The theme of the Fall 2011 issue of Parabola is “seeing”  and  in this issue are stories and reflections from many perspectives including those of a neuro- opthalmologist/musician, an Alexander teacher, an MD yoga therapist,  poets, artists, and spiritual teachers from many wisdom traditions including Christianity and Buddhism. One story in particular stood out for me. It was related by artist Jane Rosen in a conversation with Richard Whittaker.

“One day I heard the dogs barking in the living room…I walked [in] … and there was the raven underneath the chair at the dining room table. I looked at this big raven with huge claws and this huge Roman beak. The raven somehow had walked into the house  before we had become friends and had gotten stuck underneath the chair. I believe it was a mom and she was coming in looking for food.

I looked at the raven and the raven looked at me. She had these beautiful eyes and she blinked at me. It was clear she said to me, ‘I’m stuck. I don’t know how I got under this chair. I can’t get out, and you’ve got two pretty big dogs. I’m in a situation here.’

So I looked at the raven and said, ‘ Okay. Here’s the deal. You’re big. You have sharp claws and this beak. You could hurt me. I’m going to pet your back and if you don’t try to peck me or claw me, I will get you out from under the chair. If you try to peck me or claw me, you’re on your own.’

She looked at me, cocking her head like she was thinking about it. It wasn’t like she understood my words or I understood hers. There was something in my tone that was explaining to her that I was about to make a move. So I pet the back of the raven and not only does she not claw me,  she pulls her claws into her belly and tucks her beak into her chest. I pick her up and I hold her like this [cradled in her arms] and she is perfectly still. I put her out on the picnic table, figuring she would make a beeline out of there. She turned around, she looked at me, and she nodded.”

For me, this story points to what can happen when we see and allow ourselves to be seen in an open way, when we communicate from a place that, while acknowledging our differences, moves to a place of deeper connection and allows something new to unfold.

The day lies open before me.

Gray, misty rain

invites me to

nestle within,

to wrap myself in long-awaited

silence –  slowly

sip this quiet

offering.  “Yes,”

I whisper, grateful for the chance

to come to this

soft sheltering

and enter in.

                                                                  JDG

I’ve been thinking recently of my grandmother and her words to me after my mother’s death when I was eight years old and she realized I was afraid of the dark. She sat on the edge of my bed and told me that each of us has a guardian angel who stays with us and looks over us and that I was very fortunate indeed,  because I had a very special guardian angel, my mother, who was looking over me.  My grandmother, the mother of my mother, was not being merely comforting.  She believed those words with every fiber of her Irish heart and because she believed them, I believed them too. I remember closing my eyes real tight, taking a deep breath and then saying softly, ” I’m so sleepy, I won’t open my eyes til morning,” and then opening them real fast in hopes of catching my guardian angel mother by surprise. She was always too quick for me and I never did catch her, but I knew she was there and I was always able to fall asleep, even in the dark.

My grandmother’s words were not spoken with a desire to leave a legacy of any kind. They were spoken out of compassion for a little girl who was afraid of the dark.  They were spoken through the grief of  a mother who had just lost her daughter and they were spoken out of a deep and abiding faith.  Even though it was not her intent, this experience became her legacy to me – the knowledge that in the darkest night, we are not alone and that another’s love can survive even death, can bring us comfort, and lend us strength.

The first white cloak of winter lay

light on gentle

hills. Blanketed

horses breathe out

gray. A tiny deer lies red on road

as sun sends sparks

to vultures’ wings.

My day starts with

these small pieces stitched together,

a patchwork quilt

of dark and light

like so much else.

                                                           JDG

” When the inside is the outside

and the outside

is the inside,

then all is one, “

my friend intoned, a soulful look

sanctifying

his solemn speech.

It would have been

profound, indeed, had he not been

referring to

his flannel shirt

worn inside out.

                                                                   JDG

The way to the eternal passes

through the doorway

of this very

moment. Just now

my eyes took in a tree blazing

with golden fire.

My heart followed

and for a time

I stood in all eternity

awash with thanks

for this tree whose

planet I share.

                                                                 JDG

“Bless those who challenge us. They remind us of doors we have closed and doors we have yet to open.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                               – a Navajo saying

This is for you, my dear friend, who challenged me concerning yesterday’s post on Occupy Oakland. At first I was just annoyed and almost immediately began marshaling  arguments to support my position and rebut yours. Then I was overwhelmed with a sense of the futility of such an effort. This was quickly followed by a deep feeling of fatigue and a desire to avoid discussing the matter any further.  But because of the work I have been doing in  Nonviolent Communication and in Mindfulness Meditation, I decided on a different course.

Rather than focus attention on the initial thoughts and feelings your e-mail evoked and amplifying them, I turned my attention instead to the physical sensations I was feeling in my body. It was only then that I realized that my heart was racing and that was when I became aware that below the annoyance, sense of futility, fatigue, and desire to avoid further discussion was fear. I resisted  the temptation to mentally expand on all the fears I have related to the unchecked use of force and power and simply kept my attention gently focused on my racing heart. Gradually my heart returned to its usual rhythm and, as I continued to sit with my attention softly focused on my now steadier and slower- beating heart, I felt connected to all who are or ever have been afraid for whatever reason or circumstance.

I didn’t realize until then that, in closing the door to my own fear, I had closed the door to others’  fear as well, and thus had closed the door to a common aspect of humanity that connects us all. I do not doubt for one minute, my friend, your care for me nor mine for you. Strangely, the bridge back to my own heart and to you was through a recognition and acceptance of fear unadorned with explanations,  justifications, or desire to persuade.

So, let us sit, my friend, with our fears and speak them to one another. My strong intuition is that our fears, simply and honestly spoken, will lead us to common ground from which new possibilities may arise for us both.

I find myself thinking about something Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, said several years ago. If any of us were walking along a river bank and heard a baby cry and looked down and saw it precariously floating all alone down the river, we would, of course, jump in and save the baby. And, he said, if another baby came floating by, we’d jump in again, and if that other was followed by still another and another after that until there was a steady stream of babies floating down the river, we would also round up other people and begin to organize in order to save all the babies. But finally, he said, someone has to go up the river and see who’s throwing them in.

The question for me is what do you do when you get there, when you’ve gone up river and you encounter, not the thrower of the babies, but the confused, angry, and hardened faces of those called upon to defend a face they do not clearly see and a process they do not understand. What do you do when you are showered with rubber bullets, when pepper spray is aimed at your face, and tear gas falls all around as you rescue a fallen comrade?  What do you do with your outrage?  What do you do when you find you have joined those others who have “gone up river”  before you in Selma and Birmingham, in Tiananmen Square and Cairo, in Bombay and at Kent State?  How do you remember to stand your ground, to not fight back, to place flowers in gun barrels, to sing in the face of tyranny, to lock arms and stay the course?  How do you remember, as Scott Olsen lies in an Oakland Hospital, that ” the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice “? And what do you do when those who throw babies in rivers refuse to acknowledge what they’re doing,  won’t let themselves be seen and won’t allow themselves to be addressed?

I wrote this poem in response to a dream in which I, who never felt pretty,  appeared in  a swirling skirt. For the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be pretty.

You came to me late.

In a rush of wind and joy, you came.

You raised the dead

and stirred the still sleeping,

You charmed us all.

Through the silver-edged days of spring

you danced.

In the softness of summer, you held my hand

and led me back

over roads not taken when

time was ripe.

You used a finely honed and delicate knife

and the pain you brought

was almost pleasure.

You plunged deep and carved wide.

You hollowed out

an emptiness, a living space

and filled it with golden apples

with only a hint of green.

You didn’t stay. You couldn’t.

But you left behind

your dance,

your golden apples,

and you bade me eat.

                                                                      JDG

                                                                        1982

Caught in creation’s knot, I groan

and weave another kind of web,

a shield, a screen, a surety,

a stay against reality.

Masked thus I search for wisdom’s gold

and blown by every rumored vein,

I wrap myself in borrowed clothes

and hold at bay the enemy’s hand.

Until at last at Peter’s booths

I stand fumbling with my mask

and shedding ancient, carrion truth

I leave creation’s debt a coin.

                                                                                        JDG

                                                                                         April 1984