The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A comfort to me during the pandemic

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A comfort to me during the pandemic

I got this book as a gift a long time ago, around 2017. I only read one chapter during a difficult time in 2018. However, I started re-reading this book when quarantine started in March of 2020. It was a great companion to me during such a challenging time. Some tears were shed as I went through the chapters. However, the chapter that still resonated with me the most Chapter 13: Be Who You Is! since it was about vocation. "God desires for you to become who you are meant to be." The Salt Doll parable at the end of the chapter still moved me the same way it moved me in 2018. "Now I know what I am." This line also struck me: “In Ignatian spirituality nothing is hidden away; everything can be opened up as a way of finding God. ‘God must be found in everything,’ as Nadal noted, summarizing Ignatius.” I wrote this in my journal, in response, last June 26: "With each student and task, I touch God's face." These are such difficult times but this book reminded me to look beyond the immediate suffering and see the eternal in each moment that I encounter.

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#12 of 36: A Much-Beloved Companion, a Review of Mindfulness on the Go by Jan Chozen Bays

Mindfulness on the Go (Shambhala Pocket Classic): Simple Meditation Practices You Can Do Anywhere by Jan Chozen Bays
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book on a whim because it was so small and so promising (the keywords were: simple, do anywhere). It was true to its word. This will not be the first time I will read this book. This was actually my "banyo" read (sorry, TMI!) for the whole of August and September. My favorite practices were: 1) using my left hand (non-dominant hand) to brush my teeth (that was all I could manage for August), 2) feeling the bottoms of my feet. It's very interesting how relaxing it can be to put one's awareness in one's feet. We are all so used to centering our attention in the head or the heart (or even the breath), it's very refreshing to feel one's feet entirely. 3) When eating, just eat. It's very easy to use eating time as a time for talking or doing something else (like reading or browsing through Facebook!). Eating to just eat helped me pay attention to being full. 4) Just three breaths. This is a very easy mindfulness exercise. It just takes the space of three breaths and it can instantly bring me into the present. 5) Being present to the temperature. I notice that when I feel the slightest discomfort, I try to change the temperature (put on the fan or put on aircon) but actually adjusting to the temperature is a good mindfulness exercise. After a few minutes, it's not as bad as one thinks. This book will be a much-beloved companion in the future.

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The Key To The End of Suffering: A Book Review of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book came to me at the right time. If I had attempted to read this book a few years earlier I would not have been able to appreciate it. This book accompanies a full flowering of one's openness to experiencing enlightenment.

It's taken me a while to get here. I've attended many seminars, I've read many books, and I've practiced yoga (hatha, bikram and raja). I'm grateful for the journey. These were the perfect precedents and accompaniments to reading The Power of Now. If the window was partially open before, now the light is shining because the structure was an illusion.

After reading this book, I now see how consciousness is coming alive through me. There is absolutely nothing to resist, nothing to deny. "It's about realizing that there are no problems. Only situations - to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the 'isness' of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with." When I read that, I was totally blown away. I realized the truth of it. Not an intellectual truth but a truth emanating from within. This is it. This is the indestructible core of who I am. I am no-thing and everything. How beautiful is that?

This moment of seeing could not have come at a better time. It was a gift waiting to be invited in.

I do see how this book cannot be shoved into anyone's face for "therapy." This book will arrive when one seeks it. It is a gateway to the end of suffering. But only if it is accepted...not mentally but with one's whole being.

Through this book, I saw that there is no need to wait for any Heaven. Heaven is Now. Right now. And death is nothing to be feared at all. It is one more form of awakening. My context has totally shifted and the quality of what I do is suffused with care, love, and awareness.

I recommend this book to all those who are seeking to end any kind of suffering. The other side of the coin too: all those who are seeking peace.

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ModPo 2013 #20 Beauty in the Broken: On Williams' "Between Walls"

Image from www.123rf.com.

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

In which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle

- William Carlos Williams

-----------------------------------

Finding beauty in what is broken is really a modernist impulse. You won't really find it in traditional poetry. I find in the repeated mention of broken glass in Williams' poems an attempt to really flesh out this image of brokenness. One could read it as that: something is simply broken. But he imbues it with the color of growth, with the color of spring. In this poem, the broken green glass is the only thing that shines. 

I can almost imagine Dr. Williams leaning over the balcony of the back wings of the hospital looking for something to pin his focus on. He is looking for his focal point of meditation. And there, among the cinders, something mimics the stars. It is only a broken green bottle but it is a revelation. It is a moment of epiphany. 

This takes me back to my ars poetica. Poetry is a conversation but it is also a shared glimpse into something. It may be something new. It may be something beautiful. It is a view that prompts the writer to take the reader's hand. "Come, look!" the writer says. It will be worth it. No need to look up at the stars. It reminds me of Stevens' line on the thin men of Haddam. Do you not see what is at your feet? Stay grounded, here, between the hospital walls. Look down at the ground and find among the ashes what shines. It is an invitation to find in the ordinary, in the mundane, in the dullness, even in the ugliness...a brilliant moment to keep. 

Poetry as Life

I just got this in my inbox: Poetry's a life, not necessarily a living. I couldn't agree more. Poetry is a way of seeing. Just this morning I was thinking about the relevance of poetry. I once wrote an article about it: The Relevance of Poetry in Today's World on Suite 101. Poetry's beauty really depends on the beholder. But it's true that there aren't many readers of poetry books or of poetry in general. It's not Fifty Shades of Gray. It won't give a writer the success of a Harry Potter. But it does provide many things for the writer.

What interested me in the article from Poetry.About.Com was the way it distinguished a life from a living. A living is the way one survives or even thrives. But a life is what we truly make. It is what "the living" is for. And poetry does answer that requirement.

The life of a poet is a life of epiphanies, a life of sudden, striking realizations. It is a life dedicated to seeing beyond what is obvious or ordinary. It is a life lived groping for words to paint joy or grief or love. As Socrates says, "the unexamined life is not worth living." And that is where poetry has stepped in for me. It is framing my life for examination.

There might be a misconception that poets write when struck by inspiration. I don't think this is true. Well, there *are* moments when I cannot help but write. (There is a really great description of the muse in Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk. ) For me, it is a discipline. It is a way of distilling raw experience and turning it into something that helps me make sense of it, that inspires me, or that helps me see something that I didn't see before. In a way, I find that writing poetry is a meditation. And meditation is deliberate, it is a practice. It is not something you do when it strikes your fancy. It is clearing one's noisy mind and connecting with the numinous while still perfectly grounded on earth.

So, here is my invitation: live the poetic life. Hold your days in your hands. They will slip by forever if you do not glimpse the shining moment.

To end, I offer you a line from one of the most beautiful poems in the bible (I got this translation directly from Jeanette Winterson's description of Sonali Deraniyagala's book, Wave): "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it."

That can only be said in a poem.

NaPoWriMo#23: The Breath

NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.

Below is an attempt at a triolet, an eight-line poem in iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme ABaAabAB. The first, fourth and seventh lines are identical and the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Because it was very gong-like and I can't, for the life of me, write a playful satirical poem which is supposed to be one of the best contexts for a triolet (now let me work on that...) all I could think of were meditation gongs. So here it is... a meditation poem that sounds like a melodic mantra. 

The Breath

by Justine C. Tajonera

The breath begins the source of things,
it comes from deeply quiet song.
Faintly, you will hear that it sings.
The breath, it is the source of things.
At first you will not know it sings
but the sound is clear as a gong.
The breath begins the source of things,
it comes from deeply quiet song.