Hari Om

We have been here all along. This old road. I think we forget that. I think we forget that we are not “new” or “old” but “always”. When we are enter into the conflicts within and without, we can feel so isolated, or so aligned, depending on how we can open our hearts in that moment.

When I am in my wounding, everything hurts. When I am in my healing, everything is medicine.

It is from this place that we can see, in any moment, how our heart is opening or closing. All along, though, we are on that road we have always been on, and eventually it will bring us right back around. This means we are working along a lineage of all of the love and the pain that we ever have had. We cannot bury the past, because it is our history. The difference is the past happened then, and our history is always coming through us.

bell hooks brings us into what that looks like in the place from which she comes.

Appalachian Elegy 15. bell hooks pink and white oleander not native to Appalachian ground still here lies years and years of poison rebel flags heritage and hate in the war to fight hunger and ongoing loss there are no sides there is only the angry mind of hurt bringing death too soon destroying all our dreams of union

Thanks, again, bell hooks for that wonderful breath of grief and love and memory.

We also heard from Padraig O Tuama:

Men in a war Padraig O Tuama Men in a war prefer the talk of politics than of pain.

In many ways, we are all in this war we have agreed to inside of our heart and minds, I think. And when we are embroiled in that war, it is the weapons of pretext and emotional dysregulation that we use the most.

And finally, we have a great love popem from Ellen Bass, a prayer.

Prayer Ellen Bass Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. My lover watched me ascend from the subway like I was an underground spring breaking through. I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. I’m tired of the song the rain sings in June, the earth, her ornate crown of trees spiking up from her loamy head. There are things I wanted, like everyone. But to this angel of wishes I’ve worshiped so long, I ask now to admit the world as it is.

Ah, yes! The best of prayer. To learn to really truly love the world as it is.

All In Love,

Michael