messages from Spring Temple Retreat at Hope Springs

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April 7-10, 2022

A portal of presence. This breath, and then another. This moment arising. And another.

There will be silence. There will be laughter. There will be howling.

And here we are, on the other side of a vision that saw our way through. Fire smoke and hail, dark nights and bright morning sun.

I love you. Here we are.

 

  • Hokusai says look carefully.

    He says pay attention, notice.

    He says keep looking, stay curious.

    He says there is no end to seeing.

    He says look forward to getting old.

    He says keep changing,

    you just get more who you really are.

    He says get stuck, accept it, repeat

    yourself as long as it is interesting.

    He says keep doing what you love.

    He says keep praying.

    He says everyone of us is a child,

    everyone of us is ancient,

    everyone of us has a body.

    He says everyone of us is frightened.

    He says everyone of us has to find

    a way to live with fear.

    He says everything is alive–

    shells, buildings, people, fish,

    mountains, trees, wood is alive.

    Water is alive.

    Everything has its own life.

    Everything lives inside us.

    He says live with the world inside you.

    He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,

    or write books. It doesn’t matter

    if you saw wood, or catch fish.

    It doesn’t matter if you sit at home

    and stare at the ants on your veranda

    or the shadows of the trees

    and grasses in your garden.

    It matters that you care.

    It matters that you feel.

    It matters that you notice.

    It matters that life lives through you.

    Contentment is life living through you.

    Joy is life living through you.

    Satisfaction and strength

    is life living through you.

    He says don’t be afraid.

    Don’t be afraid.

    Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

    Let life live through you.

  • Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

  • Hello, sun in my face.

    Hello, you who make the morning

    and spread it over the fields

    and into the faces of the tulips

    and the nodding morning glories,

    and into the windows of, even, the

    miserable and crotchety–

    best preacher that ever was,

    dear star, that just happens

    to be where you are in the universe

    to keep us from ever-darkness,

    to ease us with warm touching,

    to hold us in the great hands of light–

    good morning, good morning, good morning.

    Watch, now, how I start the day

    in happiness, in kindness.

  • Every day

    I see or hear

    something

    that more or less

    kills me

    with delight,

    that leaves me

    like a needle

    in the haystack

    of light.

    It was what I was born for -

    to look, to listen,

    to lose myself

    inside this soft world -

    to instruct myself

    over and over

    in joy,

    and acclamation.

    Nor am I talking

    about the exceptional,

    the fearful, the dreadful,

    the very extravagant -

    but of the ordinary,

    the common, the very drab,

    the daily presentations.

    Oh, good scholar,

    I say to myself,

    how can you help

    but grow wise

    with such teachings

    as these -

    the untrimmable light

    of the world,

    the ocean's shine,

    the prayers that are made

    out of grass?

  • Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing

    there is a field

    I’ll meet you there.

    When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

    Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

    doesn’t make any sense.

  • In the winter I am writing about there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing.

    We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world and the light of _____ but I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith - only say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope. That is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile and coll, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.

  • Admit something:

    Everyone you see, you say to them,

    “Love Me.”

    Of course you do not do this out loud;

    Otherwise, someone would call the cops.

    Still though, think about this,

    This great pull in us

    To connect.

    Why not become the one

    Who lives with a full moon in each eye

    That is always saying,

    With that sweet moon

    Language,

    What every other eye in this world

    is dying to

    Hear.

  • My work is loving the world.

    Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

    equal seekers of sweetness.

    Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

    Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

    Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

    Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me

    keep my mind on what matters,

    which is my work,

    which is mostly standing still and learning to be

    astonished.

    The phoebe, the delphinium.

    The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

    Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

    which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

    and these body-clothes,

    a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

    to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

    telling them all, over and over, how it is

    that we live forever.

  • The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

    The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

    We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

    It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

    At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

    Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

    This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

    Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

    We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

    At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

    Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.