Reflections on Going with the Flow
Dear Friends ~ For the past month, my daily mantra and aim has been: Stay in the river. Let the current take me where it will.
This sounds relaxing, but it takes courage to trust that wherever the river flows, it eventually finds the ocean. It requires us to loosen our grip on what we think we know and allow ourselves to be taken, even cracked open. The good news is that in this releasing and opening there is also discovery: of the astonishing presence of grace already moving through our lives, of the endless becoming and rebecoming that courses beneath all things.
The voices gathered here approach that mystery from many different directions, assuring us that we are not alone as we move downstream. It is June, after all, the beginning of summer, when all that has waited in quiet through the dark months and was seeded in springtime promise, emerges in abundance: a communal act born of connection, relationship, and reciprocity.
May these poems and words encourage you to stay in the river, and may you be refreshed in its flow. ~ Bob
I’m Bob. Some of my friends call me Not-Bob. I hope that doesn’t confuse you. Bob is a grandpa, a lover of heart conversations, and an apprentice to night stars. He and his beloved Jackie have been orbiting around each other for more than 50 years.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
~ Mary Oliver, “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac (Part 3),” in BLUE HORSES: POEMS
May you learn to welcome both joy and sorrow
as guests bearing gifts
May you cherish all voices within you and know
each holds a place for your wholeness
May you never hide from wonder and
curiosity’s enlivening dance within you
May you feel the love of your ancestors
watching over you and let your heart seek their guidance
May you awaken to ever widening circles of
Truth
May you know the deep interconnection of all
beings and hold reverence for the planet that
sustains you
May you listen to the shy voice of soul that can
lead you into your deepest calling
May your ability to hold compassion keep
expanding so that love guides your way
~ Glenn Siegel, “Blessing,” in HOWLING WITH GRATITUDE AND GRIEF
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
Here is a summertime truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole. Community not only creates abundance — community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed.
Summer is the season when all the promissory notes of autumn and winter and spring come due, and each year the debts are repaid with compound interest. In summer it is hard to remember that we had ever doubted the natural process, had ever ceded death the last word, had ever lost faith in the powers of new life. Summer is a reminder that our faith is not nearly as strong as the things we profess to have faith in — a reminder that, for this single season at least, we might cease our anxious machinations and give ourselves to the abiding and abundant grace of our common life.
“She’s having a total breakdown,”
one put together
and very self-satisfied seed
with no cracks in it
whispered to another
about a third seed who had begun
to germinate.
“She’s completely falling apart—
her life is a mess!”
They gazed superiorly
at the smooth, intact facade
of their shells
so perfectly upholding
expectations of the status quo.
Clearly, compared to that wild,
sprouting seed
disrupting the peace,
they were doing something right…right?
But now and then,
they secretly looked up
with longing at the tall-stemmed,
bravely opened flower
wondering if there might be
more to themselves.
Please try to go
to hell frequently
because you will
find the light there
yes yes — please
try to kiss the ideas
that you find there
yes yes — please
try to get that
it is the center
of the universe
yes yes — please
try to help yourself
by kissing the hot hot
hot life that is born
there yes yes — please
try to yell in hell
yes yes — please
try to free yourself
by pouring yourself
into the gutter all
guttural guttural yell
yes yes yes — please
try to get that you
become the being
that you came there
to be yes yes — please
try to go to the great
great great fire that you
created because you
become the light
that the fire makes
inside of you
yes yes — please
try to kiss yourself
for going there
yes yes — please
get that you are
reborn there
yes yes — please
begin your day
~ Hannah Emerson, “Center of the Universe,” in THE KISSING OF KISSING
… within [us] is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related… When it breathes through [our] intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through [our] will, it is virtue; when it flows through [our] affection, it is love.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson from “The Over-Soul” in ESSAYS
To arrive where you are,
to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way
which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go by the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know
is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
Even now, I am becoming
wind, something less flesh, more
movement, more current, less
here, more everywhere. Though
the moment I think I know this truth,
the knowing re-solids me,
makes me into clay that pretends it is wind.
But becoming clay again, I am destined
to crumble, disintegrate, until
I am dust and once again one
with the wind. How to trust anything
then, except this infinite becoming and
rebecoming—and whatever
it is that is alive inside it all.
That. I put my faith in that.
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Faith,” from her blog A HUNDRED FALLING VEILS
I’m so happy to let myself float down this river with such fine companions. Thank you!
Hello Bob, So many heart opening poems gathered here. Thank you. And the invitation to Stay in the River! I love it and am moved and inspired by it. Thank you. Kay