Check out my new 'World Reflections" Section
Interesting stories and anecdotes that reach into insights I have gained abroad.
Healing Grief, On-line Course, by Terry Douglas.
You are invited to participate in an 8-
week, on-line course, entitled
Healing Grief Page that captures a journey of healing following deep loss.
Letters From Kabul
Posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006
The following is taken from a letter I wrote from Kabul in 2005 where I served for several months.
At lunch today I shared with my Sufi friend this quote from Tao Te Ching –
One person embraces the flow of time, and let’s the passing years bring new wisdom. This person becomes a sage. Another person sometimes follows the unfolding path, but keeps drawing back into familiar habits. This person struggles all his life. The third person rejects the path of wisdom altogether and clings tenaciously to youth, ridiculing the aged and vowing “never to get old.” Bitterness lurks just around the corner.
In our continuing dialogue, my friend explained the Sufi four steps to illumination: 1.We see from behind a wall smoke rising and speculate that there is a fire and someone is cooking over it. 2. We climb the wall and see the flames. 3. We draw near and feel warmth. 4. We enter the fire and are burned and only then do we understand truly the meaning of fire.
Applying the wisdom my friend conveyed to me, I shared a discovery of sorts when I realized that Donna’s loss deep down — so deep down — affected me so that I don’t ever want to lose anyone again. Yet that is the fire that I have entered realizing that I must let go and accept loss as the core issue it is for me. After a pause, my friend said that he hopes never to enter that fire.
On a lighter note — almost — he shared the wisdom of Hafiz, another Sufi master, about to understand life we must sit at the very edge of stream that represents the stream of life. We must watch it go by, not attempting to divert the stream, just to be in the Now and observe it, and in being so we reach a timeless and space-less dimension that is eternal.
So much for my light moments in the mountains of Afghanistan where I [...]
Bird Hunting On The Bay
Posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006
For those of us who grieve, it is sometimes surprising how that emotion of loss sneaks up on us when we least expect it. So it is that emotion I have tried to capture in the following poem. The slipper scuffs referred to belong to my wife of 39 years.
Bird Hunting On The Bay
Usually the silence at dawn
Is a special time for me to treasure
Peace, quiet – a tranquility of sorts.
But there are also times,
Impossible to anticipate,
When memories flood through
The gap of time as this morning -
When I hear most clearly her slippers scuff
The tile floor leading from the bedroom.
Instead of her footfall, beyond myself,
In counter-balance, the muffled shots of bird hunters
Sound on the bay beyond my home.
Impossible for me to anticipate
These occurrences that serve to
Enhance, attune life listening
To a level deep and joined within, and
I return to a region of the heart –
Where each breath is distinguished, as
My fingers seek to capture this moment
Before life activity and action once more
Gain momentum in the gathering light.
Might I argue that it is Now
We are refreshed, nourished, and recommitted
To our journey – but to where is the question?
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No Choice
Posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006
When I accept what is — even in loss – puzzling, if not distracting, alternatives are reduced and life becomes more simple — more manageable. Many years ago I trekked with a friend in western Nepal at the same time Peter Matthissen travelled in Nepal. He later wrote his award winning Snow Leopard. The following quote from that book has proved invaluable to me in my tumultuous journey, and I hope serves to help you reduce those distracting alternatives in your lives as well.
The Lama of the Crystal Monastery appears to be a very happy man, and yet I wonder how he feels about his isolation in the silences of Tsakang, which he has not left in eight years now and, because of his legs, may never leave again. Since Jang-bu seems uncomfortable with the Lama or with himself or perhaps with us, I tell him not to inquire on this point if it seems to him impertinent, but after a moment Jang-bu does so. And this holy man of great directness and simplicity, big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way at Jang-bu’s question. Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity, or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, “Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!
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Will You Tell Me?
Posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006
In stillness we discover an ageless, youthful quality that I have tried to capture in the following poem:
Will You Tell Me?
Will you tell me
How old I am –
I mean in years?
You see I get confused
When I catch her smile
From across the room, or
Describe to five-year olds
How I got the scar
Above my nose, or
Walk – not run –
Along the beach
The surfers far out.
There’s a hint or two,
But I need confirmation
Lest I do something rash –
Like hang-glide
Off the cliff toward
The sea at dawn,
Race an eleven-year old
Down the field
To score a goal,
Trek a glacier field
To a base camp
In the Himalayas.
Have you noticed
Lines etched on face and hands
Define an ageless soul
Long patient to emerge
In word, gesture, laughter,
Tears and silence?
Please tell me
How old I am,
She’s still smiling.
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Insurmountable Chasms
Posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
In Rule #4 I mention David Whyte. Today, I would like to provide lengthy quote taken from The Heart Aroused. He is on a trek alone in the Himalayas.
On the afternoon of the second day, exhilarated by the clear, thin air and the ever-nearing white peaks rising around me, I turned sharply from an eroded cliff path high above an immense black gorge and found myself on a grassy shelf where the path turned from the roack wall. . . [T]o my utter dismay, the bridge itself was broken. The taut metal cables on one side of the narrow footbridge had snapped and the old rotted planks that made up its floor had concertined into a crazy jumble in the middle. Looking down through the gaps, I could see the dizzying three- or four-hundred-foot drop into the dark lichened gorge below. . .I stopped right by the every entrance step to the bridge, calculated the movements I would have to make . . . made as if to go, hesitated, then immediately retreated to a safely anchored sun-lit rock to sit it out. . . After an hour had passed, I had finally faced up to defeat . . . As I reached for my pack, I noticed the silhouette of a small but strangely shaped figure shuffing into view along the same cliff path that had brought me to the bridge. I saw her but she did nto see me. An old bent woman, carrying an enormously wide-mouthed dung basket on her back, she saw nothing but the ground she was so intent on searching. . . She shuffled, head bent, toward me, and seeing at the last the two immense booted feet of a westerner, looked up in surprise. Her face wrinkled with humor as she registered her surprise, and in the greeting customary throughout Nepal, she bowed her head toward me with raised hands, saying, “Namaste” . . . [S]he went straight across that shivering chaos of wood and broken steel in one [...]
