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Host, Virtual Tea House
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One of my teachers, Jonathan, says: There are three things that we need to know, deeper than our own breath: 1. We are Love: nothing more, nothing less. Calcified, reified, rarified, embodied love. 2. There is enough of everything in the universe. No need to snatch, grab, greed, lust, crave, despair about anything, especially love. 3. And finally: laughter opens the heart. Crackled, as with specialty paint. A broken heart is an open heart. Being single is like most things: both sides of the coin are graced. What I remember from those days of pride nights of rumbling and range-fed angst was suspecting in my heart of hearts that the three pillars noted above Were all I needed. The distinction is Now I know. 
Daydreamers by Oleg Zhivetin
Thanks to the Amateur Poet of Figments of Imagination for this week's One Single Impression prompt: single. Visit OSI for more than a single perspective on this prompt! I will be out of the country for the next week, and will visit my OSI friends’ posts as soon as possible when I return!
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A couple of Sundays ago I spent a few hours in the kitchen/dining room of the local Bend's Community Center (BCC), where every Sunday, 52 weeks a year, full nutritious meals, along with sack lunches to go, are served for those who are homeless or underemployed. The amount of people coming through range from 200-300 per Sunday. Many of these folks are part of family units.
This meal is one of several programs provided by BCC for this group of people in Central Oregon. In addition, the BCC is only one of several services that provide meals and food to the disadvantaged in our area; in total it is a program called Feed the Hungry.
Because of their newly remodeled industrial kitchen, BCC now provides cooked meals for other shelters and meal kitchens (who do not have industrial kitchens) across Central Oregon. These other agencies bring raw food materials to the BCC, BCC volunteers prepare it and send the food back ready for distribution. The BCC kitchen is busy every day.
As part of my Rotary Club of Bend responsibilities, I was moving through my duties at BCC, which included washing pots, pans, serving dishes, putting things away, stocking the tables, and other duties as noticed or request. While I was performing these duties, my thoughts wandered here:
This is hard physical work! How does Taffy (the Executive Director) do this every day, every week, all year long?
The regular volunteers, several of whom come every week, without fail, are nothing short of angels. NOTE: In talking with them, they are all humble, quiet people who just are doing their parts towards a larger community goal of taking care of those who are at this time less fortunate.
There’s some tough love here. Taffy had to get tough with some of the regular guests—who were attempting to take home more than their share of leftovers, or other commodities provided by BCC.
Why don’t I come more often than on my Rotary rotations? Every time I come I’m so humbled and inspired…why don’t I just get on with it and come more often? (So far no answer to that question…)
I had told Taffy that I was going to post to the Virtual Tea House about what’s going on over at the BCC regarding these meals. So when I got home I sent her an email with some questions. Here are her answers.
1. How long has BCC been serving these meals?
Since 2004
NOTE: That’s 312 Sunday meals for 200+ people…
2. What would it cost to do a single meal (if you had to buy all the food)?
About $1150
NOTE: On the Sunday I was there, they were serving wild salmon, ‘recovered’ from poachers, along with delicious hollandaise sauce donated Deschutes Brewery, along with great salads, sides, mounds of buttery mashed potatoes, pies and loads and loads of artisan breads for the guests to take home. This was all donated by the community at large.
3. How many volunteers do you have?
We have hundreds throughout the year. On an average about 40 per week.
NOTE: About 15 volunteers are there every week. Every single week. These volunteers were very glad that our Rotary club members there to provide some assistance, especially with clean up which sometimes takes the regular volunteers and Taffy until 7pm on a given Sunday, if there’s not enough help. We were done by 5:30pm.
4. What are some of the projects that need doing?
We have painting projects, putting shelves together at our warehouse for donations, sorting donations, ripping up old carpet and putting down peel and press carpet at the thriftstore. We also do eBay sales and could sue a regular crew to help with that. We need to take digital photos of our eBay items , load them onto the eBay site with a description of the item. We need someone to snowplow our parking lot in the winter, landscaping in the spring and summer. This summer we want to remodel Becca’s Closet to make it more efficient and more attractive. It’s pretty ugly right now.
NOTE: Taffy said she could use 20 volunteers a day to do a few hours of work. The needs are never ending.
5. Do you have a short story about someone’s life being changed or something like that you’d like to share?
We have helped several homeless women and their kids to get into a house, into our job training program and turn their lives around. We’ve donated 5 cars to families without cars. We've gotten 7 job trainees cars fixed up so they were safe to drive (new tires, brake jobs, and other basic necessities).
6. Any stories about the volunteers, or donations by the community that you’d like to share?
We’ve had 4-Hr’s donate their pigs and lambs to our FTH program. We've had little kids do penny drives in their neighborhoods and brought in $14 worth of pennies. Girl scouts have made candles for the homeless and done warm clothing drives. One man went out and bought over $1,000 worth of tents, tarps and winter boots for the homeless. Another man wet to Cash N Carry and bought a week’s worth of food for us. We have several retired ladies on fixed incomes who go shopping for us every month to find our basic necessities on sale and donate $20 - $25 worth of food and cleaning supplies and toilet paper every month. One neighborhood and a huge multifamily garage sale and donated the proceeds to FTH (Feed the Hungry).
Ron B. is one of our long-time volunteers. He is 70, legally blind, but he comes in almost every Friday and Saturday from 9am – 2pm to cook for the homeless. We have about 15 volunteers who have been coming in almost every week for 2-3 years, including high school kids.
You can see why my heart was opened, yet again, by the mission of BCC. Taffy herself is an inspiration: committed, tough, resourceful, a great manager of people and resources. She has her volunteers’ respect and admiration.
If any of this has touched your heart, go on over to the website and check the BCC out. It’s for real. And it is only through the generosity of the community that the mission of BCC can survive and thrive. BCC needs your heart and your hands! And maybe, if I get off my duff, or give up a hike on a Sunday, you’ll see me there…
Call Bend's Community Center at 541.312.2069 to find out how you can be of service.
Website: Bend Community Center
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Left. Right.
It doesn’t really matter.
It doesn’t even matter if you turn.
But if you’re going to take the curve on two wheels
you better be ready.
Consequences abound.
Kansas State Parks-Wilson Lake (Hell Creek Area)
Submission for the One Single Impression prompt: blowing the curve. Mojo of "Why, What Have You Heard?" brings us this prompt. Check out the variety of ways this prompt is interpreted by a bunch of blown-curve poets.
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At age three and a half to four and a half
Regardless of what the weather appears like to me
Everyday he wakes up
Patters into my room if he’s not already sleeping with me and says,
‘Grandma Beth! Grandma Beth! It’s a sunny day outside! Let’s go play!’
Edan waking up next to me, with the ubiquitous Iron Man on his pillow, April 2009. Edan is almost 4 here.
I wonder when I see him again in May as he turns five
Will each day still be a full scale potentiality, an unwritten slate
or will it already be boringly marked and limited with the usual
clouds, rain, snow, sleet?
Edan, October 2009, almost four and a half Don’t mess with this kid!
This poem is a submission for the One Single Impression prompt: sunny days. Thanks to Jeeves of Silence is Poetic for the prompt. Head over to the OSI link to sashay through some sunny days.
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Trust Women
Blog for Choice Day 2010. I’m a day late (January 22nd is THE day…) but I wanted to join my voice to this important dialogue, birthed by the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. 
I started my career in Planned Parenthood in the early 1980’s, after a horrendous abortion experience from which I almost died. It was a legal procedure, but mishandled. And because I was young and didn’t want anyone to know I was in trouble, I waited far too long to seek additional medical help. I was lucky. I survived. And then spent a few years as a program manager for a developing Planned Parenthood in my area—paying my dues, so to speak. In those years, counseling and working with hundreds of young women, educating and advocating, I learned the lessons I was teaching: using my voice and speaking my truth ever more clearly is not just a right but a responsibility. And I also learned that my truth is not to be confused with THE truth: I don’t think any of us can know what that is, and if we did, it would probably be an unspeakable one.
There are many truths in the dialogue around the rights of women to bear or not bear a pregnancy to fruition. I've thought long and hard about all of them that have come to me through the years. But I sifted down--after all that research, all that experience with myself and others--to: if we have the choice to decide, we will decide well. And 'well' for one is not 'well' for another. If we don't have a viable choice, most of us will take what's available to us, but not live into our capacity because of the limited choices available. And that goes for men, women and children alike.
Trusting women to make good choices about their bodies, what they're capable of doing (raising/not raising children) and how they choose to live out their lives is a bedrock of women finding their strength, finding their voice, and ultimately giving birth to children who they desperately love and nurture.
From my particular perspective, the Blog for Choice Day theme of Trust Women has the following wisdom embedded within it.
Trusting Women
Someone wise once said that until women get their sea-legs
so to speak
They look at other women as either
competition or irrelevant.
On the other side of that moment when we realize that those two categories are a little bit limiting
Comes the dawn.
Are there whiny 20 year old women who have no heart? Yes.
Are there confused and struggling, highly competitive 30 year old women who have no heart? Yes.
Are there bitchy, still wanting to be 20, 40 year old women who have no heart? Yes.
Are there 50 year old women who don’t get that it’s not about how you look, and that still have their need to keep their pride intact no matter what? Yes.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my life cycle, so I can’t speak to any other decades.
But I can say that those women who stay stuck and don’t move with life’s flow are fewer and fewer, from my view.
What my heart’s-eye sees more of now:
20 year olds with great vibrancy and sexual potency, using their creativity to change the world.
30 year olds who are learning early on that they are not the center of the universe and at the same time are using their undaunted sustainability of energy to bear children, write books, live their lives in amazingly open-hearted ways.
40 year olds who are precociously doing the work of their 50’s, early…learning to let go of roles, expectations and constraints, and live more freely, fluidly and in tune with their bodies.
50 year olds who have lost the need to belong to tribes that no longer support their burgeoning wisdom and truth-seeking. These women are modern forest-dwellers, out to find the meaning of their lives, by whatever means necessary.
These are the same women as the first subset, only with their eyes open and their hearts aflame.
Can we trust these women?
With our lives.
I write this with huge respect for all the women upon whose shoulders I stand, including the strong and long-lived women of my family, but also Margaret Sanger and her ilk. These women have taught me that keeping my mouth closed is a sure way to explode.
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I’ve learned that karma comes around more quickly the more open I am to learning life lessons. I’ve learned that sleeping outside around my firepit can push my reset button from just about any disturbance in my peace of mind. I’m learning that working away at a craft like watercolor teaches me things that no book ever could. Like what, you might add? Like, water takes the path of least resistance and seeks its own level (like most humans). Like, allowing water to do what it will will provide far more interest than harnessing it (like evolving humans). I’ve learned that those friends that call you out of the blue from 3, 000 miles away just because they’re thinking about you, even though they haven’t seen you in years—those friendships are few and far between. I’ve learned that beating on drums with friends can recalibrate my heart’s rhythm. Really. I’ve learned that sleeping dogs sometimes need to be woken up to go on long hikes so they will sleep when you do. 
That’s about it. It’s a short list, but it’s been a busy and difficult couple of weeks round these parts. What have you learned lately?
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Like molecules in a heating beaker
Like stars moving centripetally
A glimpse of the patterns of their journeys
Might chink into the solidified fluid mystery of our own.
Nothing is random
Only poorly comprehended.
Reflection at the Japanese Gardens, Portland, Oregon, June 2009. Taken with my T-Mobile cell phone!
Thanks to intense but usually elegant The Dark Lord, who brings us the prompt chaos for this week. Stumble your way over to One Single Impression for some great interpretations on the prompt.
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This past week, many of us have had sleepless nights over the horrors in Haiti. This poem by Gary Snyder has arisen in my mind as I've considered personal and communal responses. For the past 15 years, I have lived my life to the rhythm of this poem; do my spiritual tune-ups to the calibration of it.
For those who are familiar with Buddhism, I sit in a middle place between Theravadan and Mahayanan perspective on what a bodhisattva is. What my experience has taught me is that being one bound for enlightenment means that it is our choices in each moment that bring us closer to the point where we are in the world, but not of it. From that place, we are then here not because we are afraid to leave or for any reason other than we choose to be here so that we may relieve some small suffering. We all go home together. That’s the deal.
“May I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.”
We are all baby bodhisattvas.
Kuan Yin
by Gary Snyder
Dharma Bum
Of the many buddhas I love best the girl
who will not leave the cycles of pain before anyone else.
She is not the captain declining to be saved on the sinking ship
who may just want to ride her shame
out of sight.
She is at the brink of never being hurt again
but she pauses to say, ‘All of us. Every blade of grass.’
She chooses to live in the tumble of souls through time.
Perhaps she sees spring in every country,
talks quietly with farm women while helping lay seed.
Our hearts are a storm she trembles at.
I picture her leaning on a tree or humming or joining
a volleyball game on Santa Monica beach. Her skin shines with sweat.
The other may not (yet) know how to notice what she does to them.
She is not a fish or a bee; it not pity or thirst; she could go,
but here she is.
Italics mine.
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I’m two weeks out from writing my list. Oh man, I need some self-compassion for my lack of consistency. This mid-week list --we’ll just say it’s for the last two. Anyone for an absolution? Do I hear an amen?
1. I almost forgot to make my list of things I’m learning, wanting to learn, wish I could learn, if only I’d learn.
2. I almost forgot that it’s my new friend Jena’s birthday today and my medium-old friend Rita’s birthday on Friday. Thank all the tea in China for Facebook applications that remind us of such important things.
3. I almost forgot how fun it is to walk Geronimo in the morning when I’m in joy. Not in duty. Not even in service. Joy. And it cometh in the morning.
4. I almost forgot that
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. --from Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’
5. I almost forgot to book a trip to Mexico with friends for February. But then I remembered. Zihuatenejo, I’m coming, honey. Save some soul food, soul-warming sand and water, soul enlivening color and texture, soulful laughter of lovely folk for me.
6. I almost forgot that fasting from the everyday food (rich in carbs) can make me feel deeper movement in my life, like there’s a dance beat that’s been going on, and I’ve been drowning it out with ice cream. Silly me.
7. I almost forgot what it’s like to feel balanced, right on the fulcrum, between the need for security and the need for freedom. But this week, I remembered.
8. I almost forgot what it’s like to be a university student, struggling to find my path, weary already from the battle. But my good young friends helped me remember. Blessings on their sweet heads.
9. I almost forgot that telling some truths is akin to breaking taboos.
10. I almost forgot to laugh at the absurdity of my forgetting any of these things. But then I remembered.
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untitled poem by Eunice Tietjens
The stone grows old.
Eternity is not for stones.
But
I shall go down from
This airy space, this swift
white peace, this stinging exultation
And time will close about
Me, and my soul stir to the
Rhythm of the daily round.
Yet
Having known, life
will not press so close
And always I shall feel time
Ravel thin about me.
For
once I stood
in the white windy
presence of eternity.
‘eternity is not for stones’
tinnitus in my soul’s ears
all is impermanent
might as well dance
by Magritte
One Single Impression. Thanks to Kuyerjudd of My Heart up Close for this week's prompt, indurated. Roll over there like a stone, if you dare.
I know I say this every week, but there really is some amazing poetry over at this site, and for some reason, this prompt really touched a spark, at least in my soul. Thank you, all my friends at OSI.
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From a new great blogger I just ‘met’, Hannah Miet. Her site is called ‘My Soul is a Butterfly’. She’s one of a growing cadre of young 20 something writers who mix soulfulness, erotica, rage and beauty all together in a delectable soup. Check out her blog if you dare!
Here are Hannah’s Non-Resolutions of 2010:
I am messy.
I am curvy.
I drink wine in bed.
I inexplicably laugh when saying "goodbye" on the phone.
I am full speed ahead.
I seduce with the force of a Roman army marching to the beat of a Fiona Apple symphony.
I won't and don't exercise, unless speedwalking through life counts.
Unless picking myself off the ground counts.
I don't resolve to stop eating cookies or to fold my laundry the second it comes out of the dryer.
I don't resolve to hide my neurotic quirks.
I only resolve to try, until I can't.
Me too, or at least wannabe…but I don’t laugh when saying ‘goodbye’, although there is some existential humor in saying those words. How the heck do we ever say goodbye when, if we’ve really said hello, that thing, person, conundrum is now us? Enough, I say, enough.
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“In a boat down a fast-running creek, it feels like trees on the bank are rushing by. What seems to be changing around us is rather the speed of our craft leaving this world.” --Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
Photo taken at springs flowing directly out of a mountainside into the lovely Metolius River in Central Oregon.
One night
I dreamed I was in an underground river
flowing through the religions of the world
watching them develop and unfold.
First was the garden of the world.
I floated/swam through the most gracious of waters
warm and sultry—bringing life to everything the river touched.
Then came structures for religious thought.
I saw Abraham and Sarah, in a tent in the desert. Arguing and making rough love.
I saw Jacob dreaming his dream of angels and a spiral staircase to heaven.
Frescos of scenes I’d never read about and couldn’t recall when I awoke, slid by.
I saw the Buddha teaching, laughing with disciples.
I experienced Krishna dancing, great dances to At-Man.
I saw Jesus in a crowd, talking calmly and with great passion.
Muhammed was busy teaching that Allah is One.
He was already misunderstood as the words were spoken.
And then there were Sufis dancing passionate DNA spirals, love poems to the One.
I traveled through wars about who rightfully owned the river.
It just kept flowing.
Sometimes it was cold and dark.
Other times golden and warm.
There were aqueducts, underground bridges, arches of ancient stone.
When it was my time to get out
The river deposited me gently on a sunny, sandy beach.
I breathed and laid still and watched the gulls swooping and talking trash.
From this dream, my wings of understanding have grown stronger.
Eagle, released after its healing, Hotchkiss, Colorado
Thanks to Sherri of Sweetest in the Gale for this week's prompt, wings. Soar over to One Single Impression for a bird’s eye view of the other offerings for this prompt.
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This is in the continuing vein of trying to crystallize, maybe for future writing, maybe just to say the words, a few things each week that are in the flow around and through me. If you want to see the other weekly posts, put ‘ten things’ in the search box at the top of the page and it will list them all.
Want to know more about the ‘thin places’ of this time of year. Really dive in. Or through.
Want to know more about my dream states during this and other ‘thin places’. The amount and content of my dreams is amazing.
Love hoar frost! Christmas Day and for two days after that were those kinds of magical days. I feel like I'm in Narnia with that type of frost. But NOT the part of it ‘always being winter but never Christmas’!
Went off my ‘you can’t buy any more books until you read the ones you have’ ban this week, without a hitch of guilt. Just like that I’m back in the addiction of the smell, feel and fatal attraction. Oh oh.
It may be an illusion. Probably is. But I feel more secure walking on the icy streets in the pre-dawn with my YakTracks on.
Sabbath happens, bidden or unbidden. It’s like we’re programmed to occasionally just stop, for pete’s sake. I want to make this more of a ‘bidden’ piece of my life.
Having a friend stay in my home during the holidays is one of the best parts.
Being a blonde (again) is fun—I like the sunny-ness of my countenance. I don’t know if I AM more fun, though. I need to work on that.
Preparing for a major dietary change is both invigorating and frightening. (I start on Medifast on January 2.)
Starting new holiday rituals is easier than we might think. For the second year in a row I’ve given gift cards for Barnes and Noble (all right, it should be a local bookseller—next year!) to all the family, and we go together to pick out books/games. It’s fun watching us all, even the 6 year old, wander and ponder. Then we come home for a delectable meal—last night it was pasta and home made marinara, and movies. Two years makes a straight line…it’s now a holiday ritual!
Happy new year!
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It might be true
that all things come to those who wait.
that all sights are visible in one’s heart.
that any experience is everyone’s experience.
That being said…
I still want to slide into deeper waters, the secret aqueducts, the chambers of the heart of the universe.
to surface from the underground in sunny meadows that smell of slightly drying mid-August wildflowers.
to eat seven different varieties of mole and be able to tell the difference.
to roll in the mole and then the wildflowers and then have some half-crazed artist paint a picture of me or on me. And me on them, after I roll them in honey and then tiny beads made in tiny villages in Mozambique.
Sigh.
Such pathetic peripatetic contradictions.
Tom writes about this photo: My room on Tobacco Caye. Sleep walking was a wet dream experience.
My dear friend Tom Leach is on a pilgrimage through Mezo-America. Click here to read his well-written travelogue on FaceBook and view his photo journal.
If you can’t access the travelogue or photo album because of you’re not on FaceBook, you can join up, ask to friend me and I’ll maybe do just that. The venue of exchange: send me a new mole recipe, a soap made with wildflowers, a half-crazed artist or some combination of the above.
Offering for this week’s One Single Impression prompt. Thanks to my friend, and everyone else’s as well, Tammie Lee of Spirit Helpers for this week's lovely prompt, wanderlust.
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I’ve been asked to post the powerpoint slides from a talk I gave at the Spiritual Awareness Center here in Bend a few weeks ago early in the Advent cycle, December 6th.
These are my talking points, so the info may not flow as well as an essay-type post. The prayer/poem was experiential and seemed to be very helpful. Let me know if you need clarification. Feel free to use any parts of it, with or without assignation. The idea for the talk came from the quotes located on the first page, seen on the wonderful website, 'Abbey of the Arts'.
Blessings during this ‘thin place’ in the year—take note of who you meet on the streets of your town or your heart; ‘who’ you are giving birth to…and let’s make it a habit.
(Talked here of Christology and where I sit on that scale: low Christology!)
(see below for larger type: Sweet Darkness)
(see below for larger print: Anthem)
(see below for larger type: Motionless in Moonlight)
Sweet Darkness by David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
Anthem by Leonard Cohen
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
Motionless in Moonlight by Stephen Harrod Buhner
There is no place you are not seen.
It is no secondhand God
But the stones under your feet.
The tree leaning casual in shadows,
The wolf motionless
In moonlight,
Your own soul
Standing silent in darkness
Next to your unconscious self
That see you.
All of you.
In spite of your thinking yourself safely invisible,
these beings,
their lives,
pull,
tug,
at your tethers,
and call you back
to suckle
in leaf-dappled shadow,
at the ancient breast
that suckled humans
long before Jesus saw light of day,
or Buddha sat,
or ate mushrooms,
or man walked on the moon.
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