Soul wakening

This song has inspired me lately as my soul tumults and my heart trembles for people I love.

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life

Thoreau

 "Every child begins the world again." 

- Henry David Thoreau

My religion...

Although I've been feeling more and more distaste toward religion as a concept overall, the one exception came to me in the words of the Dalai Lama:

"My religion is kindness."

And that is all it should be.  If everyone everywhere simply made kindness to self, others, and the world their "religion" so many things would be simpler.  And really, does it have to be complex?

Picture source.

On religion

I've been having a lot of thoughts about my spiritual views, beliefs and questions.  I want to start jotting things down as they come because I don't have them all sorted out or organized in my mind (not sure if I ever will?)  I know I need to do a lot more reading and soul-searching about all this, but I need a place to start.

These thoughts have largely been prompted by my near-visceral reaction to the Catholic church's reaction to the work of American nuns.  It simply outraged me.  It is such an obvious play for control over women and in the 21st century, I'm just so tired of it.  I ache for these nuns who are trying to do good work in a church they believe in, and yet are condemned for it by a leadership that I think knows deep down it is treading on such thin ground keeping women out of its administration.  I'm angry at the church, but also angry at women (myself included) who stayed a part of such an organization.  The pope and his cronies may be archaic and abusive in their views of women, but we women aren't doing any better by not breaking away.  If we aren't part of the solution, we're part of the problem.

Religion:  a tool for the powerful to control the weak and ignorant.

I just finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel, and it really stirred me to start thinking more critically about these things.  Her book ultimately attacks Islam and its treatment of women, which clearly is on a much baser level than that which the Catholic church is doing; however, both religions are trying to stifle women -- be it literally with the cloaking and ostracizing of women in Muslim countries, or more figuratively with the church's stance against women in leadership roles.

There is so much more to say on all this.  I'm glad to have started, and I plan to be back.

Onwards

At the end of the day, when I stop and ask myself, "Self, what's it all about?" Mostly I just fall into bed and avoid the question. Then there are days (like today) when it plagues me. So many decisiions to be made, so many decisions to live with. There are issues facing others in the world that are so monumentally bigger than those that haunt my mind that I feel guilty even dwelling on them... but then, these are the ones that are mine. These are the ones that I have a say in, that affect my emotions, my finances, my family... No, we're not being slaughtered by a brutal regime; yes, we have enough food in the house; no, we're not suffering from major illnesses; yes, we have a roof over our heads and jobs to pay (most of) the bills. Still, there are worries, there are concerns, there are stresses, there are frustrations. Are we not justified in feeling the associated feelings, or should we constantly be comparing ourselves to those so much less fortunate and focusing on gratitude?

Can we be grateful and confused at the same time? I have wonderful things around me -- but are they the things I would choose if I could choose again? These questions swirl without answers, and without purpose. It is far better to just be grateful than to focus on questioning the things we cannot change. I know this, but it's hard to live it.

Yet live with it I must, and so I just keep moving -- onwards.  Hoping for this haze to clear and my path to be laid before me.

Morning Walk

This morning the weather
Bared my heart: sodden gray.
The moisture, not quite rain,
The shifting clouds – a ballet.

A breath of this morning
Opened memories of you:
Stealing mushrooms from woods
To make dinner for two.

A tourniquet of un-
Felt feelings no one knows
Surrounds my sorrowed heart
Beneath smiles and hellos.

I could almost fall back
In the arms of dense air
And escape to the place
Where your arms were my lair.

We’d watch our planet’s path
Unaware of our own…
And move to the rhythm
Of the hippo’s low moan.

A breath of this morning
Opened memories of you.
Can nostalgia take form
In foggy mist and dew?

-- circa 2001

The Dream I had of You

I distorted my stories in night’s spell of sleep
His face showed a history I had not seen before,
Yet I kissed him regardless:  my heart longed to leap
To when we followed footprints on Africa’s shore.
I distorted my stories in night’s spell of sleep.


While the moon meditated memories rearranged.
Diseases took leave and our farewell was unsaid.
No more did my fingers fiddle tiny Zim change
So I wouldn’t forget.  I had him here instead,
While the moon meditated – memories rearranged.

Last night brought him back to me as daunting dreams do.

‘Cross an ocean he traveled to unite with me,
To verify that Fate’s visions for us were true,
To revive what we were, and to seek clarity.
Last night brought him back to me as daunting dreams do.

How I ignored his longing sad questioning eyes…

All he wanted from me was to be close again,
But I was hurried, restless:  Americanized.
I gave him few moments – and I met other men.
How I ignored his longing sad questioning eyes…

In the midst of my flurry, he found his answer.

Without a word, without a “one last” anything
He left.  With hurt as consuming as the cancer
He could wait no longer – he left me the suff’ring.
In the midst of my flurry, he found his answer.

Would that waking antidote my guilty wrought cries;

On second chances, I committed heresy.
His dark absence haunts me like unfulfilled tight sighs,
And I’ve wailed ‘til my voice box pleaded for mercy:
Would that waking antidote my guilty wrought cries.

I wait:  for dream’s strength of memory to someday wane

Into something unrecollectable.  Farewell:
Left unsaid, incomplete, and with rekindled pain;
For we are no more – neither here nor in sleep’s spell.
I wait for dreams’ strength of memory to someday wane.

-- circa 2002