basic reflections

The Heart Of Change

This morning I unearthed something I had written a couple of years ago which I had quite forgotten about. Reading it again reminded me that I had something to share with you! I thought I would call this little piece "The heart of change."

The heart of change lies in
Listening
Seeing
Smelling
Sensing
The truth of our lives together

Listening
To needs we hardly whisper about
And to  hurts we carefully conceal
While secretly  dreaming of
The way  our hands and feet
Our minds and hearts
Might  have moved in our lifetime
Had they not been fettered since birth.

 

Change lies in
Absorbing the  rage
Of    being muzzled
The  pain of
Never  having been seen
The way  we are.
Like  birds having misplaced
Their sense of  direction
We now look
For a place to
Call home.

You might say.
Change has to do
With things like politics
And economics
And social activism
And wars and the rules of
Trade and commerce.
Global currents
And all kinds of super complicated things which
Only a few special people are capable of grasping
As such
Who  feel they should rule our lives.

But
How can a fresh breeze be set in motion
By a politician  who refuses to see
Or an economist who has  stopped smelling or tasting anything other than the  theories he lives with
Or a social activist
Rushing around,  to meet  the needs of people whose
Innermost cravings he is afraid to sense.

I decided a long time back.
I don’t want to be an activist
I don’t want to be a politician
I don’t want to be an executive in an important organization
I don’t even want to be a writer or a poet any more
Which I once thought I did.
The list is too long
Of cravings left behind.

For  what I  want,
I realize now, has  no name
Or form that I can convey to you with ease
In words or pictures that will make sense.

 
So maybe
You need
To stop by for a while and
Listen to me
And let me also, listen to you.

Maybe
We  need
To slow down for a moment

So you can feel me
And let me get a feel of you
To get closer to me and let  me share your space
Even as I  prepare for you 
To enter my own.

Cautiously
Respectfully
Tenderly
With love
Respecting the nature 
Of our existence on earth.

So that for a brief while
I can get under your skin
And you too,  know what it is like
To be me
And we both stay with each other
Long enough to know

That it is for ourselves we
Essentially live -
Which means we
Live for each other.

Uma

January 2006

 

 

 

Aloneness

George Kunnath sent in this poem on aloneness:

Aloneness is a state of being
A wonderful state of being
In aloneness I find myself
In aloneness I am by myself

In aloneness I discover myself
And reach the core of my self
In the depth of aloneness
I find everything

In aloneness I find bliss
All beauty contains in aloneness
The wonder of the universe
The bliss of solitude

It feels wonderful to be alone
In the depth of the aloneness
I find you and everything
It is in aloneness love flowers

From the deep spring of aloneness
The river of love flows
The flow never stops
As it is an eternal spring

Find the well of aloneness
Sink deep into the waters
Soak it in to the core
And lack nothing any more

God and Man

Kahlil Gibran

The God separated a spirit from Himself and fashioned it into Beauty. He showered upon her all the blessings of gracefulness and kindness. He gave her the cup of happiness and said, "Drink not from this cup unless you forget the past and the future, for happiness is naught but the moment." And He also gave her a cup of sorrow and said, "Drink from this cup and you will understand the meaning of the fleeting instants of the joy of life, for sorrow ever abounds."

And the God bestowed upon her a love that would desert her forever upon her first sigh of earthly satisfaction, and a sweetness that would vanish with her first awareness of flattery.

And He gave her wisdom from heaven to lead to the all-righteous path, and placed in the depth of her heart and eye that sees the unseen, and created in her an affection and goodness toward all things. He dressed her with raiment of hopes spun by the angels of heaven from the sinews of the rainbow. And He cloaked her in the shadow of confusion, which is the dawn of life and light.

Then the God took consuming fire from the furnace of anger, and searing wind from the desert of ignorance, and sharp- cutting sands from the shore of selfishness, and coarse earth from under the feet of ages, and combined them all and fashioned Man. He gave to Man a blind power that rages and drives him into a madness which extinguishes only before gratification of desire, and placed life in him which is the spectre of death.

And the god laughed and cried. He felt an overwhelming love and pity for Man, and sheltered him beneath His guidance.