Cultivating openness when things fall apart: Pema and bell

Feeling a fair amount of anxiety these days, finding solace in the insights of Pema Chodron. Found this conversation between Pema and bell hooks.

Chickpea to Cook

Chickpea to Cook
~Jalaluddin Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it's being boiled.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

"Don't you try to jump out.
You think I'm torturing you.
I'm giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

"Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this."

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
"Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can't do this by myself.

"I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention
to his driver. You're my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking."

The cook says,
"I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

"My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher."

Obama at U-M Commencement

What an inspiring day it was! Perhaps there actually is hope for the future.

	Malcolm Dalglish & Grey Larsen - Shake These Bones .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I imagine I'll start my 60th b-day show with this song.

Writing rules

Cool rules for writing. nuff said.

Word cloud

writing quotes

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside of us."
--Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, 1/27/04

"That which would give light must endure burning."
--Victor Frankel

"The true art of memory is the art of attention."
--Dr. Samuel Johnson

All of the above collected in Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking about Difficult Stories by Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis

And Stacie wonders if I overthink things!?

1977
From a 1977 letter to my housemates:
Not meaning to sound too esoteric, etc., but Penny and I have been working a lot on what might be called aligning the subjective with the objective. We’ve been focusing on how we both shut each other out in fear when it’s really only our illusions we have to fear—not reality itself. It’s a hard process to break down the illusions because they’ve become part of us, even though they cause us to work against our best interests. And at the bottom of those illusions is perfectionism. Neither of us will really let go and trust the other person until she reaches perfection. In the meantime, though, there’s a lot we still want from each other—so we finally reach and ask, but in such a defensive, suspicious way that the desired results become highly unlikely. Slowly, we’re starting to break the patterns. That feels GOOD

what if we discover...

What if we discover that our
present way of life is
irreconcilable with our vocation
to become fully human?

--Paulo Freire

Self Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.