Tag Archives: Beloved

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Y is for yearn

Y for yearn, in 7 sins and friends. What do you yearn for? Do you ever feel yearning and if so, are you ok with that feeling?

Rumi’s and Hafiz’s poems give me permission to feel and to long. They says that all longing and yearning is praise and prayer for reunion with the Beloved.

Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds.
If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.

Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you.

Rumi (the rest here)

I Have Learned So Much

I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me

That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even a pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
my mind has ever known.

Hafiz

From: ‘The Gift’
Translated by Daniel Ladinsk, here.

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.

– Rumi (From here)

I took the photograph in town….

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W is for wrath

W is for wrath, the seventh sin.

From Webster 1913:

Wrath

1. Violent anger; vehement exasperation; indignation; rage; fury; ire.
Wrath is a fire, and jealousy a weed. Spenser.
When the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased. Esther ii. 1.
Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in. Southey.

2. The effects of anger or indignation; the just punishment of an offense or a crime.
“A revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Rom. xiii. 4.
Syn. — Anger; fury; rage; ire; vengeance; indignation; resentment; passion. See Anger.

 

Wrath is a sin, yet is it ever justified?

I am wrathful about this: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/23/471595323/drug-company-jacks-up-cost-of-aid-in-dying-medication

In my state a terminally ill patient may choose Death with Dignity: http://www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/IllnessandDisease/DeathwithDignityAct

The person must be terminally ill, must not be suicidal and must go through a process. But one of the tablets prescribed, which only the person may administer to themselves, has had a price increase from $200.00 to over $3000.00.

I heard this from another physician, who has a patient who is going through the process.

I feel wrath and anger and hurt and rage that a corporation is choosing to make an enormous profit from terminally ill patients.

And so wrath may be a sin, but it is also an appropriate feeling at times.

In a sermon about forgiveness, hate is also discussed:

“Let me also say a word here about hatred, since I am speaking of forgiveness as being the release of hatred. Many  of us,  I suppose, like myself, have been taught not to hate.  We have been taught that hatred is always a bad thing and there is no place for it.  Thus, we feel uncomfortable in the face of this intense emotion and attitude.  Many times I have stumbled on the line from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes which reads, “There’s a time to love and a time to hate.”

Can there be  a time to hate?  Ironically, when  reflecting on the subject of forgiveness, I see that there is a place for hatred.
 
First,  your  hatred  lets  you  know  that  you  are  feeling  diminished  and  perhaps  being stepped on and treated as no human being ought to be treated.

Secondly,  your  hatred  lets  you  know  that  you’re  fighting  back  and  that  you  have something  to  fight  back  with.    It  lets  you  know  that  the  situation  is  intolerable  and  you will not put up with it.

And  so  hatred  can  be  a  natural  and  even  necessary  response  to  situations  that  threaten human dignity.  Says one author, “Not to feel resentment when resentment is called for is a sign of servility,… a lack of self-respect.”  (Forgiveness, Haber)”

From: November 15, 2009, here: http://www.quuf.org/index.php?page=2009—2010-sermons

p7
http://www.quuf.org/uploads/Sermons/Is%20Forgiveness%20Always%20Called%20For%20Part%20II%20Nov%2015%2009%20print.pdf

I took the picture in 2007. No wrath here, but three different expressions, and all complex….

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U is for ursine

U is for ursine. Have you ever felt ursine?

Ur”sine (?), a. [L. ursinus, from ursus a bear. See Ursa.]

Of or pertaining to a bear; resembling a bear.

Ursine baboon. Zool. See Chacma. — Ursine dasyure Zool., the Tasmanian devil. — Ursine howler Zool., the araguato. See Illust. under Howler. — Ursine seal. Zool. See Sea bear, and the Note under 1st Seal.

I am thinking of my sister again. My mother called me tiger and her bear. “Chris bear” was one of her names. Have you felt tigerish or ursine? We talk about a temper like a bear or hibernating when we aren’t feeling very social and then there are teddy bears and care bears and last night I saw the new Jungle Book movie.

I know the book well and loved it. I spent much less time with television. The movie is a mix of the book and the Disney version and I am considering the deviations. Sher Khan did not kill the wolf leader in the book, though he did influence some pack members. And the ending is changed and an interesting change at a time when we are afraid of the disconnect that many of us feel from nature. We are afraid that too many people and that sin of greed are destroying species and destroying the world.

And so I do feel ursine. Sometimes it feels unbearable. Sometimes I want to rear up like a grizzly bear and tear down the veneer of civilization. Sometimes I just want to sleep as deeply as a bear and dream…. dream of playing with my sister.

In my photograph, two cars have crashed in the Octoblast and one has been ejected forcibly: that is my sister bending over it…..

 

 

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M is for mourn

M is for mourn. We mourn for losses. Mourning is part of being human and we have to give grief room and space. How can we love and feel intimacy without also feeling grief and mourning?

M

I wrote a poem the day my sister died. I had flown home four days before, after seeing her in hospice, 7 years of cancer. I flew home the day before her birthday. My birthday is three days after hers. She died the day after my birthday. It has now been four years.

An apology, a love note and a remembrance

I step outside into a fine mist rain.

I am enfolded in cloud.

The dog still wants to be walked.
The cats want their treats.
The bunny rattles her cage.
The fish will want feeding at the usual time.

My heart lies stunned in my chest.
The dog does not pull.
I walk measured.
He waits.

The rain comes harder.

I hope that where you are, is joy.

The crows harsh caws comfort me.
I answer.
They watch from the tree tops as we circle.

I am enshrouded in cloud.

We are back to the house.

I try to remember.
I have the birds.
I have the trees.

We go in.

first published on everything2.com with other poems for her here: http://everything2.com/title/An+apology%252C+a+love+note+and+a+remembrance

I don’t know who took the photograph. Probably my grandparents.

 

 

 

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B is for bored

B is for bored? All of the emotions that I could pick that start with B, and I pick bored?

But I am going to talk about bored in the context of chronic pain: and suddenly it is not boring at all.

Welcome to 7 Sins and friends, a spectrum, a kaleidoscope, an ABC of emotions.

B

If you hear the same sound over and over, like a faucet dripping, can you tune it out? I can. I can tune out practically any noise and I have fallen asleep under bright light in a Casino room full of ringing and blinging and alarming machines.

You may not have quite that level of ignoring something, but you can certainly tune things out. I have been reading Jon Kabat Zinn’s books on Mindfulness Meditation and I have used his mindfulness CD. I was having trouble sleeping after my father died, and I would use the CD. However, I used it in the reverse of how it is meant.

I used the body scan. Dr. Zinn talks in a slow calm tone and has the listener move from body part to body part, just feeling what is there. Not tightening or releasing muscles, but just starting with the left toes. At the start he says, “This is to fall more awake, not to fall asleep.” And I fell asleep every time.

But what does this have to do with pain? If you have tried meditation and focusing on your breath, your mind wanders. It gets bored. It starts think about the grocery list, or that person who yelled at you or ….. anything but the breath. You keep returning your mind to the breath. One day I had a hurt knee and was trying to go to sleep and thought…. hmmm. So I focused all my attention on the knee pain. Really tried to get inside my knee. Felt the pain fully and entirely….. and soon I was thinking about my grocery list. I pulled my mind back to my knee. My mind was sulky: yes, it hurts some, so what? Can’t we do something else? I am bored!

We are taught that pain is bad and I see many people in clinic who are afraid because of back pain. They are afraid to move because pain means something is wrong. Only most of the time it means that they have injured back muscles. The back muscles cramp up to protect themselves. The muscles must be soothed and stretched and healed and to do that we have to both pay attention to the pain and move without hurting the muscles worse. Sounds a bit boring,  right? Bored is more important than we think….

I took the photograph at the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula Washington, in 2004. We were not bored.

 

 

 

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Costume 8

This is the last in this costume series and now it’s revealed. My sister was not wearing a costume but she contributed to the festivities by showing off her ballet skills. Her daughter was more interested in dinner than ballet at that particular moment, even though they performed together. My sister loved to dance and loved the costumes there too.

Taken in 2009, Lake Matinenda, Ontario, Canada. My sister died of breast cancer in 2012.

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7 Sins and friends

My blogging from A to Z this year is titled 7 sins and friends….. sins? I am thinking about emotions and how many our culture says are bad or that we should not feel. Men are encouraged to be strong and silent and women are encouraged to be nice. “Feel good all the time!” says our culture. But we can’t, won’t, don’t.

People say, “Try not to feel that way.” Now when someone says that to me, I think, that is a feeling that they are not comfortable with, but I am comfortable with it, enough to express it. We label feelings with value judgements. Happy is a good feeling, anger is terrible, but really it is all neurological information. It is part of our system for exploring the world, just as touch and taste and sight and hearing help us explore the world. Imagine if we could not feel fear: a toddler walking off a cliff because they have no idea to be afraid. And without pain, we would not pull our finger back from being burned. If we can’t grieve, we can’t truly love.

I sat down yesterday and made a list of emotions and feelings, from A to Z, and I have more than one for each. I will only choose one for each letter, at least that is the current plan, but think of the richness and complexity of human feeling. Why don’t we celebrate it instead of excoriating it? And doesn’t every human have the full spectrum of feelings? We may not be comfortable with a feeling or have a name for it, but I think we all have all of them.

The photo is from Halloween, 2005, dressed up for church.