Sunset sky from our deck
During this string of stay-at-home days I find myself thinking back to the advice of a spiritual teacher I worked with in the 90’s. She used to say, “The most important thing you can do is to…
Fill Up and Hang Around
She was speaking in a spiritual sense, not in the sense of consuming or taking in all you can and then just lazing about. Today, I’d like to share with you two poems that speak of how I fill up and hang around.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.— Wendell Barry
The more time I spend in nature, gardening, and creating, the less I need outside entertainment. I am an avid reader but I’ve even been reading less than I used to.
How to Be A Poet
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.— Wendell Barry
I still get stressed and mindless all too often, but I find that the more I fill up and hang around, the more I’m able to enjoy my life whatever is happening. Here’s hoping that you too can fill up and hang around.
May you walk in beauty.
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