Medicine

Michael Meade's Mosaic Voices podcast is really medicine for this soul.

Listening to it this morning, this episode in particular - what to say, how to say it - it resonated so much I barely have words for it.

The failures that bring us truth, the losses that bring us to love...whittling away, whittling away so all that remains in spirit..

There was William Stafford to begin with and Rumi in the middle and Hafiz to end with and the insights of Meade who weaves together his belief, his being, his truth about this necessity of being who you are, especially the poet you are, especially the dancer you are. In so many ways, these words in this podcast mirror...reflect....give words to the silences I live and create from. Listening to this today, I feel I went on that same journey of awakening, struggle and catharsis that forms the journey of The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects.   in its own particular way, all that was spoken connected to the heart of all I am doing in my own particular way...

"Cast all your votes for dancing," as Rumi says;  yes, that! and Listen, here, below and more podcasts at the Mosaic Voices "Living Myth" website.

---

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
William Stafford

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

---

ONLY BREATH
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam or Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

Coleman Barks, Tr., The Essential Rumi (San Fransico: Harper Collins, 1995)

---

~my darling Hafiz~

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even Bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from you companions’ beautiful laughter.
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of you Beloved

And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
The may buy you a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours bring freedom
And love.
Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing,
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom.

O keep squeezing drops of Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!