Which is better To breathe in or out At their annual convention This was the question Of the year Not a moment Too soon As immanent researchers congregated Took sides Gave talks Of oxygen and carbon dioxide Aerobic capacity and respiration rates Jousting with jargon And championing with prodigious and prestigious citations As philosophical schools of fish out of water Evolve their thinking In the now Shared err Missing the import of inspiration And export of expiration And in that moment A women seated arose Previously silent spoke It simply depends What you did last And decidedly acting Put it to rest (until next)
Some wear long the weigh, I heard the Zen or Zen-like answer to the question: Which is better, breathing in or breathing out? Steeped in an atmosphere of competition for the best and an all-too-often default mode of reducing problems to a single, universal solution, those of us living in Western cultures may miss the sublime holism and simple practicality of the answer: it depends what you did last. I am struck by the rhythm and harmony of this answer and its corresponding reality in nature. Nature breathes in deep harmonies, an underlying balance only poorly reflected in our oft pasted together half-truths and over-lying and mismatched self-servings.
To this Zen meditation of a poem, I add my love of science and social justice, both of which lean gently but persistently into a more accurate and more fulfilling relationship with reality as a whole. A woman seated arises. One previously silent speaks. And decidedly acting it is put to rest.
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JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo Just for the Health of It is my weekly half-hour public health show on WAKT, 106.1 FM Toledo. You can listen at 9:00 AM Tuesdays and Thursdays (after Democracy NOW) on-air or on-line ToledoRadio.org. To listen anytime you want online, […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
Sow culpable Too due nothing President Trump pulls out What little hand He had in Mother Earth’s Safe guarding His oily and gassy mates Coal for everyone! It’s like Christmas!! And stocks sore In the after math Of this unbelievable savior As he Really nailed this won Portending every faux In ascension into heavin’ His big short His wee altitude toward clime Single digit approval Or not As what gives Chump change In loo of climate change
This poem is in response to President (sic) Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris climate change accord. For badder or worse, this clear signal of climate insanity may provide the best united front yet for international resistance to American hegemony; plus, American abdication of global leadership offers opportunities to forge more sane efforts at worldwide solidarity.
“To the dismay of our allies, the White House could any day announce the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But as a patriot and climate activist, I’m not dismayed. I actually want to pull out.
The value of the Paris Agreement is in its aspirational goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, not in its implementation mechanisms, which are voluntary, insufficient, and impossible to monitor. But that modest goal will be breached shortly, which makes the agreement a kind of fig leaf, offering political cover to those who would soft-pedal the runaway climate crisis a while longer.
The U.N. Conference of the Parties is certainly not the organization to constrain powerful, retrenched fossil fuel interests and other bad climate actors and rogue climate states. The Paris agreement affords oil, gas and coal companies a globally visible platform through which to peddle influence and appear engaged on climate change while lobbying for business as usual. That won’t save the climate. At what point do we give up wishful, incremental thinking — that reason will prevail, the free market will adjust, the president’s daughter and son-in-law will dissuade him from the worst climaticide, the Democratic Party will do something, or prior policies which tinker on the margins like the Clean Power Plan won’t be totally obliterated?
I’d argue we’ve reached that point. If Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement, at least we will have clarity instead of false hope.
Who wanted to keep the U.S. in the Paris agreement anyway? People around the world, a majority of Americans, environmentalists and other coastal elites — constituencies for which Trump has shown indifference and/or contempt. Staying in was also favored by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Peabody coal, eBay, HP, General Mills, Kellogg, Tesla and other multinationals the Trump administration would have preferred to keep happy. But let’s face it, they won’t be all that mad the U.S. is pulling out, and the political impact won’t be all that great.
Neither will the environmental impact. In fact, since the agreement lacks teeth, breaking it won’t have any effect on the climate in the short term. But in the longer term, the shock and rethinking it will cause in some circles just might precipitate political and cultural changes we need to stave off climate cataclysm.
Pulling out of Paris will also give the president a political boost. It gives Breitbart and Fox something to crow about and The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN something that’s not Russia-gate to fret over.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to justify or abet Trump and his supporters in climate denial, and I’m not thinking climate activists and the Trump administration will end up in some the kind of strange-bedfellows embrace. Personally, I loathe this administration and find the president’s actions mean, maleficent, and mendacious, though it’s nothing personal. On my very best days I can eke out a couple minutes of meta loving-kindness meditation for the president as a person, but it’s a struggle.
I welcome pulling out of the Paris agreement because it will disrupt our complacency and strengthen the most vigorous avenues of climate action left to us, which are through the courts and direct citizen action. It lends much more credence to the Our Children’s Trust legal argument that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to consider the long-term impact of carbon emissions. It advances the arguments of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in their federal lawsuit for the right to a livable climate. And it strengthens the case for climate activists attempting to raise the “necessity defense” as a justification for citizen climate action, as I and my fellow “valve turners” are doing as we face criminal charges for shutting off emergency valves on oil sands pipelines.
It’s also true that withdrawal from Paris deprives mainstream environmental organizations and the foundations and funders that guide them of a key deliverable, and that could risk eroding support for them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Many of them have pursued an utterly bankrupt strategy of understating the climate problem, negotiating with the fossil fuel industry, and cherry-picking small victories to showcase organizational accomplishments at the expense of a functional movement strategy.
Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement. So as committed climate activist who knows we’re running out of time, I say, let’s get on with it.”
The false propriety of incremental change is being smashed. Let’s join together as one planet, one humanity, to build a lasting consensus that Mother Earth deserves our love and undying respect.
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POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
She snapped Too a tension As shot Wrung out And as her life left her Realizing Won does not die By bled alone As neither does One live Buy bred A loan For giving Awe that is Unbroken
I have awe ways been a fan of epic themes of life and death, heaven and hell unearth. This poem is yet another meditation on the reality that most of us most of the time simply do what is most urgent, not what is most important. What is urgent is often not really that important in the long haul, and what is really important often doesn’t present itself in the clothes of urgency. This poem employs that apocryphal moment at our death where we are delivered in a flash our whole life. The much denied inevitability of the end of our life on earth is rife with potential epiphanies adept at properly ordering our seemingly shorted lives. When the grim reaper harvests us, will our death reflect a life well urned? Will our life be better characterized as meticulously saved or gloriously well spent? This poem plays with the daring metaphysical math than one good death may be infinitely more valuable than innumerable small deaths threw out life. This poem confronts the moribund multiplication of lives either simply buying bread and just getting by or vainly seeking to multiply a life irreproducibly created. Buy what calculation can we justly trade the breathtaking awesomeness of life for a little, less, death? In the end, facing death alone and a loan in life, whatever may truly matter is inseparably bound to whatever we’ve for giving awe that is unbroken. May you live a wholly life. Even sow, if you cannot find such a weigh, and it be hooves you, may death be dammed, just the same.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
In his rock Solid doubt Thomas Had herd rumors Of unflailing love Abuzz of hope so high If only To find himself Quite In the dark Wear time stops To the ever sow gentle Beating To a singular conundrum As sound as it gets In the artlessness of won’s Perpetual searching Where awe is aloud And know license kneaded Yet so long Due Over Come Warming to the extremity In a hospitality of patients Still Not sure What he thaw He’s frozen code Hesitatingly lust Pulling out Aplomb The surest proof Of assurance Yet knot enough too Drink the Kool-Aid™ Turning to whine Taken in Bred of skepticism Only willing To live on Crumbs That will Surly re-seed In annoys Of the daze The quest in For gotten How ever dumb dumb dumb dumb
This is another poem on a familiar theme of skepticism of skepticism. In this poem, skepticism is juxtaposed with a simple and profound reality at the center of each human life: your heartbeat. In fast-paced, postmodern society, we live in a precarious and constricted mental and spiritual territory. We are, well, maladapted to ask “What have you done for me lately” a-long-side routine strings of epic fails to live in the moment. In a triumph of evolution, we walk a mathematically constructed line that every mathematician knows doesn’t exist except as a mental construct. And then we complain about God’s ethereal nature — with a periodicity much less regular than a heartbeat, in between ignoring God’s good creation. I can’t help but note that the bulk head of such complaining seems more fitting on bar stools than in poem or song. Of course, I don’t recommend sobriety when it comes to being drunk on poetry. In the book, The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, the main character tells two stories: one hauntingly mesmerizing and another as a police report. When asking another character which story they prefer, not surprisingly, they choose the captivating story; to which the main character replies, “and so it is with God.” I, for one, would much rather be captivated by a good story than limit my reading — and living — to police reports (though many good stories include police reports). I strongly suspect that God wants us to make epic stories of our lives, for our hearts to beat captivating rhythms, to grow bigger and fuller today than we were yesterday. For this to happen, at some point, we have to make stuff up as we go along. This process can be analogous to scientific discovery, proposing stuff that we are not quite sure are true and then testing them out with out lives. Not surprisingly, scientific-minded folks are greatly disturbed when religion hypothesizes great truths and then fails to adequately test them in the here and now. Not all shit is worth making up. Fortunately, most any shit can be used as fertilizer. Even cautionary tales are indispensable. Nonetheless, as Native Americans traditionally began their storytelling, “This may not have happened, but it is true.” Or, as I might put it: God is the coolest being I ever metaphor.
But back to the even more palpable. Your heartbeat serves as a metaphor, gentle reminder, and literal lifeline to, well, life. The heartbeat is both a shared human reality and intensely intimate and personal tether to life. In astounding irony, the common ground of a heartbeat at the center of each human life seems to be easily taken for granite, that is, common ground. There may be a fine lying between common ground and complicated dirt, but I suspect that the road less travailed makes awe the difference. Akin to breathing, our heartbeat is a great center for meditation, that is, simply centering our life (see my poems, Breathing and The World’s Shortest Meditation). I find the persistence, reliability, unobtrusiveness, and effectiveness of both breathing and our heartbeat as a wellspring of metaphors and insights into the deepest nature of life. Still, may your life take definition by those moments which take your breath away and that which makes your heart to skip a beat.
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POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
POEM: Innocence — An Owed In A Sense Her innocence Was immune to their dis ease As be wilder And a tempt However tempered Only to be Dis missed As just A guile His innocence Deified awe bravery In the face Of accusations summoned As subdude As never a cur to them Posing the quest in Guise will Be guise Her bosom leaped […]...
Exhale Meditate on Mother Nature Asking only What have you done for me lately?
Meditation is difficult. Meditation is exponentially more difficult for each additional minute attempted. The chattering monkeys of the mind interrupt accessing the sacred silence offered by deep meditation practice. Many meditation techniques are based on accepting these interruptions for what they are and moving gently past them.
The meditation offered in this poem is surely not an all-purpose formula for effective meditation practice. Still, centering on breath as both a process and content of meditation offers quick access to the gratitude inherent in our very existence. The phrase “waiting to exhale” is reversed here, replaced with “waiting to inhale.” “Waiting to exhale,” in popular usage, can be a long and winding road to either letting go or relaxing into a situation. “Waiting to inhale,” is grounded in one of the most powerful and immediate life forces present in our life, the need to breathe. This force will easily overpower us if we somehow feel a desire to resist. This overwhelming invitation to appreciate such a life force is built into our very human existence. Breathing has been a perennial focus in meditation practice because of the somewhat odd reality that such a basic life function, necessary to sustain our life over the horizon of seconds, is directly subject to our willful control. This interface between conscious and unconscious forces is ripe for fruitful meditation practice, offering a bridge between conscious and unconscious realities. Why we have direct willful control over breathing escapes me. When is our conscious direction of our breathing superior to the unconscious regulation our bodies provide? I suppose if you have an infantile desire to seek a terroristic ransom from a parent by threatening to turn blue from lack of oxygen, it may come in handy. Nevertheless, even in this case, unconscious forces of a more benevolent and enlightened nature will come to the rescue by robbing the most willful of their consciousness and return them to a greater bodily harmony.
Postmodern society suffers from chronic disconnection from nature and experiences of God. This is wrapped up in our physical and technological infrastructure which isolates us from regular immersion in unspoiled nature, and from an ideological infrastructure of a distant or nonexistent God, isolating ourselves from the moment by moment and close-to-one’s-heart miracles of life present in such experiences as breathing. Of course, ever-wanting belief and skepticism routinely intervene to relegate nature, the creation of a distant or nonexistent God, to a mundane status quo, of which taking for granite, our stoney heads and hearts fail to consciously access ever-present life forces which quietly and persistently answer the question: what have you done for me lately?
May you be overwhelmed by wonder and gratitude in the presents offered by the mystery of mysteries of life.
The Rev. Medley Had risen To the highest position He would ever It was only down from there An awe too common Occupational hazard Of moderate irony And accumulating lessens Just falling short Of making one cross Facing that less than eternal question If only Jesus Had bothered to develop Better retirement plans
Here is a poem that I wrote before the Lenten season, and now that we are in Lent, I realize that it is an appropriate Lenten poem. I have always admired Jesus for being “all in” this thing called life. While Jesus’ way of being in the world raises difficult questions, his life powerfully juxtaposes finding meaning in life with finding meaning in death. Lent is a time for Christians to reflect on such things. For years I have often joked that I have given up Lent for Lent. More to the truth, my ascetic tendencies and frank goals of living simply leave me in a sort of permanent Lent. In practice, I see that Buddhists seems to model better than Christians simple living and prudently avoiding attachments to material goods. Materialism has such a powerful and normative presence in Western civilization, that Christianity, at least as practiced in Westernized communities, seems to have accommodated rampant materialism quite well. I see the divide between serving God or wealth (worldly power) as primary in my understanding of the message of Jesus’ life and death. The conventional wisdom of sensible retirement planning, as alluded to in this poem, seems second nature to what is considered the good life in modern times. I have witnessed way too many fear-filled discussions in church settings about more financially secure appointments, health coverage, and retirement benefits for clergy. In sharp contrast, I have found little traction for providing a living wage to janitors, secretaries, and many other employees of churches or faith-based organizations. Church folks are too polite to crucify you for suggesting providing a living wage to low-wage church employees, but the resounding silence kills nonetheless.
In reflecting on the often lukewarm leadership of professional Christians, often called clergy, outsiders are at little risk of ever guessing that the founder of their movement was publicly executed by the state for his revolutionary, uncompromising life. In sharp contrast, outsiders have little difficulty understanding that religious elites were complicit in Jesus’ murder.
I admire the Buddhist spiritual practice of meditating on your own death. This practice seems like a powerful way to elicit the value and importance of life in the context of death. Followers of Jesus have a profound leader who made such meditations an incarnate reality. Jesus is the way. But the retirement plan is a killer.
Amazingly, and quite fortuitously, people can breathe without thinking. Breathing is something we know how to do without having to think about it. Thankfully, thousands of bodily functions fall into this category. Fortunately, we don’t have to think about digesting a meal, or even know the intricacies of how digestion occurs. Breathing is somewhat special in that it occurs without our volition — and even against our volition if we try to stop breathing — yet we can alter our breathing if we want. Breathing is under both unconscious and conscious control. This is why many meditation experts use breathing as a focus for developing awareness of and harmony between our conscious will and the many natural, well-regulated processes outside our consciousness. Most people who have ever tried breath meditation techniques immediately learn that conscious thought can interfere with the natural process of breathing. Some things are better left alone. This poem is intended to cause reflection in the reader about the benefit of leaving alone these many natural, well-regulated processes outside our consciousness. Humans have a bias toward conscious control of themselves and their environment. The great gift of volition needs to be balanced with a respect for life and nature and its own wisdom, that doesn’t require our will for harmony to exist. Perhaps ironically, willing ourselves to let go of the need to will is often the best solution for us and the rest of life. Of course, adding another few thousand tasks to our do-not-do list can be more freeing than free will itself! May you freely relax into your life.
I was traveling on a journey And it was definitely not south I watched the mile markers grow in number Until I found myself in a different state Noticing that The mile markers restarted And lo, it was different Though northern still Through and through
No matter what direction you are journeying, something will change. What a joy to travel on a journey that is good (“definitely not south”) for a long enough time to see the proverbial mile markers rack up! Nonetheless, at some point, things will transition to another state. In this new state, the markers of progress along your journey will change. This typically requires a recalibration of our thinking, a new start. While most of us hope and pray for new starts, at least somewhere along the journey, new starts, even those viewed positively, require effort and some re-orientation to new conditions. This poem addresses the issue of integrating new states and experiences into a coherent and positive larger journey, such is our life. Faced with constant change, we can still keep our eye on the prize. There are things in life that can be counted on. Natural laws can be uncovered through science and meditation on the existential realities of humanity’s place in the world (that is, through physics and metaphysics). There is a true north that transcends any human timeframe or temporal set of conditions (“states”). Regardless, of if or how we think of true north it is still. Perhaps most comforting, it can provide reliable beacons in which to frame and map our life in a coherent way, “through and through.” Seeing our various journeys as a coherent AND positive story is somewhat trickier. Given that most of reality is outside our control, that is, we can’t change it, can we view this “helplessness” as a positive thing? I, for one, regard a persistent order to the world as a magnificently beneficial state of affairs. On the other hand, that persistently elusive free will and subjectivity at the center of our being carves out a space as delicious as it is bewildering in which we get to reign ourselves into this world. This is that space that is irreducibly ours. We are free to act within it and act out into the world. We have soul responsibility for these free acts, that is, that of which we have control, namely, ourselves (or at least that “part” of ourselves). Since, this freedom seems to define what it means to be humans, many focus most of their attention to this aspect of our being. These are the “way existential” people. Many others just have a way overblown sense of what they are in control of! Unfortunately, if one does not balance out their focus on freedom with an adequate understanding of the larger part of the universe, then their freedom will be running blindly, ignorantly into the rest of reality (that which we cannot change) with painful results. By simply making note of those thing which stay the same regardless of what we do, we can avoid a lot of hurt. Of course, teasing out the sometimes subtle differences between what we can change and what we cannot change is the stuff of wisdom. This all rather succinctly captured in the serenity prayer:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
May you have the wisdom to make a difference, in your own life, and in the world around you.
Only after building the wall To keep the barbarian hordes out Did I realize That we are the barbarian hordes
Exclusion is the most barbarian practice. Inclusion is the most enlightened practice. To evolve in our humanity we need to move beyond our self. Xenophobia, and its companion egocentricity, is a stubborn barrier to enlightenment. Recognizing the oneness of all things is a spiritual practice that moves us out of an ego perspective. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it:
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
I am fascinated with meditating upon what I see as the most fundamental paradox of human reality, the juxtaposition of the oneness of reality with the “myriad of things.” Of course, this apparent paradox is most pronounced, perhaps paradoxically, if one accepts no difference between anything. My most clear and palpable retort to folks who assert that there is no difference between anything is to ponder a hypothetical punch in the nose — I avoid the actual punch in the nose because I believe that there is a difference between violence and nonviolence! It seems that the post-enlightenment, modern scientific reductionism characterizing Western civilization lies silent, levelled if you will, stubbornly incapable of granting legitimacy (authority) to any difference or hierarchy, even though differences and hierarchies are omnipresent. How do we move or evolve beyond the self-mutilation of scientific reductionism to a self-transcendence? I am partial to E. F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed, which I would highly recommend if you are perplexed in most any way. On nugget in this regard:
There are physical facts which the bodily senses pick up, but there are also nonphysical facts which remain unnoticed unless the work of the senses is controlled and completed by certain “higher” faculties of the mind. Some of these nonphysical facts represent “grades of significance,” to use a term coined by G. N. M. Tyrrell, who gives the following illustration:
Take a book, for example. To an animal a book is merely a coloured shape. Any higher significance a book may hold lies above the level of its thought. And the book is a coloured shape; the animal is not wrong. To go a step higher, an uneducated savage may regard a book as a series of marks on paper. This is the book as seen on a higher level of significance than the animal’s, and one which corresponds to the savage’s level of thought. Again it is not wrong, only the book can mean more. It may mean a series of letters arranged according to certain rules. This is the book on a higher level of significance than the savage’s . . . . Or finally, on a still higher level, the book may be an expression of meaning…
In all these cases the “sense data” are the same; the facts given to the eye are identical. Not the eye, only the mind, can determine the “grade of significance.”
To make the grade and avoid continually devolving our humanity into some nihilistic cynicism where meaning can find no root in our being we might benefit from looking up to a higher power, living in an ever-higher perspective — and thousands of years of meditation on such things informs us that this should not involve looking down on our fellow beings.
I love mornings that I can sleep in I call them “weekdays”
I am a wealthy man! I can go for months at a time without the need for an alarm clock. How many have such wealth? In crass terms, how much would you be willing to pay for this? But alas, the value of such a freedom cannot be fully accounted for in terms of cash. As part of my package deal, I find myself without health insurance, but I am well-rested, have relatively little stress in my life, and have room to pursue my daily needs and wants, which may include exercise and meditation. The reference to “weekdays” alludes to that which is “normal” or most common in our lives, the bulk of our week. Of course, I may sleep in on the weekend as well! This summer I took three weeks for a vacation; how many of the most powerful people in the world can say that?! Please don’t consider this bragging. I see it more as fumbling gratitude…
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This simple peace or antiwar quote challenges our thinking by asking a question about what we are willing to risk or invest in securing peace. Everyone seems to understand that war is costly. However, oddly, many people seem to think that peace should just happen. Though, this might be true, if we just dis-invested from war, but this would involve great risk and sacrifices that I would simply call taking risks to secure peace. Either way peace takes work! The status quo, which is solidly in the war camp, is what will continue to happen if we do not change the way we do things. This involves a cost, a high cost, the cost of war. This is a choice, just as much as making a conscious choice to take the risks to secure peace. As quoted elsewhere, war is costly, peace is priceless. I hope this peace and antiwar quote stimulates some meditation upon what price you are willing to pay help secure peace on this precious planet, for all of its inhabitants human and otherwise.
We interrupt this commercial Now that wasn’t so hard Or was it?
How many times a day is our consciousness breached by some form of commercial interruption? Way too many times! I consider this commercial assault a major form of violence in our culture. This short poem is geared to get the reader to think about taking back these interruptions and reclaiming our consciousness. Rather than the commercial interrupting us, we interrupt this commercial. Initially, this may not be difficult. A momentary victory is not difficult to achieve. However, the assault of commercial interruptions is so pervasive and penetrating that keeping them out of our consciousness requires constant discipline. In the long run, avoiding those settings where commercial interruptions are prevalent is probably the best strategy. Like any kind of mindfulness or meditation practice, maintaining complete control over where the mind goes is probably impossible. Nevertheless, we can train our minds to let go the commercial interruptions and build associations in our mental state that eventually rate these commercial interruptions as not worth paying attention to. Another suggestion on the social front would be not to buy any of the crap that’s advertised. This is not really that difficult since most of the crap that’s advertised is crap. Questioning consumption and consumerism, as well as living a simple life, are long-term strategies to interrupt the violent assaults of commercials. Also, given the sloganeering and design work that I do, I like to parody and satirize the vanity and absurdity of many commercial endeavors. I find this method of fighting back both cathartic and joy producing. May the farce be with you as well!
I like this two-line poem for many reasons. First, the poem contrasts the rather ethereal subject of meditation with the eminently practical need to eat and the everyday routine of meals. I love these apparent paradoxes, which drive much of my poetry and thinking. While I believe that meditation and eating meals are both basic needs, most would agree that they are basic needs in very very different ways. I also like this poem because its two-lines mirror the classical set up for a joke, misleading the reader or hearer with the first line, and then hitting them with something very different, unexpected. And as in good joke telling, timing is important. By tying the hour of meditation to before breakfast, it stresses the foundational nature of meditation in one’s day, and, especially for people like myself, who don’t like getting up early in the morning, it suggests that meditation is perhaps appropriate and important enough to rise early for. Certainly, the practice of meditation is very difficult, even for short times. The mention of an hour of meditation is probably scary for most of us. Given the mystical nature that one might ascribed to meditation, one might expect something very grand, epic, perhaps even some miraculous revelation, after such a long endeavor. Nonetheless, meditation may be less about achieving some temporary, mystical experience, than enriching our regular everyday experience, such as eating a meal. I have to laugh at myself that trying to explain even some of what is behind such a simple, short poem, takes much much longer been reading it and giving it a simple meditation for oneself. Of course, that’s the power of poetry, to say something seemingly simple, yet realize that it is much richer than it first appears. Please feel free to read my short poems without the long commentary, especially if your simple meditations upon these poems give you a better, power-packed experience.
If I told you that I’ve figured it out
You probably shouldn’t believe me
But, if by chance, you find me dancing
You need not ask me why
Simply discover what makes you dance
And dance!
Then, if our paths shall cross again
We may dance together
In that place where there are no words
I wrote this mystical poem, Wordless Dancing, first as an attempt to describe a parting of ways; but, in writing this poem, I discovered that in a deeper mystical way, that living authentically could very well lead to joining up again, if it is meant to be; and if it is meant to be, that joining up again with the good, that is, what is meant to be. This poem represents part of the common everyday struggle to “figure out” the world, other people, and what they may need. However, it dawned on me that by discovering and living that which makes one dance, the rest doesn’t really matter that much, or at least is out of one’s control. In the end, or perhaps along the journey, if two or more people come together dancing, then getting caught up in what the other person is doing or needs is not so important, and dancing together need not be described (or may not even be describable) but merely experienced. And as much as we influence one another, our own ability to dance freely and authentically is perhaps the best hope to bring about dancing freely and authentically and others. I find this theme of differentiating oneself, finding oneself, and relating to others, creating authentic community, a rich theme. It strikes me that a great part of wisdom is being able to dance both while alone and with others. I am attracted to the mystical and wordless nature of poetic strivings, meditating upon that which is paradoxical, at least apparently paradoxical, and finding some synchronicity or synthesis. It seems that such meditations are infinite and unending, in the sense that life is a journey and not resolved once and for all, except perhaps in death, which of course is not normally seen as life. I like the image of dancing because it connotes freedom in a process that is flowing and beautiful, and least that is when some people dance; or least it can be beautiful to the one dancing even if it doesn’t appear beautiful to someone observing the dancer. Dancing also seems to connote joy and engagement in the world as opposed to an outwardly motionless type of meditation. This seems to embody a more naturally contagious way of being. Hopefully, in this short poem, you will find rich meditations that will help you articulate better in words that which you feel and experience, and bring you mystical experiences, in that place where words are not only inadequate but unnecessary. Well, that ends the rather lengthy, wordy dissertation on a short poem that perhaps should be allowed to stand on its own two feet; or better yet, dance.
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Risk Taking in War and Peace
PEACE QUOTE: Risks Making War Risks to Secure Peace–PEACE SIGN BUTTON
PEACE QUOTE: Risks Making War Risks to Secure Peace–PEACE SIGN BUTTON
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This simple peace or antiwar quote challenges our thinking by asking a question about what we are willing to risk or invest in securing peace. Everyone seems to understand that war is costly. However, oddly, many people seem to think that peace should just happen. Though, this might be true, if we just dis-invested from war, but this would involve great risk and sacrifices that I would simply call taking risks to secure peace. Either way peace takes work! The status quo, which is solidly in the war camp, is what will continue to happen if we do not change the way we do things. This involves a cost, a high cost, the cost of war. This is a choice, just as much as making a conscious choice to take the risks to secure peace. As quoted elsewhere, war is costly, peace is priceless. I hope this peace and antiwar quote stimulates some meditation upon what price you are willing to pay help secure peace on this precious planet, for all of its inhabitants human and otherwise.
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