open my heart and heal yours

you are a pedophile, convicted and incarcerated. ten years in, you have two weeks left. you've had no treatment, no talk or drugs, only time and violence. you desperately want a relationship and the american dream.

when you said they sent you to federal prison to have you killed by inmates, i could not help but sympathize with "their" decision. what you did was cruel, permanent violence. worse yet, i didn't hear much remorse.

but could i have? do i have the heart to forgive, ears to listen?

a prayer this morning for us both. as you go free, walk softly and carefully. stay safe and stay away. as i go back in, walk with and compassionately. stay safe and stay present.

he had a big adventure

remember the little man? the gnome? so patient and gentle. i worked on removing a good deal of cancer from him this morning. now he's in recovery and he isn't waking up.



get your pray on.

morning self-loathing

a prayer for divine remembrance
as in
hey! remember the divine!
put down that wine!

instant message

at the VA hospital, the squirrels are as big as cats. they have barrel chests and thick strong arms and legs. they aren't any more skittish than cats, either. you walk by them and keep playing.

hurray for healthy well-fed hospital squirrels!

fear and labor.

fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain - fear - tension - pain

i was walking out of the hospital behind a woman and two men. the woman walked slower and slower. the men turned around and looked at her, and she stopped. in a high choky voice she said, "it's too hard to just walk out!" and i could see her face was wet. i was walking past as the men went back to her, and she said with a weird terror in her voice, "it's like i'm leaving something behind here!" and the men said soothingly, "you're not, you're not."

in birth we have the fear-tension-pain cycle. stop me if you've heard me say this too many times in the last couple days. fear of pain: your whole body clenches against it. then you feel the pain.

how can we not be afraid?





in birth, we be not afraid because we are obliged to welcome the labor, the process. we are obliged because otherwise we could not survive it, except, of course, by high-tech means of escape from consciousness. if we have those, we can be afraid, and it doesn't really matter, that we know of: it seems normal.

but when we have no short-cuts across the process, we are forced to learn to be not afraid, and we find that pain is not the same as suffering.

pain is not the same as suffering.
one of the things about labor is that, when it's at its most intense, you can look in a woman's face and see the certainty that she is going to die. and if you have labored yourself, you might remember it, on a very primal level, the struggle to radically, radically let go, to recklessly allow the process to seize you and take you over and tear you asunder, you have to let go of even the personal feeling of a body. you aren't actually torn asunder, of course; but you are ready to be...





you escape suffering by transforming it. pain there may be, but it isn't the issue. letting go and opening up is the issue. remember, i'm talking about birth, here, and i am referencing a very practical, working activity: the hard labor of letting go and opening up.

it could be a metaphor for so many things we labor through: trauma. bereavement. disfigurement. grief. stigma. loss. subliminally, we cling to the idea that something must be gained, that when one door closes, another opens, and so on. but that's a hard yoga to put on somebody who's already suffering, here and now.





it's a harsh and dreadful thing to say, be not afraid.
how did jesus ever get away with it?

i think we have to fill that admonition, that prescription, with all the love it will hold: "good measure, pressed down, flowing over," as they say. we have to swing on hard-core full of love, to say that to someone. it's legitimate to say it, theoretically, because in fact one must be not afraid, in order to survive the hard labor and get to the next part. and we trust that the next part will be good, because we have no alternative. we certainly trust it can't be much worse.

so we expect that radiation will cure the cancer, and grieving will make us kinder people, and being assaulted has somehow made us braver, and after death there's peace, and one set of abilities is replaced by another, and offering up our physical pain will free ten souls from purgatory, and so on. our belief makes us be not afraid. our spirits stop twisting and writhing away from the pain. the pain is still there. but it's not all there is.





did the lady leave the hospital? she went to her car and they drove her home. did she leave something behind at the hospital? i guess so; you could hear the fear in her voice as she said it, but that's not the end of the story; there's always more, there has to be. and that's my prayer for today: transcend fear, transform pain, step forward. be not afraid. love hard. there's always more.

love keep them safe

girl like so many in desire, in need, kept distant by past and injury.

her nose is so damaged that when she smells closeness, all she can do is gobble, not savor.

how can i hold her in the light when i want to run away?

a prayer today for kindness, for humility, for the lessons of my own times past.

as soon as you practice breathing, you will not spit up your coffee

As soon as meditative concentration has been developed by you and frequently practised, then you should train thus:

I will develop freedom of mind for living kindness and compassion.

i want to tell you a story about a little man if i can.

a little old man came to see the surgeon. his skin was grayish yellow, and he had lost so much weight that it made his ears stick out like sails on either side of his head, tufts of silver hair poking straight out of them. his eyes were big and round, long-lashed and wet with worry, sunk deep into shadowed hollows, with silver eyebrows jutting out above. he had a gentle smile, revealing three lonely, cracked and blackened teeth. imagine a friendly gnome from deep in the forest shades, come out to say hello and ask you his curious questions. now imagine him wearing a red flannel coat and big muddy boots, patiently sitting in a doctor's office.


he wore a scarlet tunic, a blue-green hood. it looked quite good.





obediently he pulls up his t-shirt, revealing a belly as hollow as a bowl. he has lost forty pounds in one year, and he says his friends have been telling him he's "changing color." he's not in any pain, and is comically perplexed when we ask him about his health. he's fit as a fiddle, he says. i tell him to breathe normally so i can listen to his heart. "i think you're making it beat a little faster," he jokes. at last he stands up to tuck his shirt back in. he leans his head toward me, smiling gently, and asks in a quiet voice, "this cancer - will it kill me?"


he had a big adventure, amidst the grass. fresh air at last.





his mother got a lump in her breast. she went to the surgeon, and had a bunch of medicine that made her sicker, and then she died. his wife, she started bleeding, and she went to the surgeon, and he said she only had six weeks to live. she made a fool of that surgeon - she lived fully four months. he's been asking doctors about the way he keeps losing weight since 1991, since he came back from Desert Shield and Desert Storm. they all just kept telling him he was a normal weight. he hitches his belt in until it looks like a drawstring for his pants. then he sits patiently back down. the surgeon is typing on the computer.


and then one day, hooray! another way for gnomes to say hooray.





he folds his hands quietly in his lap. he looks at us with gentle eyes. our plan is to remove his colon. he accepts this. he prepares to drive back to effingham in the rain, and i bow my head and pray.


look at the sky, look at the river. isn't it good?
look at the sky, look at the river. isn't it good?

a prayer for me and you

a prayer for strength
keep the demons of self-doubt out
keep the grace of my own visage in
a prayer for understanding
if my words prove greater than the deeds i want to do
if my self proves more porous than electric
a prayer for connection
because grace's form cannot be planned
because pleasure's form cannot be explained

if all the seas were one sea, what a great sea that would be

oh sniper-rifle man, oh sniper-rifle man. i wish i had the tools, the tape and bandages and anti-inflammatory ointment, the tranquilizer darts, the perfect love, the lottery ticket, the birthday cake candle that could mend your wound.

when your shoulder surgery was done, and you tried to climb off the table in anesthetized slow motion, blearily frantic for someone to hand you your gun, i started worrying about you, and it seems it'll be at least a few days before you wear out of my consciousness. until then, i pray:

mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.



but i frown on asking impossible requests from deities (even country-western deities, who may use a more flamboyant hand with the blessings). praying isn't going to stop the urban holocaust, the rural seige, or the military. it doesn't work that way. back to letting go of the idea that a prayer has to be a big thing, has to get something done... back to the level of birthday-candle wishes.

so, sniper-rifle man, i pray your shoulder stops hurting you, setting alight the red-hot circuit that rings the alarm in the vietnam of your mind, making you blindly reach for your weapon. i am praying that you forge a new pathway for your pain - since pain is one thing we're guaranteed more of, as life grows long - one that does not spell assault but instead calls for pity, and mercy, and care. even of yourself.

reverb: a prayer that makes a ripple, rocking all the little boats of the personal meanings of suffering.

welcome

breathing in i calm my body
breathing out i smile
i dwell in the moment
the moment is wonderful