Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same."
- Author unknown
"Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand."
- Emily Kimbrough
Posts
What a perfect drawing for Monika’s birthday week! The roundness of it. Notice that most beautiful, most true center of the relational universe, that space we wrap around each other in the most sacred of ways. We must understand, that space is empty and, in that emptiness, abundant and rife with love. I always find Monika in that space, the impermanence and permanence of her. She is the roundness of compassion cycling and motioning through our lives and no doubt leaving “footprints on our hearts.” I came from the city to visit Monika and Suse in New Paltz, the center of the universe, I’ve heard:
ReplyDeleteThe crow flies from New York City
Straight to the round sky of New Paltz
Somewhere in the center of the Universe;
400 million years ago just west of the Hudson
And east of the shining waters of Minnewaska
(The Indian name given), this seed of dharma
Was planted; the Lenape Indians called these mountain
Ridges of Minnewaska, 2000 feet up, Shawangunk
Meaning large white rocks, thinking they were the sky --
God’s great round eggs; but the story is older than that
As all round things are.
On that day we stood on time, we stood
On history, we stood on the skin of sand millions
Of years deep, and risen up out of the Wisconsin,
The glacier 120,000 years before floeing through
The valley called Hudson, the Bight watershed—
Before the screech of the hawk circling overhead
Or the honk and black fluttering of the duck below.
That was one of thousands of moments purifying karma in the presence of Monika, who inspires us all to carve our own paths
As we’re following one truth: love. And we can embrace that love in the everydayness of our lives and the world surround. As long as we understand that relationship is the key ingredient to that love.
Quite a few years ago, when in mourning, I found a way to share its deepest meanings with Monika. We would sit on Sunday mornings and birds would be singing outside the window, as if to remind us that “we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand." In that mourning I found Monika’s prayerful hand and song. She is a bird. And, like the bird, in the impermanence of things, in the coming and going of change, I have learned to just let go and fly. It is in the letting go that time, friendship, and love are neverending:
And you’re in mourning
And a Buddhist friend, as deep
As she is light, finds in her chant
The meaning of your suffering;
And you hear the swallow of her throat
as you, along with her, chant your
om mani padme hum, and the hum
around the tongue of wisdom
turns the padme of perseverance
into wine, as the wistful murmurs
of prayer step slow and almost
unencumbered. There is time
there is time there is time
"A monk asked:
ReplyDelete'What is Buddha?'
The Master replied:
'Who are you?'"
- Zen Mondo
Thank you for all your loving words and poetic incantations. You make me blush, and so we continue with a big smile on the ever winding path to more smiles. Amitofu :)
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
ReplyDelete— Dr. Seuss
I can't top that :)
ReplyDelete