A poem by Ralph Copleman a longtime Open Space practitioner, posted this week on the OSLILST
The Days of Now
On the night before Now
we all clambored over
and greeted each other by the gateway.
Now came the first morning.
We opened for each other many conversations
and passed cups around the shining circle.
On the second of Now,
I could see a long way in people’s eyes
which cleared to let in the light.
On the third of Now,
everyone started dialing up tomorrows,
released laughter and embraced
every future Now with braided voices
and sweat-slicked arms.
Each night Now the sky
came down to join us,
like an animal testing the scents.
On the fourth of Now
we saw magic inside ourselves
and blew gently the embers in each other.
On the fifth day Now transformed
into pieces of hours and sounds.
There was baying and mirth
and sweet fresh rubbing of skin on skin.
The sixth of Now saw us
plain and fearful, thrilled and drawn
to each other in new forever dreams.
On the seventh of Now
we redrew all our lines,
filled all the hollows, as Now expected.
At last the night Now
draped velvet and quiet
as hushed we prepared our ascent.
This night is that night Now.
It has unquenchable questions
and the same different beginning.
On top of morning Now
and all through evening Now
we waxed and shined the circle again
sipped each other’s songs
and touched old and new alike.
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Forwarded to me by my colleague Ray Gordezky, with whom I am part of a team looking convening people around polar bears in Northern Labrador and Quebec.
The Moon Speaks of Polar Bears
Hailey Leithauser
Some things are better defined
by what they are not,
as when snow heaping the world
replaces the world, becoming
no longer a rooftop, no longer a narrow
gravel shoreline or road,
even in times, in places,
no longer the black breathing
of the sea.
In this way the polar bear
stealing her difficult, beautiful life
from the ridges
and drifts, the colorless
plateau around her,
teaches her young to hunt
by sliding her belly
flat along the frozen light,
blunting her cloudlike
respiration, covering
with one comic paw
the dark flesh of her nose,
so well suited to her artifice
that the oily
seals collecting the ice
are pulled by an intimate
landscape, soundless
and ravenous and white.
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Comfort
Oh, the comfort–
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person–
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
–Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887)
Sweet to find that faithful hand in the space between me and the other.
via easily amazed.
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I believe in all that has never yet been spoken
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
by Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 – 1926)
English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
via I believe in all that has never yet been spoken at Seeds for a happy planet.
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Day zero here at the Shambhala Summer Institute here in Halifax. The staff of the ALIA Institute have been working hard to get everything ready for us, and today people started to arrive. Over the past could of days the faculty have been meeting in a little pre-institute retreat, building our own field and grabbing the chance to have conversations with one another. We’ve been getting a little taste of each other’s modules, playing with some of the creative process that is going on and generally catching up with each and getting a sense of our field.
Today we held a little open space and one of the things we were invited to do was give some thought to what is alive in the field of the Institute this summer. Sensing like this helps us to be able to pay attention to the collective experience and gives voice to what is showing up, and what we can serve. At the conclusion of the Open Space, we checked out and I harvested a little poem that captures something of the flavour or what we’re in. Part of the set up for this poem is knowing that today the weather has been wild with high winds and driving drizzle, and even though the air is warm, there is a sense that the winter/spring part of the year is keen to leave its legacy on the summer/fall part.
Here’s the poem:
What’s alive in this field
We’re going to be at home.
The depth of passion that we own
expands out to connect
the alternatives that sing, circumspect,
from the hill tops,
that reach the ears of the young
who stand in the storm, sung
songs of drenched longing,
wanting to tap creative energy
to quiver with the joy that
lives in the edge of death and life
the light that redraws the breath of summer.
The directions are called,
the integration invites a falling into place
a space of compassionate embrace
of all we are related to.
My daughter – an image held in the hand,
at arms length, on a touch –
there is much that is held here,
much that isn’t here.
What is clear is not-knowing –
uncertainty growing like the clouds
of drizzle that shower our container
Can you feel the wind?
Can you feel the breath?
Settle down. Then step.