Saturday, August 31, 2013

Write our Song



Write our Song

Preparation seems long
Long those days
Delays with passing..
Many hesitations stall
Still we're asked to
Write our Song..
Those scary leaps
Many are forsaken
Then our Song
Most remarkably
Leads us on..
Our Song invites
Find me there
Between Silence
and words
In that space 
Know our energy to
Write our Song...

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Big Bang Cycles

  

Big Bang Cycles

Scientists with

peering satellite deep
 finds startling news..
If Genesis to us
means Big Bang
just that once
we need pause
and prepare..
satellite finds Cycles
circular patterns
 movement sublime
Story before: 
chaos to order to
chaos once more..
Now a vision
Genesis beginnings
in timeless eons
 in time's seasons
beauty not ceasing...

Circular patterns within the cosmic microwave background suggest that space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang but that our universe in fact continually cycles through a series of “eons.” That is the sensational claim being made by University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, who says that data collected by NASA’s WMAP satellite support his idea of “conformal cyclic cosmology.”

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Small Landscapes


Small Landscapes

Landscapes
 easily overwhelm
but with persistence
each is multitude
of relational smaller..
recognize and
watch it expand
fill the mind
and universe...

Monday, August 26, 2013

Weeds


Weeds

In our modern
Quantum knowing
entanglement claims
the one reality..
Alas if all
is so entangled
some might say:
These are weeds
much overgrown..
To our rescue
Are two grounds
Fore and Back
new clarity arrives
finds the reality
Beauty deserves...





Imagination


Imagination

Oft maligned in
our Newton homes
Where out there
is what Is..
But this Is
is darkening as
our days prolong..
Cries for connection
are arousing
desire for dawn..
a gift forgotten
this lifeline
cord...

Friday, August 23, 2013

Country Doctor


Country Doctor

The eye of 
his camera in 
 timeless juxtapose  
finds the meaning
of the life 
we live..
two children
emerging from a
dark forest place
find a lighted
garden of discovery..
A country doctor
braces from wind
rendering service to
 those caught in
that same forest..
his wish to
rescue childhood
which now weighs
distant and dim...




For his groundbreaking 1948 LIFE magazine photo essay, “Country Doctor” photographer W. Eugene Smith spent 23 days in Kremmling, Colorado, chronicling the day-to-day challenges faced by an indefatigable general practitioner named Dr. Ernest Ceriani.

“Country Doctor” was an instant classic when first published, establishing Smith as a master of the uniquely commanding young art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his stature as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century.


Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Red Bicycle


The Red Bicycle

Real learning we
learn from
a red bicycle..
Movement is 
conversation of
oppositions..
Without conversation
differences reign..
We soon find
multiplicity growing
and peace disturbed..
Red reminds us
each difference relates
to other differences..
Relating is unifying
bringing the peace
Red turns Blue...

Monday, August 19, 2013

Tangential


Tangential

a periphery sounding
word seems key
to each her own
identity..
each painter explores
what is out there
 in forest and sea
finding those words
which other painters
have already stroked..
our perennial question:
where is originality
or is this distinction
simply and always
Tangential...

Mae's tangent...

Saturday, August 17, 2013

3/4 Moon


3/4 Moon

evening reflection
of departing Sun
tonight three quarters
brilliance and shadow
awaiting new evening
a fuller reflection..
our shadows are
of varying fractions..
might we hope
for a fuller moon
 on some days...


City noise




City noise

motorcars and cycles
weaving the fabric
of surround sound..
a dog barks
a honking horn
distant siren
these cut the fabric
offer their names..
is this picture
a dark iteration
of the Field
with creation
interrupting...

Friday, August 16, 2013

Mother bird


Mother bird

is honor beyond
and light concealed
through all creation..
her chicks need
our attention
without distraction
of ego for honor..
Send her away
we are advised..
discover her light
in the nesting chicks
in the beauty
of flower
mountain and plain...

see Deuteronomy 22

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Experiential Communion


Experiential Communion 

Beginning is sitting
Sit in shadow
Difficulties there are
Yours and theirs
Nearby and world..
Ascend Center aisle
Enter dark tunnel
Your frontward gaze
Sights pinpoint light..
In Mindful walk
The pinpoint enlarges..
Receiving the bread
Light floods all..
Contact with wine
Recalls the shadow
Bread and Wine
Light and Shadow..
Descend wing aisles
Ending is sitting
In unity's Glow...

Friday, August 9, 2013

Constriction


Constriction

We compose our
poems
each unique voice
from our source
experience of life
ebb and flow..
finding our words
do they speak
to the poet alone..?
or need we
constrict 
find a clarity
to converse
favoring those..
not to forget
our original flow
elevating restoring
a unique soul...






Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Disruptions


Disruptions

A friend's kitchen 
disturbed and
my mouse entries
must be sealed..
This day dawns
 planned disruptions
What is disrupted..?
is our experience
one of

Disrupted disruption..?
what then if
Mindfulness blooms:
 surrounding wholeness
welcomes disruption
with expectations of
delicacies looming
mice denied entrance
filtered colors ablaze...

Monday, August 5, 2013

Fracking


Fracking

a withdrawal
from 
cycle of life..
water
cycling since
primordial times..
afternoon rainstorms
diminished..
that rain from
earthly stimulation
now her flow
interrupted impure..
is now time
for fracturing
or for
joining and
return...?

Kabbalah and Fracking Don't Mix; or, The Fracking Solution
Rabbi David Seidenberg


Every year, more than 100 billion gallons of water are used in the United States for hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a process that breaks up rock in order to force out millions of cubic feet of natural gas. But if we charged the fracking companies for their use of freshwater in a realistic way, fracking would end in an instant.

Why is that? Well, if you use a gallon of water to take a shower or flush the toilet, that water gets mixed with basically harmless stuff that can be treated. Afterwards the water is put back into the stream of life, back into the water cycle of the whole planet. If a farmer uses a gallon to grow tomatoes, the time it takes for the water to come back into the natural cycle is even shorter.

When a petrochemical company uses a gallon of freshwater to "split open the depths of the earth," most of that water stays deep underground. It needs to stay far beneath even the deepest aquifers and away from the water we use for drinking and agriculture, because otherwise it would poison the groundwater and aquifers near where fracking takes place.

Other extractive industries also use huge amounts of water, but the many millions of gallons of the water used to frack a well are not just used one time and returned to the ecosystem. They are being used up for all the possible times they would ever have cycled through the Earth's streams and seas and atmosphere as part of the lifeblood of this planet, for potentially millions of years.

What does it mean to lose most of that water, essentially forever? According to Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), it could be considered a sin against the water itself.

Kabbalah imagines the world and its elements as yearning, longing, to be raised higher and higher into consciousness, into the process of life and love. This can happen whenever a more sentient life form like a human being takes in a more basic substance (like when we drink water), and it happens through the process of evolution itself, where life comes from the elements and develops greater and greater capacities for connection and awareness.

In Kabbalah, the very symbol of blessing and of divine wisdom, of emergence and life, of Chesed (or "lovingkindness"), is water. If we take these ideas seriously, then the water that stays in the fracked rock is deprived of fulfilling its deepest purpose.

By conventional environmental ethics, one should just be thankful that most of the water stays far below the ground. That's because the fracking company first mixes that gallon with its own proprietary blend of poison that will make the solution flow easily yet still be very dense--dense enough to fissure huge rock formations at high pressures.

When it injects millions of gallons of this solution into the ground, the water absorbs more poisons: radioactive elements, salts, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, etc. When the well starts to produce methane gas, anywhere from 20-50% of the fracking solution (hundreds of thousands to a million-plus gallons) comes back up the well-bore along with gas, in the form of what's called "flowback water" mixed together with "produced water," all of it highly contaminated.

The fracking industry is still struggling to figure out how to handle it. Sometimes, the flowback water gets diluted with freshwater on site and sent straight into our streams and rivers. It can also be deep-injected into isolated rock formations, where it may lubricate faults and cause earthquakes. Or, in a version of recycling unique to the oil and gas industry, it can be added to more freshwater for re-fracking the same well or fracking the next well.

There are other adverse impacts that fracking has on our water supply. Withdrawing millions of gallons of water from an ecosystem, river or well can cause terrific damage in and of itself -- all the more so in drought-ravaged areas of the West and Midwest, where so much fracking takes place. And we don't know whether fracking fluid and natural gas will come up through old abandoned wells that intersect with fractured rock.

One thing we do know for sure, however, is that when a fracking operation "withdraws" a gallon of water from an aquifer or stream, half or more of that is a permanent withdrawal.

It would make a huge difference if the fracking companies were just charged for the "cradle-to-grave" use of all these millions of gallons of water, including the costs of the predictable spills and the technology needed to treat the water that doesn't spill. But we can go further than that.

Let's be very conservative and say that there are 100,000 times that this water could be used that are gone in one shot. How much does a gallon of water times 100,000 cost? More than a cubic foot of gas? More than 50,000 cubic feet of gas.

This magnification of the value of water is no exaggeration. If anything, the price is far too low. In 100 years, the people who are alive will look back in utter horror to think of how we wasted and ruined our precious water resources in order to bring more and more poison up to the surface of this very good and beautiful planet.

For science and ecology, as for Kabbalah, water is the very substance of life. So shall we take this gallon of water, brought here in this planet's early childhood by comets of ice, this gallon that has passed through the forms of sky and cloud and ocean for billions of years, and even cycled through cytoplasm and breath, sap and blood, and remove it from life's cycle? Is that what the water would will, if it could will?

You see, even if we didn't have to worry about tap water catching fire, even if we didn't have to worry about hundreds of thousands of acres of land being taken over by wells and collection pits and truck roads, or about all the escaped methane being driven into the atmosphere (where it will accelerate global climate disruption 20 times more powerfully than carbon dioxide) -- even without these things, fracking, and the attitude behind fracking, would still be a danger to the well-being of the planet.

Ban? Moratorium? Regulation? That's beside the point, once the actual consequences for the planet's freshwater are assigned a cost. If people want to stop fracking, if municipalities and citizens want to take control of their land from rapacious companies and know-nothing state governments, then let's charge the companies for what our precious water is really worth.

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org. He teaches on ecology, spirit and Judaism through his website and throughout North America and the world. His first book, on ecology and Kabbalah, will be coming out this year.










Sunday, August 4, 2013

All breathes


All breathes

deeply
solar plexus
cells
even stones..
imagination
forms and
colors 
rising and
falling..
each cycle:
the many
gathers and
transforms
to light..
and light
to
the many..
each and
All breathes...







Saturday, August 3, 2013

Charity


Charity

this opening of self
to outside others
is expanding awareness
and a connecting
with Self inside..
Sages report this
repeating awareness
as vital gain
in many realms
higher and lower...

Friday, August 2, 2013

Illumine Solitude (Rilke)


Vase with Daisies, by Vincent van Gogh

Don't be confused by the nature of solitude, when something inside you wants to break free of your loneliness. This very wish, when you use it as a tool for understanding, can illumine your solitude and expand it to include all that is. Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. It is clear, however, that here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living things in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves at any cost and despite all opposition.

Rome, May 14, 1904
Letters to a Young Poet

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Discovery

Discovery

as writing poetry..
of surprise
of beauty
of pattern
of symmetry
of unity..
these may be 
the true Joy...

"I wouldn't bother to start a poem if I already knew the ending.
The pen is not just a recording device; it can also be an
 instrument of discovery."

—Billy Collins


Beauty and consciousness.... Nassim Haramein


: “Connect with your existence, connect within yourself, connect with this infinite beauty that you are made of. And then express it in the world. Make the world around you an expression of that beauty, of that power, of that consciousness.” -Nassim Haramein

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