DECEMBER 8: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating  

Thursday 8th DECEMBER

Day 8 

Very little grows on jagged rock.

Be ground. Be crumbled.

So wildflowers will come up

where you are.

You have been stoney for too many years.

Try something different.

Surrender.

by Rumi

                                 

 Surrender . Be at peace. How many times do we feel power force strength are the way forward. We shoulf say every morning ‘SURRENDER’

The philosophers know that simply being tough enough to subdue an adversary– physically, emotionally, verbally— does not guarantee peace. It only assures me that the situation will continue long after the initial struggle ends. “Soft is stronger than hard,”Hermann Hesse wrote, “water stronger than rock, love stronger than force.”

Christmas parties are the thing this week. One special group the Women Writers Network WWN met as it has every year (weather permitting) Under the Magnolia tree and we met  – some of us for the first time since covid. We shared poems that made us laugh, we popped a few bottles of Champas and shared  special treats and chocolate,  Later the same day in the evening we met the Norm’s Poetry group and again shared  our work and a party. 

 

DECEMBER 7: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating

 Wednesday 7th DECEMBER

Day 7

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 

and rightdoing there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

Early this morning I refound a poem titled Loud by poet laureate  (2009-2019) Carol Ann Duffy. It begins with a quote from the news,  violent enough that today they would add the disclaimer if this has disturbed viewers they can ring Lifeline.  

A woman screams so loud her voice  rips out of throat like a firework. It responds to global conflict and suffering, shouts in its effort to get control,  in the spit on the tip of her tongue . . . it roars,

bawls, howls, shieks  and those in the news cowered in the noise.

I reflect on how daily news drums into our lounge rooms, fills our personal space with impending doom, darkens our minds, bombards our hearts and it is easy to get caught in the hype that peace is impossible .

This can be depressing, deflating and our memory can be smothered. It is easy to forget 

 to look for the light

 be in the light  

be the light 

knowing the darker the world 

the brighter will  be our light

as we move beyond the wrongdoing  and rightdoing

into the field

 where WE ARE PEACE.

Finding Zen and the Guesthouse by Rumi

 

Coming to learn to be fully human consider my body a guesthouse

When you breathe deeply and go inward,
make space for whatever wants to come to visit your guesthouse today.
What do you notice rising up in you?
What could it be helping you accept or understand?
What has your grief taught you?

The Guesthouse 

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


Jalaluddin Rumi

from Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)