FORERUNNERS

by MICHAEL JAMES

APRIL 2015

Lame, in April and Orion overhead,

 We forerunners who were to make straight The Way,

aren’t doing the job; we’re not even finding 

a river for the baptists.

        Or if any of us do find one,

   it’s polluted and catches fire at the burning descent.

  

 And those who should be preparing the children,

              (Having themselves not a clue),

being possessed only with the urgency of keeping up

                with the  latest screen fiddling,

(As if that were anything more than serving the machine),

              make its fodder easier to digest.

That one baptist, John, did more than all of us can do together, 

as did Pythagoras and the Gnostics burned at stake.

We’re not inspired, don’t breathe enough the holy fire,

      can’t see Blake’s metaphors.

Our wills are dulled by comfort and doubt, comfort, and doubt

that comes from too much trepidation and self love to catch the nearest way. 

Doubting, we immobilize ourselves...

Becoming the Sweeneys of the night,

      we miss that final meeting in the fading light.

Doubting, we tell ourselves we don’t know enough,

as if knowledge alone could ever be sufficient

  to spur a man to action. 

      It takes inspiration,

the breathing in of heavenly fire to melt the fat lodged in our veins,

to heat our blood so it flows in the right direction,

towards the heart, not round it, 

and lets us move.

    Why don’t we catch fire? 

            Why are we simply empty men

       Who serve only in the ante-room of our times?

It’s due to doubt and comfort; and we won’t give up either.

  They help us avoid choosing. 

They rationalize away the existential moment 

             so we never see it coming.

We continue our insipid half-lives, stumbling along,

never approaching the altar for the final blessing,

        the eucharist that is the be-all here.

  In short we are afraid we’ll have to give up 

   the hard-earned identity we think of as 

ourselves.

        Of course we will, I want to shout! 

            That is what our life’s about!

WRITING POETRY

by Lucille Hamilton

2015

Grab the words as they flee in the darkness
as you try to describe the beauty of the star overhead
or the wind that won't stand waiting as you search
for a pencil.

Why even try,
when words are earthbound and cannot take the leap
that even approximates the feelings.

It is impossible;
you have to make that effort, nevertheless,
in order to honor
all the gasping beauty of this
magnificent world.

Sometimes you have an opening with the words
that,
when they are put on paper,
you do not want them read aloud -
they sound better to the mind's eye
if read in quiet silence.

Search in your life's experience
for the right - just the right word,

leather-bound somewhere in your vocabulary.

Being Born Avocado Green - Joan Shepherd

My father was in the military, a General in fact. He was quite a ladies man and virile as I have so many brothers and sisters and even cousins, I hardly recognize some of them. I am one of the oldest, older in fact than anyone expected so that some of the family thought I’d be gone long ago with maybe some of my parts being donated to science. Not science really, but used for something, just the same.

My mother came from a very large family scattered all over the US  and the world. Very influential, too. She had a mass of hair that kind of stood out from her head like curly straws. The Electric family was admired and when she and Dad had so many of us, they had to get more space and found a nice place that would keep us comfortable until another family kind of adopted us. The new family had to pay before we could go with them.  I guess it was for taking care of us. The place we stayed was called Sears and they are all over the map too, because our family is so huge.

Some of my younger brothers and sisters are quite fancy with shiny chrome and big windows so they can see really well but carry a big price for their adoption. And others are less dramatic, mostly white and without a window.  I am quite proud of being a charming avocado green which was quite the fashion some time ago. At the beginning, I was a most handsome, shiny avocado green with a simple black panel with only two dials. Why do you really need anything more than two…one for time and one for temperature. I believe simplicity is the key to longevity.  My parent’s names were stamped on me like a tattoo. “General Electric” so all would know I came from a good family.

After I left Sears, I stayed with a family for about 10 years but they started thinking I wasn’t big enough for their growing family. That was in Redlands, CA, and there isn’t a Sears store in that town. They had to look all over and the price of these younger start-ups was shocking but they found a place where they could pay something every month. So guess what happened to me? I was put outside, on the grass with some old vases, books, phonograph records, even some chairs. They put up a sign, nothing like the Sears sign, as it said Yard Sale. A couple who happened to be running down the street, passed by the house, saw the sign, and then me, still looking good but a little rust now appearing on my legs and I still had the scar on my right side where some kid was playing with a wheelbarrow and ran right into me. Anyway, this couple came back with some money, not very much, maybe $50, and my adopted mother said to them, “Now don’t turn around and sell this because you could get more money. It’s a good one.” They took me around the corner to their house where I sat next to a tired Frigidaire washing machine that died in a couple of years.

These new people were good to me. They did not have a big family, I only got used about once a week, and in good weather, clothes were hung outside.  After a couple of years, they took me on a long trip north to Sonoma, CA.  I didn’t get enough notice we were moving and I had to pee and was embarrassed when water leaked out of a hose of sorts and ran down the floor of the truck.

I am still with that couple. I’ll admit my avocado green gives away my age but I have been with them 25 years.  Just imagine, that long for only $50! My hose, a big fat round one with ridges, leads right outside so if I fart, nobody even knows. I am beginning to moan a bit now and sometimes my insides sound like a metal orchestra but I have endured. I never expected to be functioning this long and I’m sure my parents names on my front face, General Electric, have given me good genes.

I wonder if they will sell my parts or have a garage sale when I can’t take one more load of wash to dry. Surely there is someone who would love to have an avocado green dryer.

Someone Left  Behind an Enlightened Gaze - Noris Binet

Some one left behind a penetrating gaze from which very few are able to escape. Very few are able to look into this gaze and stay the same. Somehow most of the people that have stumbled across this thousand-year-old stare have been raptured forever.  I never knew, that just by coming across the eyes of a sage on a picture, one’s heart could be taken. 

My first trip to India was full of excitement, illusions, desires; waiting for miracles to happen to take me all the way into what I had heard was possible, spiritual enlightenment! I had no real understanding of what enlightenment was about, but the ego was seduced by everything that was for sale in the spiritual marketplace: fulfillment, being eternally in peace, rising above human limitations and an ongoing party with the divine. Of course within this cocktail of wanting there was an authentic hidden desire for truth.

How foolish I was, thinking that the mind and the ego could attain what is only possible when they are both gone--even for a split second--but gone. 

During my time in India I was surprised by the unfolding that took place.  I was ripped-off of everything that I thought I knew and was connected to. My ego-ic structure was shaken, torn apart, jolted and broken everywhere! There wasn’t a place to hide as I faced my assumptions and mistakes, my judgments and desires.  At times I found myself on the ground under the rain pleading to outside forces for help when that could only come from within.  The pay off was precious, because after so much noise by the cathartic kicking and screaming of the ego,  I was able to catch a glimpse of silence from which I didn’t ever want to depart.

During my second trip to India, I got lost in my search, though I had touched the profound silence that I thought I could keep forever,  I could not keep it.   I totally failed the Guru that I was with! I was unable to be a good follower, a disciplined student and didn’t know where to turn. 

I  became disenchanted with the path I had taken and couldn’t make sense of anything. I just knew that it was over for me, that there was no clear direction to go in my exploration of what I just had glimpsed again.

One day a monk from the ashram where I was staying that knew what was happening within me, broke the rule that no one was supposed to be reading books and he  sneaked one to my room and said, “take a look!”  I had no idea what the book was about, but hiding from everyone, I opened it to a page upon which was the image of an old man looking directly at me.  The only thing that I could do was to look back at him because something broke open within me when I recognized that was what I had been looking for. 

That was the real thing, unmistakably, not a doubt anywhere within myself.  I was struck by the simple, naked look of the beautiful innocence and grace that emanated through his gaze.  There was something else happening than just looking at a picture in a book: Those eyes were alive,  transmitting truthfully the essence of what I only can call… emptiness… pure humble presence.

The gaze was limitless, open ended  penetrating through me like the wind, weightless and free. The transparency of his light didn’t allow any thought to arise, but took everything away leaving only tears dropping from this profound transmission where the truth that I had been looking for was revealed. From that moment I was enraptured by the gaze’s transmission that some one left behind and by a deep longing for what had awakened within me through this gaze.

Who was he? Where was he? To my disappointment he already had attained  Mahat Samadhi,  no longer in the flesh.  When I was told that I could go to the ashram that he left behind, I didn’t even try. It was too late, I thought. He is gone!

Those were my last few days in India, but this time I left with a deep longing in my heart -- a longing that I had never felt so deeply before.  What I was feeling nothing could satisfy  except the truth that permeated through the luminescent, empty gaze of the sage. 

Coming back home had a different flavor than before. I had been profoundly touched by my glimpse of silence during my first trip to India, but this time it was a full picture of what was possible in this human incarnation.  As I began to find out more about him, I received the only thing that apart from his gaze was left behind, the question: “Who am I?” “What am I?”

A question that when asked silently and being fully present can dissolve the mind. When the mind stops, what is left is what is always present and eternally alive revealed freely to anyone.
 
Finally I was able to understand who he was. He transcended his transient human personality and was named Ramana: “That which is at the Core of all Being.”

Return to the Ocean - Robyn Makaruk

Return to the Ocean

I awoke to the full moon
Beaming a pathway
Across the wood floor
 The whales were calling me
Plaintive, unrelenting,
“Come, come with us
We will take you on a journey
And show you from where you came
You, Capricorn, the Sea Goat
 Know that you came from among us
And as your life on land is
Nearing its end
It will be soon time to
Return to this Ocean of Livingness
Come join us.”
I walked naked, to the shore
And swam out to a joyful embrace. 

Robyn Makaruk, April 2015

 

Connections - Michael James

CONNECTIONS

by Michael James, April 2015

Feet are all right,
                But of what use are they if eyes can’t direct them
                Or brain keep them going straight?
                Knees still work
                And what of that if hips can’t keep them moving?
                Hands can clutch
                But here’s the catch,
                Back can’t carry them.
       
                 Is the mind still on?
                Does it yet light up
                As good food comes to table?
                Or when lovely lasses shake their tresses?
                When thrushes sing
                Or children play?

                Of what use is any good thing
                If it’s all alone, with
                No connections or directions,
                No place it can call home?

                Imagine all objects discreet,
                No messy relationships trailing,
                Not a single work in progress,
                All matters and scores settled, completed,
                Projects ended, promises kept,
                Ambitions fulfilled,
                Dreams realized....

                Yes, life would shudder
                Like a train slamming on the brakes,
                Locked up wheels skidding on the rails,
                Each carriage banging into the one before,
                Snapping linkage with the one behind,
                          All down the line
                    Connections failing, then
                       The train, with an angry
                            hiss of escaping steam.
                             stopping.

The Day the Circus Folded

The petite lady’s sequined bustier flashed in the spotlight as she stood barefoot, knees flexed, astride two galloping white stallions. It was a stunning sight. The crowd murmured as the three beings, linked together by trust as much as gravity, circled the ring. Suddenly, the ringmaster cracked his whip. There was a flash, bang, cloud of smoke.

It had been an illusion. It was Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, on two jet-black bulls. He was nude, save for a thick belt with an enormous gold buckle on which was embossed, in Helvetica bold italic, the word “greed.” The frenzied romp of the animals caused the various parts of his manhood to swing wildly. The ringmaster, Alan Greenspan, was fully clothed—a black tailcoat and trousers with red, white and blue stripes. He cracked the whip again.

The bulls accelerated. Their eyes widened and saliva sloshed from their gaping mouths. The crowd chanted, “faster, faster,” the loudest cheering from the ringside seats, occupied by members of the House and Senate. Lobbyists had a standing order with Ticketmaster for every performance. There was also a section with a banner overhead: RESERVED FOR THE SUPREME COURT, and in small print Corporations are people, get used to it.

The President, from his box seat, jumped up and shouted “Bring them on. Go bulls. Go you beauties!” Then he turned to Laura and said “It’s a great show but would be a damn site better if they were Texas Longhorns.” There was another flash and more smoke which, when it cleared, revealed two brown bulls with horns, seven feet tip to tip. 

Suddenly, without warning—at least to most observers—the Longhorns veered sharply to the right, jumped the ring’s small curb, and headed for the open flap of the circus tent. A horn nicked a tent pole, bending it. This pulled on a support rope, which pulled on another pole. Soon the tent was, in slow motion, collapsing around the crowd, from whom emanated a forlorn “Nooooo,” except those in the cheap-seat top rows, who were slow to discern what was happening.

As the Longhorns tore through the exit, Paulson yelled “The economy is healthy and robust,” then he leaned to the side and puked. He was loosing his bearings as they galloped off the circus grounds and onto the streets of Manhattan, streets now renamed. They crossed the intersection of Lehman and Bankruptcy streets, ran down what was formerly Avenue of the Americas, now Avenue of Credit Default Swaps. But they finally reached a familiar one—Broadway. By now the beasts ran at a frenzied pace, passing cabs and city buses, careening left and right, upsetting sidewalk vendors and breaking storefront windows. It was a nightmare. At 42^nd Street the theatre marquees trumpeted the latest offerings: AIG, the Musical; Too Big to Fail; Morgan and Sterns, a Love Story; and the risqué Fannie and Freddie Go Down on America.

Finally, they jerked to the left at Wall Street, crashed through the doors of the Stock Exchange, and collapsed in a heap on the trading floor just as the closing bell rang. Then, like the slippers of the Bad Witch in the Wizard of Oz, their carcasses shriveled and disappeared, leaving Paulson standing, legs splayed, mouth agape but no sound emerging. The hall fell silent. A snow of shredded mortgage loans began gently falling from the ceiling. The room chilled. One of the floor brokers yelled “What the hell’s happening?” No one answered.