The Hungry Heart’s Game Changer

The prodigal pilgrim sailor packs away the scrolled maps he bought long ago that promised a course to a supposed hidden treasure somewhere on some uncharted island .He blows the dust from his passage trusted weathered weary compass securing her in a box for storage wondering if the stars lied. Forty-eight months have passed at sea since his vessel about to be lost unrecorded wreckage was graced with another chance by great-unseen hand.

What seems to be an obscure lost dream in the blink of an eye the cracking open of his chest as if he were some about to be consumed lobster was what a member of the band would label a “game changer.”  The light at the end of the tunnel continues to slowly increase in size as his vessel proceeds in becalmed and stormy seas alike. The passage continues as he grows in acceptance of the impermanence.

The priests say it is their prayers and his attempt at faith that healed and saved him. The sisters of the Holy Trinity believe it was their love that kept him on course. The member of the band protests the proposition of any role in feeding the pilgrim’s fire.

The pilgrim sailor’s journal scribblings attempt to articulate the confusion of new labyrinth meanderings and concern about the possible lack of progress. Recent readings provide some elucidation while meditating at dawn the comings and goings and songs of the birds of the first light and how the great mother sun gradually illuminates everything without judgment. He does not command - his heart to beat, his blood to flow, and his lungs to breathe. Somehow they know their purpose. 

“Something bigger than everything is at work here.”

It is the wonder-filling peace and mustard seed rooted gratitude that begin to flourish around, within and through him as he tries just to be. The fog that encompassed the affirmation that he was not here for himself was burning away.

[On July 31, 2008 the family enjoyed an evening of celebration of hope in the “land of giants” by the Boss. The program’s tee shirt with the three swords and a heart was an appropriate garb, as the father would have a CABG (coronary artery bypass surgery) at dawn on August 4, 2008. That celebration was part of what promoters called “Magic Tour”…. and he believed.]

         








                        Epitaph on the gravestone of St. Ignatius of Loyola


     “Non coerceri a maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est.”

(Loose translation…. Not to be daunted or held back by the greatest challenge and yet to      be concerned with the nitty-gritty, that is the path to holiness.)

********************************* 

Autumn Poem

In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn
the mockingbird
in his monk-gray coat
and his arrowy wings

flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —

it's more like whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges.
All birds are birds of heaven
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the
evening,

its ticks and wheezings,
and so I have to wait a long time
for the soft, true voice
of his own glossy life

to come through,
and of course I do.
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look
inward

to the sweet spring of himself, that mirror of heaven,
but when it happens —
when he lifts his head
and the feathers of his throat tremble,

and he begins, like Saint Francis,
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock,
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches,
I am recalled,

from so many wrong paths I can't count them,
simply to stand, and listen.
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.

Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world.
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is
trying

to type it down, in lumped-up language,
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.

                  -  Mary Oliver

*******************************************

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

  - Shakespeare in Love

                                           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCVJny3Va4I

                                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W7_XgXfH38

amdg

Lost and Found: The Journey to the Authentic

“A tree gives Glory to God by being a tree. For being what God means it to be it is obeying Him .It consents, so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea, which is in God and is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.

The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him. If it tried to be something else which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God and therefore would give him less glory.”

-       Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. “

-       Isaiah 55: 10-11

 

So there they were, the three almost wise men, gathered for their ritual communion.

“Peace be with you.”

“Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen.”

The requisite reports on the status of offspring and the supersonic unbridled passage of the collective and idiosyncratic existences are swiftly shifted. Transitions and potential transformations, discerning the Odyssean passages of the pilgrimages of self identity and work evolved as the unspoken focal points for the theme of this concelebration.

What was that road not taken? Was it fear? 

“What would you be doing if you had the choice?

The new Irish writer of the purple sage questioned.

Passion, talent, and  desire are surfaced as overriding factors. Filling up the siloes meant nothing as the trio understood that gifts were given to be nurtured and used…life would take care of itself. It was an easy conclusion since a semblance of faith fueled their fire.

The survey said

-       Two for music

-       Two for writing, (the senior one stuck to his split decision and would acquiesce to the flip of a coin if necessary. However, if time permitted sailing and baseball would have made what his father called the proverbial  “jack of all trades” list. )

Regret  was not a condition explored. Their journeys, a series of accidental vocational circumstances, had brought them together on the way to their Emmaus. Each as a Sherpa, mentor and wizard –in-training behind the curtain, they had encouraged other pilgrims to discover the universe within and without. Yet, their own sanctified gifts that had been dormant in the recesses of their souls were insistent on making way to the surface and great light. Bliss does not sleep.

The older one shared

“The encouragement by a member of the band helped me become a channel for words from some unknown spiritual spring and placing them in some type of pre-ordained construct. This same companion immersed me in re-baptismal font of  the ineffable sacred joy of filling the silence by creating music. “

He continued with a secret smile

“ These transformational resuscitated creative experiences are blessings and when I am channeling them as all sense of time is lost. However, in this losing I have found my self again. “

He didn’t say, “ ’ where your heart is there is you treasure.’  That is the heart of the matter, isn’t it?” They all knew the truth.

As they all readied themselves to depart their temporary safe harbor to resume their own passages the wind whispered dialog of a pair of real wizard voices in the wilderness

BILL MOYERS:” Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands? “

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: “All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. “

It begins to rain again and the three hug….

“Peace be with you”

“Until next time”

“I pray there will be a next time”

and somehow they know whatever path they chose it will be the right road .Nothing had changed.

                                                                          When I write my book

                                                      EVERYDAY I WRITE THE BOOK

                                                                     Paperback writer

---------------------------

By learning you will teach;
by teaching you will understand.
 - Latin Proverb

“I write to discover what I know.”
- Flannery O’Connor

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
- Lao Tsu

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
- Aldous Huxley

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 – (Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson)           

"If you write for God, you will reach many men and bring them joy.

If you write for men, you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make noise in the world, for a little while.

If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted, you will wish that you were dead."

   - Thomas Merton

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

    - Robert Frost












amdg

40th Anniversary Waltz

                                                June 16 , 1972

^“ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.”

                                             1 Corinthians 13:4-8

“There's nothing you can know that isn't known. 

Nothing you can see that isn't shown.

Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.

It's easy. 

All you need is love, all you need is love…”

                                          -  Lennon and McCartney

He had a smoke and fell into a dream and recalled the day she packed her bags for leaving home. It was forty plus years ago and they have been going in and out of style ever since. Trying not to sing out of key the duet still gets by with a little help from their friends.  Now they hope for Valentines, birthday greetings and bottles of wine and being needed and fed.  It was getting better every day. On their boat on the river everyone seemed to smile.

He read the news that day after the fates had finished the first phase of a series of events that would change everything .His intuition said something greater than them both was going on within and without as the two had relaxed in their room the night before at the Howard Johnsons across from the Watergate Plaza.

“5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here”

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2002/05/31/AR2005111001227.html

   

                                        

She said

“ Good morning. We’ll have many more important memories to make and collect ”

and she discarded the newspaper while the taxi waited on the shore.

He pondered this article and the date and wondered about what he had read somewhere in another life

“… the power of love will always raise up all that is good and neutralize any evil in the universe.”

Now their memories stretch out longer than the winding road ahead. Life happened as they busied themselves making other plans. They are on their way back home. Grateful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14nD-QMjFvI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5aD6m7ub0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4p8qxGbpOk

amdg

A May Day Meditation: Any Road

2094 hours or 174,240 minutes are completed as the first minute of the first hour of the fifth month of the Julian calendar’s Leap year of 2012 Anno Domani. It is rumored that somewhere hidden in the smallest corner of a nanometer in the smallest microchip in a dark corner of Institute for Advanced Study or some such scientific laboratory this event is noted and filed. Meanwhile a few rogue scientists report how the universe is expanding every mega second and is in a constant state of change. The Dalai Lama whispers "If you asked I would have told this" while the scholarly philosopher wonders , “So does the universe ‘leap’ in ‘Leap years?’ ”

“May Day! May Day!” chants ring out amidst melancholic songs of hope.

Dancers spin round the multi-ribboned pole while the 99% occupy the streets.

“Is any progress being made?” the lone observer asks.

One responds,“ Well this one wants to cross the finish line on Sunday and the other one is anxiously looking forward to start a new joint venture come this fall.”

A second says, “ I think the light at the end of this tunnel is getting bigger each day.”

A third voice, one echoing in the wilderness, can be faintly heard amidst the noise of a crowded earth….

….“It only matters who you touch and how …and of course who touches you and why.”

“So the answer is ‘yes’, right?”

"At the Day of Judgment we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done." ( Thomas A’ Kempis , The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 3.)

amdg

Songs of Sixty-Four

                                                                       When I'm 64

Images of valentines , birthday greetings and bottles of wine

swirled inside and out and all over again. Wondering if the door was locked, as the clock hadn’t struck a quarter to ten P.M.  That post card with a well crafted stated point of view was hidden away so well that it might never be found. Worried that there is nothing really handy, not even doing gardens or pulling weeds to prove one’s worthiness. No Vera, Chuck or Dave to reinvigorate affections. The question of being needed or fed was completed in the form that was filled out a lifetime ago.  Is the answer ‘yes’ a true or false memory?

Uninspired, dried up and panicked Ernest only got to 62. One blast and it was over. Dad’s heart was shattered days before retirement eligibility but at least his spirit lives on.  Each day this vessel makes it beyond those buoy markers becomes another victory. A few friends are like leaves from Neil’s maple…. some falling finished, some weak would be blown this way and that some still are brighter and greener than ever. 

                                                         One of These Days - Neil Young
                                                      (Song appropriate - video inspirational)

Meanwhile an original member of the band, finally flying up and out of his cocoon, casually intentionally inspires nurturing the return of what might be considered modest dormant gifts. Dreams of a house much like the one of an older ageless Daryl slowly mitigate the anxiety about the light at the tunnel’s end getting larger. A new wrecking ball has made room for awareness that one can believe in a promised land on this side of Highway 9 and live the dream now, or at least a form of it.

“The cool kids become cool adults, ” the headlines read, as the distant cousin, a Jersey shore troubadour, revealed the map home thundering down the road of a land of hope and dreams through a city of ruins. (A celebration - a rock and roll revival sing-a-long.) Those once in charge considered playing music a frivolous childish exercise. Contemporary music has come with a warning label since it’s conception as the best example of irresponsible immaturity. 

                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31tgD-JVpIc&feature=related

                                                         

“No one over thirty years old who is in their right mind would be serious about popular music or poetry. Where is the responsibility to the family, or to yourself?” they said. “What about the real world?” they questioned.

“But it’s the music that brought and continues to deliver joy. Music soothes the pain. It is at the root of all experience. There is that proverbial individuated soundtrack to the journey and the set-list evolves day-to-day, year-to-year. The words in songs and the poetry crack open the window to the soul and the heart, and everything miraculously becomes clear “ the pilgrim called out.

                                                    

Now that the second half is in full swing it is hoped that it’s not too late to tap into the flow and be precisely what God intended all along. It is not about fame or fortune but rather just being. Humble gratitude overflows the cup with the awareness of another breath and another beat of the heart. Well, you never know there might be a song or poem in all of this.   

                                                             

“Our tradition teaches us that sound is God. That is, musical sound and the musical experience are steps to the realization of the self. We view music as a kind of spiritual discipline that raises one’s inner being to divine peacefulness and bliss. We are taught that one of the fundamental goals a person works towards in his lifetime is knowledge of the true meaning of the universe - its unchanging, eternal essence…. The highest aim of our music is to reveal the essence of the universe it reflects, and the ragas are among the means by which this essence can be apprehended.”

-       Ravi Shankar

“Poetry, music and dance are all expressions of a living God.”

-       Rumi

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

                            ― Friedrich Nietzsche (source: David Arn’s tweet)   
                                                                        http://www.davidarn.com/

** Gratitude Moments. 64.3.9, 64.3.27. and 64.3.29

 A day was celebrated with number two at the Philadelphia Museum of Art getting our spirit tanks filled with each with the art of Van Gogh.  

Sunflowers- Van Gogh

Philadelphia Museum of Art - Photo by Leigh

                                                          

Sound Check Party At Bruce Concert

While on another evening it is reported that the first one and I were seen dancing in the darkness on the edge of town singing “We take care of our Own” with the Boss and the E-Streeters while connecting with the BFF and his crew.

Otis Redding !

                                         

Of course there is no coincidence that a new companion joined the clan bearing the name “Otis Redding.” Story has it that as a young pup he used to "sit on the dock of the bay” and thus the name. (And, his birthday being two days after his predecessor, Dylan,  and 7 days before George Harrison’s ....and my own.)

                                                       









amdg

A Leap Year Meditation: The Gift / February 29, 2012

                                                                              (   Click image)

He woke to the soft silent stately scintillating sun slipping through the creases in the blinds that had sealed out the cold dark of night from an unwelcomed entrance. Radiance. Consolation. Nurturing. Illumination!The Buddha heart within was opened. The unexpected gift was becoming clear with each breath. His eyes confirmed what his spirit had whispered in the first blink of the dawn. He was in receipt of a potential extra one thousand four hundred and forty. The sanctifying surgeon was at work again.

The mind nascarred itself harder and faster than it had ever done before. Faster. Faster. A wreck about to happen.

“There must be an answer! There must be a reason! What was done to earn such a gift? What does this mean? What shall I do?”

Rumi must have visited and converted him while in a dream! Whirling, whirling dhikr. He felt more dizzy than holy. But that was not unusual. The blackbird was singing like the first bird on the first morning. Everything was new again as if everything and every creature was reborn with him.

Jonah, the Prophet of Second Chances, watched from a distance with a smile.

“You need to listen.”

The great Greek chorus of his earthly angels raised their voices in harmonious gratitude.

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

It was obvious to his simple frail human mind that all this was all a well-planned intervention…. or…. maybe it was some lost grace that finally found an empty soul to save. He had never expected to make it this far down the yellow brick road.

Little did he know that this was business as usual.  The universe delighted in immersing wandering spirits into a sea of love and wonder. No reward for any great deed or heroic effort is needed or required. No mystical slight of hand magic is ever involved. Sometimes just trying is enough. Sometimes the truth and just being is sufficient. Love just is and sometimes bonuses happen. 

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Buddhas_Last_Instruction.html

                                                               (Click link above)

                                                                 ( Click image to play)

“…And when you feel afraid, love one another
When you’ve lost your way, love one another
When you’re all alone, love one another
When you’re far from home, love one another
When you’re down and out, love one another
All your hopes run out, love one another
When you need a friend, love one another
When you’re near the end, love one another
We got to love one another

Light of the world, you got to shine
Love will be a means, yeah, yeah
Shine on us all
Know that love can save the day
Just give it one more chance
Lord you just cant let it stop lord
Love is the answer
Got to be free to let love into your life
Let it shine…”

                                                 ( Just One Victory -Click image to play)

amdg