“Years ago in Vietnam, people used to take a small boat out into a lotus pond and put some tea leaves into an open lotus flower. The flower would close in the evening and perfume the tea during the night. In the early morning, when the dew was still on the leaves, you would return with your friends to collect the tea. On your boat was everything you needed: fresh water, a stove to heat it, teacups and a teapot. Then, in the beautiful light of the morning, you prepared tea right there, enjoying the whole morning drinking tea on the lotus pond.”
— Thich Nhat Hahn, Creating True Peace, p. 67-68
There is something very important about having a practice like this that both expands time and connects one to the land. I do something like this around here on Bowen Island, off the west coast of Canada, where my kids and I head out to the beach or into the forest to walk and eat from the land: seaweed or berries or fern roots.
But what can compare with drinking tea perfumed by a lotus flower?
My friend Toke Paludan Moller gave me a huge gift at the Practice of Peace conference. He issued a challenge and an invitation to work at a deep, deep level. Since I heard him speak these words, my work has changed measurably.
After the conference was over I asked if he could remember what he said and asked him if he could write it down. He did his best to put the ideas in an email, which I have recast as the poem that it is.
it is time!the training time is over
for those of us who can hear the call
of the heart and the timesmy real soul work
has begun on the next level
for me at leastcourage is
to do what calls me
but I may be afraidwe need to work together
in a very deep sense
to open and hold spaces
fields
spheres of energy
in which our
and other people’s
transformation can occurnone of us can do it alone
the warriors of joy are gathering
to find each other
to train together
to do some good work
from the heart with no attachment
and throw it
in the riverno religion, no cult, no politics
just flow with life itself as it
unfolds in the now…what is my Work?
what is our Work?
I can’t believe how little play the story of the Georgian velvet revolution is getting in the mainstream media. Certainly in Canada the major news outlets are paying it some heed, but this should be a huge global story. Over at netvironments, Laura has been tracking a few of the critical developments, as the people of a country calmly and effectively take their government back.
This comes to me as I have just cracked Jonathan Schell’s The Unconquerable World, and so it becomes the next chapter.
Hard on the heels of Thich Naht Hahn’s advice on mindful consumption comes this poem which appeared today at Poetry Daily:
On First Looking into Heaney’s Beowulf
Anne MacKay
Anne MacKay
A bunch of high class thugs
returns in a golden cloud of
exhaust fumes and dust, helmets
polished bright as maseratis,
spears and chain mail clashing,
enters to a riot of cheers.
The king’s daughter and
groupies serve wine,
dripping meat and beer
while they boast and yell,
unable to shut up, telling
how the blood spurted
like a chain-saw massacre,
how sword thrusts blasted
guts all over the heath.
Then the big guy shouts how,
at great cost, he hacked the
slavering homo-monster and its
disgusting mother to pieces,
brought back the slimy head and
taloned arm. Roars of laughter.
Meanwhile, the bard, who’s
no dope and knows on which
side his meat is seasoned,
commits to memory every heroic,
bloody word; great deeds to
inspire a millennium of brutal
bullet-pocked worlds to come.
Let me be the first to welcome Ashley Cooper’s weblog to the blogosphere. She’s called it “easily amazed”, which should describe her readers as much as herself…
Ashley is involved in the Open Space community worldwide and is also a constant presence at the Integral Naked discussion forums, which is a home for conversation on Ken Wilber, and others with an interest in trans-personal psychology. After communication back and forth on the OSLIST, I finally had the privilege of finally meeting her in person and talking at length about a whole bunch of issues from compassion to invitation to homeschooling to prisons at the Practice of Peace conference a couple of weeks ago.
Glad to welcome another Open Space weblog to the world!