Wisława Szymborska (July 2, 1923–February 1, 2012)

When Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality,” the Nobel commission rightly called her “the Mozart of poetry."

LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT

By Wislawa Szymborska

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

SECOND SIGHT

Sometimes, you need the ocean light,
and colours you’ve never seen before
painted through an evening sky.

Sometimes you need your God
to be a simple invitation
not a telling word of wisdom.

Sometimes you need only the first shyness
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,

so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.

And then there are times you want to be
brought to ground by touch
and touch alone.

To know those arms around you
and to make your home in the world
just by being wanted.

To see eyes looking back at you,
as eyes should see you at last,

seeing you, as you always wanted to be seen,
seeing you, as you, yourself
had always wanted to see the world.

…

© David Whyte ‘SECOND SIGHT’
From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte
©2012 David Whyte

Wild Geese

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda  Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.

Little Gidding

by T.S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Halloween Group Therapy

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here,

that is natural, that is love…

 ― Rainer Maria Rilke

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

As Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst, notes, “the following poem speaks of the absence of what became, in Winnicott’s developmental theory, the formative experience in the child’s life; the way the mother, in the fullest sense, ‘holds’ the child.  Poetry is not an indulgence or a luxury: it's the key to who we are, and central to the therapeutic process."

The Tree

Mother below is weeping
    weeping
    weeping

Thus I knew her
Once, Stretched out on her lap
as now on a dead tree
I learned to 
make her smile
to stem her tears
to undo her guilt
to cure her inward death
To enliven her was my living


D.W. Winnicott

Anne Lamott

Beannacht

BY JOHN O'DONOHUE

On the day when

 The weight deadens

 On your shoulders

 And you stumble,

 May the clay dance

 To balance you.

And when your eyes

 Freeze behind

 The grey window

 And the ghost of loss

 Gets into you,

 May a flock of colours,

 Indigo, red, green

 And azure blue,

 Come to awaken in you

 A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

 In the currach of thought

 And a stain of ocean

 Blackens beneath you,

 May there come across the waters

 A path of yellow moonlight

 To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

 May the clarity of light be yours,

 May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

 May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

 Wind work these words

 Of love around you,

 An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

GO TO THE LIMITS OF YOUR LONGING

By Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,

so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.  

To make a deep physical path, 

we walk again and again.  

To make a deep mental path,

 we must think over and over the kind of thoughts

we wish to dominate our lives.”  

 Henry David Thoreau

Kindness

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans 
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth. 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and 
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

How to transcend our self-imposed limitations in the pursuit of happiness is what artist Agnes Martin (March 22, 1912–December 16, 2004) wrote about:

Hold fast to your life, to beauty and happiness and inspiration, and to obedience to inspiration. Do not imitate others or seek advice anywhere except from your own mind. No-one can help you. No-one knows what your life should be. No-one knows what your life or life itself should be because it is in the process of being created.
Life moves according to a growing consciousness of life and is completely unpredictable.
If you live according to human knowledge, according to precept, values and standards, you live in the past.
If you live entirely in the past you will not know beauty or happiness and you will not in fact live.
You must believe in life. Believe that you can know the truth about life.

The current of the river of life moves us. Awareness of life, beauty and happiness is the current of the river.
With great awareness we move rapidly. With no awareness we do not move.

In this life, life is represented by beauty and happiness.
If you are completely unaware of them you are not alive.
The times when you are not aware of beauty and happiness you are not alive.

The measure of your life is the amount of beauty and happiness of which you are aware.

In Search of Kindness

BY OMID SAFI , COLUMNIST at ONBEING.ORG

Sometimes after having a heart-to-heart with friends, particularly friends who
are going through hard times, I think about the struggles they are undergoing,
the advice I have shared with them, and how I would take it into my own life.
Every now and then, this results in having a conversation with the younger
version of my own self.

These days it seems like most of my friends are struggling in relationships.
If they are in one, they are struggling. If they are not in one, they want to
be in one. Sometimes it seems like two groups are not struggling: the happily
married ones who have been together for over 30 years and the ones who are
still in the infatuation phase of relationships. That’s it. Everyone else
seems to be struggling, or not dealing with the challenges that are just under
the surface.

Seeing so much suffering around, and being asked to offer advice to others,
makes me want to go back to my younger self and have a journey with myself
about where I have been, what I have gone through, and the lessons of the
heart that I have learned. Or, to say more directly, I wish I had learned at
an earlier phase of life.

In earlier periods of life, there were times that I thought I knew what I was
looking for in a relationship. I often thought in terms of qualities the other
person would possess. I thought of compatibility in cultures. Coming from a
Persian background, I thought for a while it would be important to be with
someone who understood my culture, or at least understood my culture’s
importance to me. Seeking God on the path of Islam, for the longest time I
thought it would be key to be with someone who shared that spiritual
orientation. At times I thought of someone who understood how important my
family was to me, and would love a large, loving family. At times it was to
seek someone who shared my love of poetry, sacred music, and travel to faraway
exotic destinations.

I realize now that one of the mistakes I made back then — maybe
“mistake” is too harsh — a life lesson I had not learned yet was that I
continued to look for qualities in my partner. I needed to pay as much, if not
more, attention to my own growth.

And the truth of the matter is that each person brings out a different quality
in us. It’s almost like a musical symphony, where each person brings out
different “notes” in us. Some people bring out something in us that is
kind, generous, and loving. Others bring us qualities of frustration, anger,
and resentment. None of us is an island unto ourselves. We are all products of
a kind of alchemical interaction with each other. There is something beautiful
in being around people who bring out beautiful qualities in us. And yes, it is
true that there is a kind of growth that comes by people who “rub us” the
wrong way. It’s true, as Rumi said:

“If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?”

Yes, sometimes to have people who give us opportunities to grow, to be
challenged, to even be shown our own rough edges, is lovely. But maybe, just
maybe, not as a life partner. Opposites do attract sometimes, but it’s not
necessarily a life plan for bliss and romance to go seeking after people who
are our opposites.

Back to the life partner part.

I am grateful for any and every encounter — yes, even the ones that left me
brokenhearted. Now I know that even the brokenness made me seek the healing.
We cannot seek water without thirst. And when I come across people who carry
their own pain and suffering — which is all of us, each and every single one
— having had my own pain makes it so much more real, more personal, more
immediate to sit with them and their pain. We are rarely more human than we
are when we see the suffering in one another.

But back to that advice for our younger selves. All of those other qualities I
looked for are beautiful in their own way, but if I could somehow go back, or
offer the insight of decades to others, it would be this. More so than similar
culture, religion, life experiences, education, number of children, like and
dislike of extended family, let us praise kindness.

Give me kindness above all else.
It is kindness that I would choose in the person to spend my life with.
Kindness in the love glances.
Kindness in the touch.
Kindness in the listening.
Kindness in understanding.

Kindness is love embodied, love that touches us as we would wish to be
touched.

May you, we, each of us, be embraced and welcomed into the kind embrace of a
kind friend, a kind lover, a kind beloved, a kind neighbor, a kind family.

The Prophet is said to have so cherished kindness that he said:

“Indeed,
everything that has kindness in it
is adorned by it.”

Let us be adorned by kindness.

Somewhere I read that to be part of mankind, humankind, takes… kindness.

Some languages even build that into their words. In Arabic and Persian we are
told that the concept of the insan (human being) is etymologically linked to
the word uns (intimacy).

Let us be human, become more fully human through this loving kindness, this
intimate experience of sharing kindness.
Let us praise kindness.

Let us seek kindness.
Let us cherish kindness.
Let us embrace kindness.
Let us radiate kindness.