“You might consider your own minor annoyances and turn one into a bell … let it be a bell to remind you to come back, and remember, soon all of this will be gone.” —David Keplinger, Another Shore (May 30, 2025)
And so today when the very slow driver
in front of me starts going ten miles
over the speed limit right when we get
to the passing lane, I imagine
my frustration is a bell. Instead
of calling him an idiot, as usual,
instead I think, Ding. Can you be
grateful to be alive right now?
Ding. Can you bless this body?
Delight in this canyon? Find joy
in the burgeoning green of spring?
Ding. Ding. Ding. Can you come home
to this moment and realize all belongs?
Even slow drivers who speed up.
Even your impatience. Ding.
Here’s your chance to imagine whatever
provokes you becomes a mindfulness bell.
There will come a time when you think
oh, what a lucky woman you were
to drive these roads at all. Could that time
be now? Ding. Ding. Oh that idio—. Ding.
Please, let him pull over. Don’t honk. Please.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Posts Tagged ‘resistance’
The Mindfulness Bell
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bell, driving, frustration, mindfulness, presence, resistance on May 30, 2025| 8 Comments »
How
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, prayer, resistance on January 22, 2025| 17 Comments »
A little context: if you have ever been in a class with me, you likely know I often joke (except I’m not joking) that EVERYTHING has something to teach us … except ticks. So. In these days when I find myself faced with things I really really do not want to turn toward, I have finally done what I swore I would never do. I wrote a poem about ticks. I consider this practice.
*
I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet.
—Mark Nepo, from “In Love with the World”
Not the tick, no.
Surely it is not sacred.
Do not try to tell me so.
Repulsive tiny blood suckers.
I do not wish to be impressed
by their survival, do not want
to respect how they have thrived
since the first flowering plants
arrived on earth over
one hundred million years ago.
I do not want to praise
their hard protective shells, nor how
efficiently they swell,
nor the ease with which they sense
moisture, heat, vibration.
Rather to vilify what disgusts me.
Repulsive little carriers of sickness.
Vile little vectors of disease.
What joy is there in knowing
a tick is so effective and good
at doing what a tick was made to do?
Could it be greater than the perverse joy
I get from my hatred? It is clear
my repulsion does not affect the tick.
Oh, clenched heart. Oh, clenched fist.
Where is the line between what I love
and what I resist?
Is it true there is holiness in everything?
How do I wound myself
when my heart and hand are closed?
Let my prayer not be to fall in love,
but to open to the prayer I do not yet know.
From the Sauna
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Finland, heat, resistance, sauna, surrender on December 31, 2024| 1 Comment »
As the sweat beads on my chest,
I ask my daughter to ladle water
over the rocks. Steam rises
to fill our lungs and heat our skin.
My lips move to whisper
Ihanaa löylyä, “beautiful steam,”
but it is my Finnish host mother’s voice
I hear. She taught me, too, to crave it,
to love it, to long for the shock
of its intensity, helped me practice
learning to desire what is good
for the body, though it is uncomfortable.
Ihanaa löylyä, I say to my daughter
as she gasps from the heat.
She repeats it in Finnish, in English.
Beautiful steam, though her syllables
lack conviction. The steam is,
I trust, doing its good sauna work—
cleansing the body, relaxing
the mind. Now it’s natural
to want it, even as I struggle
to stay with the heat. Sweat rolls down
my cheeks. I praise it, call it beautiful—
the steam, the feeling, yes, but also
this learning to love what is sometimes
not easy at first to love.
Afraid My Actions Would Hurt Someone Else,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, belonging, burr, resistance on April 28, 2024| 7 Comments »
my chest filled with anxiety,
as if burrs grew in my bloodstream,
sharp barbs catching on my skin from inside.
I wanted the feeling to go away.
Wanted to know I could make everything okay.
And the burdock dug deeper in,
clinging to my heart as it would
to a sock or a sleeve or a dog.
Inside the burr was a seed of fear:
I can’t protect others from harm.
And my teacher said, her voice warm,
Let the fear of repercussions be here.
But the longing to control kept
digging into me with spines sharp and long.
Include it as part of the whole, she said.
And I thought of wild burdock
with its big soft leaves,
how naturally it grows in a field.
How it’s evolved, a product of life itself.
How the root is used to heal.
And I was stunned by the fact
that burdock belongs to the field
as much as wheatgrass,
dandelion, wild iris, wild rose—
the burr one part of the whole.
And I knew myself as field.
I imagined inside me
the grass, the sunflower, the vetch, the trees,
and the uncomfortable burr of anxiety,
which, though painful, belongs.
I focused on whatever it is
that holds it all. Inside me,
acceptance opened like a song.
*with thanks to Joi Sharp for her words (in italics)
Unlikely Camaraderie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged presence, resistance, separate self, wind on November 10, 2022| 8 Comments »
All day, the wind, the ruthless wind,
unruly, unsettling, relentless wind,
the wind that crashed the leafless trees
and strewed the branches across the streets,
the wind that scraped at my fragile peace
until I was as dismantled as the day—
I notice the part of me that wants
to wish the wind away. I ask it
to sit with me. With little option
except to be present with each other,
we sit together, listen to the wind.
Turning to Physics
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged electricity, path, physics, resistance on April 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
An electrical current
knows nothing of the path
it will take. It goes on all paths,
but flows best toward
where it flows best.
It sounds so simple,
and yet the electrons of this body,
charged with my beliefs,
defy nature and rush toward resistance.
How often I try to fight myself.
How often I battle my own current,
the current of the world—
it’s like wading through honey instead of water,
this thinking I know best.
Sometimes, I see how my own resistance
is nothing but a part of the path.
In that moment, I flow toward where I flow best.
In that moment I am copper, ductile, tough,
In that moment, I am so alive with it, the buzz.
published in ONE ART: A journal of poetry
One Important Tool
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged resistance, tool on June 23, 2020| Leave a Comment »
How the Days Go
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, loss of self, poem, poetry, resistance on September 23, 2012| 2 Comments »
Looking in the rubble
one might wonder
what is left to break.
Such a dangerous thought.
There is always more.
And one part of me
says to the other,
Hush, don’t ask.
Don’t look. Things
are settling now.
Let’s talk about
something else.
And the other part
smiles, says
nothing, already
feeling the distant
tremor.