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​Following the Brush: A Wabi-Sabi Meditation

4/28/2019

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a Zuihitsu by Marilyn Ashbaugh 
Note on genre: zuihitsu is a form of prose-poetry that emerged during Japan’s 11th century (Saito). Translated as “following the brush,” zuihitsu collects observations, notes, personal feelings, and quotes in a seemingly random and associative manner, ‘not too close, not too far”, leading to surprising poetic expressions and insights. Or not. When cultures collide there can be collusion. 
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Atlantic Coast, Florida
 
Life can only be understood backwards.  – Soren Kierkegaard
 
If you want to know the future, heat up the past.  - Chinese saying
 
 
Nothing Special* 
My father never spoke of it directly.  When I was a young girl, he told me to never confuse a priest with God.  And never let a priest tell me I was special, for that would be a lie.  Never be alone with a priest and never enter the rectory, ever, for that would be a sin.  I was more afraid of my father than I was of any priest, so I followed what my father told me.  

So when the new young priest with the big smile enters Sister Margaret’s eighth grade class to ask who would like to “babysit” the rectory phone, no one questions why the priest couldn’t answer the phone himself.  All my classmates raise their hands. Everyone likes the handsome young priest with the big smile.  

a flycatcher

dives for the butterfly

morning mass
​
*Published in Presence, issue 62.  Voted best in issue.
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Mountain Empire, Arizona

Pink Satin*

I open the door to an apparition.  Seated in the small space is a ballerina.  Her hair forms a perfect bun atop her head.  She too wears a pink leotard with pink tights, the ones that fold open at the feet.  Her one foot is completely wrapped in tape.  Her hands lightly fold around her exposed foot as if she is caressing an injured bird.  Her foot is raw and bruised and her toes are so misshapen as to appear broken.  She briefly meets my eye with a look of determined composure, and then proceeds to wrap her foot.  

My cheeks flush.  I look away as I gather my pointe shoes and gently close the door.

on pointe

we tie pink satin ribbons

around each ankle
 
*Published in Presence, issue 63
________________________________________________________________

Maurer School of Law, Indiana

behind the black robe

a white robe. . .

a butterfly wanders through
 

looking on paper

for jurisprudence

cut to the bone
 
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Good poetry makes the universe share a secret.  –Hafiz
_________________________________________________________________
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident -Arthur Schopenhauer

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my soul has its own pace

4/19/2019

2 Comments

 
Response from Apple Farm writer Marla Sarle who lives half the year in Michigan and the other half in Arizona.

Until I retired I rarely got enough sleep. My second grade teacher let me stay in and take naps during recess. The noise of a college dorm kept me awake with anxiety: Music theory class at 8:00 in the morning required rest. I occasionally cried myself to sleep. The exhaustion and anxiety of working years sometimes called for a little pill in the middle of the week so that I would have at least one good night’s sleep during the week.

Now retired, I live in Arizona for five months of the year. I go to bed late. 12:00? 1:00? I am a night owl. After so many years of being tired, I recognize that the world does not operate on my circadian rhythm.

I naturally wake up between 7:30 and 9:00. My husband puts coffee on my bedside table at 8:30. Sometimes it is cold before I realize it is there. An hour of thinking about and writing dreams, checking email, reading the news…I am ready to leave my warm cozy. I might put in a load of laundry, clean the bathroom, run Roomba in the bedroom--he vacuums under the bed!

Maybe by eleven I am ready to eat something. Is it breakfast or lunch? I do my daily 7 Little Words and the Washington Post Crossword Puzzle.

By now I am ready for the shower. The text comes: Am I ready to play cards down by the pool? I have to dry my hair and get dressed; I need fifteen minutes. My card playing friends have been on the go for hours. Their houses are clean; their laundry is finished (my laundry still needs to go in the dryer); their dinners are in the crockpots…

We play cards until happy hour or dinner time. We have fun and laugh a lot. But, I have had no reading time and have done no writing. I don’t function on their schedules.

I realize something else: I am a be-er. Many of my friends are do-ers. Their energy levels put mine to shame. 
They love to go and do. I want to stay and be still.

And I also recognize: Two of my favorite people are ENFP’s on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I am an INFP. I envy my extroverted friends’ energy, their eagerness, their accomplishments. I love conversations of depth with them, but I cannot keep up with their activity levels. They seem to have it all and do to all—and to have it all together.

​Sometimes guilt slaps me up side of the head. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I live like others?  Why can’t I do what others do? 
Why can’t I be on the go like others? Why can’t I accomplish like others accomplish? 
But then I read, “What does it mean to live at the speed of your own soul?        
(Parker Palmer and Carrie Newcomer)

The world may expect me to live at its speed, but I realize that my soul has its own pace. 
I work at understanding what that means for me and honoring the regulating voice within.
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Being Faithful

4/10/2019

1 Comment

 
Response from Apple Farm writer Jane Smith-Eivemark who lives in Hamilton, Ontario

Be faithful to soul. You may not know where you're going but that isn't the point.  The real point is to open up to what is being asked of you.  To be faithful as you are asked to move with a soulful perspective - one that is larger than one could imagine.  One that makes sense in its own way.  

Wolfgang Giegerich writes in many ways about the soul having its own logic.  

We move toward something or someone thinking that he/she/it is this/that/or the other only to find out that we need to leave that vision behind through a negation of what we see and open to what really is. It isn't, though, that our journeys are insubstantial or not worthwhile if what we think "is" and it "is not". We learn, rather by this journey to this/that/other and the act of negation to know more of what really "is."  We cannot learn otherwise.

Being faithful to always knowing that we reside in soul, in this sense, as distinct from soul residing in us offers a very different perspective in life.  The soul is always thinking in its own way - not with rational logic, but with soulful logic, with a logic that invites us to a fuller expression of life.  ​
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Let It Go

4/5/2019

1 Comment

 
Response from Apple Farm Writer Barbra Goering who lives in Chicago, IL.

This winter the voice I hear is one that has spoken on a guided yoga meditation recording for many years:
If there is frustration, let it go. If there is anger against people, let it go. If there is criticism for yourself, let it go. Life has so many frustrations, small and large, and so many frightening problems and crises. If I use this mantra, it becomes the starting point for action. The “let it go” is not passive or even, necessarily, pacific.  It clears the way of the emotions of desire for revenge or hatred of oneself, emotions that can block my ability to deal effectively with a problem or person.  I have listened to this voice when suiting up to face small or large challenges, whether they are personal, national, or worldwide.  

When I let go of the feeling of frustration, a new feeling comes in:  a peace that can allow contemplation of the source of the blockage.  When I let go of my fury against another, I can step back, assess the other and what the other presents to me.  When I let go of the criticism of myself—for feeling the frustration, for feeling the urge to exact revenge for a wrong, for my inadequate response to evil—then I can feel an opening for a new way of thinking and feeling to begin. I may be able to see the quarter-turn that Helen Luke writes about—the shift that opens the way to revelation. 

The problems of this world, inner and outer, may remain knotty and difficult of resolution.  But the way can be cleared to face them, to strategize, to feel my true response deeply.  Then the hard work can begin. 

Barbra Goering February 2019 
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    ...it is in part by our response to the great stories of the world  that we too can begin to find, each of us this individual story expressing the symbolic meaning behind the facts of our fate and behind the motives that determine the day-to-day choices of our lives.  -Helen Luke, The Inner Story

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