith.
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