Archive
A poem for a rainy day: Inner Practice
It is a dreary day here in Maryland. It is dark and gloomy with rain coming down steadily. It is a good day to practice!
Inner Practice
The breath begins with emptiness.
The inner curve of the belly
Is a waiting, a pause,
An anticipation of the new.
The breath proceeds with a rise.
The curve of the belly fills with
An action, expansion;
Excitement lifts on an inner note.
The breath rises on its inner path.
The spine straightens and lengthens,
Action peaking, seeking the crown,
Expanding outward and upward, reaching.
The breath follows the inner curve.
The skull bone directs its passage,
Downward through the hollows of the face,
Ending in the empty space guarded by teeth.
The breath remains in this inner space.
This is a waiting, a pause.
Inaction holding, resting in peace,
A suspension of the doing – just being.
The breath descends from its quiet rest.
The inner curve of the chest opens
With soft action, a contraction,
A sinking downward and inward.
The breath expels what no longer serves.
The inner curve of the belly forms,
Compressing, flattening, sending out
The last of the used, the spent, the old.
The breath ends in emptiness,
The inner curve of the belly restored.
Resting, contemplating, anticipating
The inner practice of breathing.
©2017 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
New Year’s Eve: Out with the Old!
One of the teachers I am working with has asked us, as part of our year-end review, to release all the old habits, feelings, beliefs, thoughts that are not serving us. I’ve spent this week reviewing the year, in fact the past nine years, to dredge up and lever out the old “stuff” that’s “down there!” As another of my teachers would say, “it is time to metabolize that “stuff” and turn it into compost for new growth!”
2016 is a 9-year, a year for completion. 2017 is a 1-year, a year for new beginnings! Today is a great day to release the old to make room for the new.
Here is my poem to reflect on this process; a riff on the five elements of Classical Chinese Medicine and Philosophy:
Release—
Anger through forgiveness:
Grow through the lessons,
Rise with the lengthening days,
Draw on all the resources,
Create your own destiny!
Anxiety through surrender:
Expand through the lessons,
Allow engaging relationships,
Mature in thoughts and actions,
Manifest inalienable joy!
Worry through service:
Serve from the lessons,
Share from the heart,
Engage in all life offers,
Adapt to the Way of life!
Grief through acceptance:
Transmute through the lessons,
Balance loss with gifts,
Release emptiness for fullness,
Purify life through praise!
Fear through trust:
Contemplate life’s lessons,
Believe in your own power,
Feel free and confident in life,
Flow through the currents to Wisdom!
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Happy Christmas Eve, and all the other Eves we celebrate as the year winds to a close!
Enjoy! Celebrate! Live, love and laugh the old year out and the new beginning in!
Eve
The day, the evening before:
Christmas
New Years
All Hallows
Changes and more.
The women, Mothers of All:
Adam’s wife
Jesus’ Mother
Holy Mother of God
Peace before the fall.
The birth, renewing Light:
Solstice
Deepest dark
Returning Sun
The dawn following First Night.
Eve, new hope at last:
Forgiveness
Light
Love
Release of all that’s past.
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A post-election day poem
Often when I am upset by circumstances, events, things beyond my control or even understanding, I turn to my pages to write and I turn to my poetry journal to see what might help, if not penetrate to an understanding, at least bring me into a state of grace and gratitude. In this post-election denouement this is what came to me:
Change (with gratitude for a Pawnee proverb)
Fortune cookie:
Mistakes are portals to discoveries.
Me:
Then there are no mistakes.
Optimist:
Every problem is an opportunity.
Me:
Life is all about lessons.
Electoral College:
Trump is the President Elect.
Me:
Half the country has voted change.
Rosemary:
Hold in the Community of Love and Light.
Me:
Embrace me, Community.
The Divine Feminine:
Your purpose is to live in Joy.
Me:
Facing the Sun I see no shadow, only Joy.
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Happy Halloween! A poem for Samhain
The veil between worlds thins at this time of the year. Samhain is the holiday in Celtic tradition that celebrates this special cross-quarter day, half-way between Equinox and Solstice. It is the new year! A time of letting go and resting as we approach the long nights of winter.
Feeling the Other Side most clearly at this time I offer this as my treat:
Thin Little Veil (with apologies to Bob Sima)
The season drifts toward the dark;
Slanting rays glance lower, shorter.
The bright light of high summer fades
To the sadder shade of yellow tinged with gold.
The cold creeps slowly along the road;
Longer nights hold it to linger there.
The warmth of high sun is but remembered
As the chill settles deeper in the bones.
The veil ‘tween here and gone shreds;
Thinner now, revealing more it drifts.
Gossamer, hiding nothing, not even shadows
As it wisps away as fine mist.
This Halloween the thin little veil
Opening the way to the Other Side
Stands as a welcoming sign
And beckons us to listen well.
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A New Poem: Nothing is Real
I actually wrote this as a prose poem while doing my “Morning Pages” the other day. Then with a few edits I turned into today’s poem. It is kind of an answer, almost an antithesis, but not really, to the notion that “We are Light”!
Nothing is Real
Too many thoughts and concerns;
They are all just puffs of smoke in the great field,
Specks of dust in the moonbeam,
Tiny ripples on the still clear mirror of the pond
Reflecting the dust and smoke.
These are all reflections, images of mist
Floating over a sea of nothing.
It is not real, this picture.
And this picture is a poor reproduction of some unreality
That is a guess at a grasp of
What truly is – or is not.
If nothing is real, nothing matters.
And, yet I stroke this pen on the page,
Sip my tea and ponder.
Something there is that ponders me, echoing my own.
If everything is a reflection
Then reflect on this:
The image within the mirror
Holds a mirror reflecting me.
We are that and that is we.
So, what is the consternation about anyway?
Let it go. Remain in flow. Just be.
Be with this. Everything is okay.
You are okay. You will survive. Or not.
What is survival anyway,
But remaining in a current incarnation of illusion,
The image in the mirror.
Is there any point in hanging here?
Of course!
Take the meaning, the learning;
Pass it through the mirror into Consciousness.
And, perhaps the lessons will carry well
Into a new incarnation of a new reflection.
And the mirror may be that much more perfect
Reflecting more clearly, brightly, purely
Than the current reflection can manage.
And it, no matter how bright and light,
Will remain a reflector!
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A Poem: Virtual 71
So, I turned 71 yesterday. Now birthdays at this point in life are not the excitedly anticipated events they once were. 71 is kind of a blah age, even though it is a prime number. But there’s no real milestone attached to it. Nothing exciting happens. And as I approached this non-milestone birthday I mused about what it really means anyway. Time is just an invention; it is relative based on our perceptions, perspective and the human compulsion to measure everything. I decided I am a “virtual 71” and this poem is an attempt to explain this:
Virtual 71
All time is relative;
I can be any age I want.
Measured in life-times,
I’m infinitely old.
Measured in the emptiness of time,
I am a new-born.
I can be any age
I consciously conjure
Between these infinite ends.
If I can be an age of my choosing
What age would I be?
Would I be younger
With fewer wrinkles?
More hair?
Few aches?
More care?
But then would I have
Less time?
More demands?
Less ease?
More stress?
Would I be older
With more wisdom?
Fewer chores?
More peace?
Fewer claims?
But then would I have
More wrinkles?
Less hair?
More aches?
Less mind?
Or would I be this age
With what I do have:
Few aches.
Enough hair.
Some wisdom.
Enough care.
Few demands.
Enough time.
Good energy.
Great health.
Much love!
What age would
A wise man choose?
I choose to be mine—
A Virtual 71!
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A poem: Flow
My goddess, Rosemary, channels the goddesses; they call themselves The Divine Feminine. This past Monday evening, July 25, Rosemary channeled an incredible message from The Divine Feminine. It inspired today’s poem.
The subject of the channeling event is “What in the World is Going On?” We are in the midst of tremendous change, of transformation, of an evolutionary time which is birthing the “New Human.” Yes, it is a time of struggle; world events seem chaotic and frightening. But The Divine Feminine offer both a clear message of empowering wisdom and a way for us to be in our purpose to aid in the process of this evolution. It is an important message for out time!
You may learn more about this and purchase the recording on Rosemary’s website: Recording
And here is the poem the message inspired:
Flow
I move with the flow
And accept what is mine—
Mine to do
Mine to learn
Mine to love
Mine to live
Mine to be.
And it is all vibration
It is all light and shadow
Reflection and illusion
As we all, with all of reality
Wink and blink
Here and gone.
The glinting river flows to the sea
Its brilliant waters reveal
The emptiness
Vast and heaving
Seeing all
Reflecting all
Taking nothing
But more water
The home of souls.
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A Time to Grieve
You know there are no coincidences. Everything is in flow, in divine order. The other day I wrote briefly about reading “The Smell of Rain on Dust”, the latest book by my most esteemed teacher, Martín Prechtel. This lovely little book is all about “Grief and Praise” – its subtitle. As I said the other day I’ll write a complete review of it when I have finished savoring every word. But in the meantime I am struck that I have chosen the perfect time to be reading it. It is time to remember how to grieve!
It is with humility and the deepest respect that I offer this riff on Martín’s work. These are his thoughts that I heard from his lips as I sat learning at his feet and I read in his marvelous book. And I offer it to you as a way to cope with a world that seems off the rails. It is only love that can right the wreckage.
A Time to Grieve
We seem to drift, as a nation,
Ever more deeply into violence and divide;
More killings; cops killing “innocents” –
“Innocents” killing cops.
There is an emerging frenzy to this senseless,
Escalating violence. It is so much, so intense.
It is maddening.
And it is not clear where it will end; or when or how.
Martín knows how.
He has spoken and written about it over and over.
We as a nation – as a so called culture –
Have lost the ability to grieve.
In fact this ability has been taught out of us!
Go shopping instead!
This is always the remedy. Consume more.
Eat up the world to mask the grief.
Hide our losses and sorrow
And desperate need of relief through grief
In our purchases.
Salve the wounds over with stuff.
Feel better with that latest broach –
Pin it on over your heart as a shield to hide behind.
Pin together the tatters in your broken heart.
Pretend it is whole; mend the tears
And choke back the tears.
For Heaven’s sake don’t embarrass yourself
With any display that would reveal your vulnerable soul.
That will not do!
There is no comfort there; only in more stuff.
How else do we keep the wheels on this economy
That promises protection, plenty, prosperity for all
And that pursuit, so elusive, of a happy life?
Grief is equally elusive as happiness!
We are not allowed to grieve.
Three days off for our dearest family members.
Take your own time for friends. Then back to work;
Produce so you can consume more.
No, we are not eating the world! There is always more.
Oh, and there will always be poor. Jesus said so;
And he was right about everything.
And they killed him too!
Never mind the poor; they are not worth dying for.
They are not worthy of our life style.
It will end in one of two ways:
We may kill one another as the violence escalates
To a new world war – a Global War on Terror
Brought to you by terror. Fight terror with terror –
It is the American Way. Our violence begets more violence.
It matters not how it began – it only has a violent end.
Or, we may remember how to grieve.
We can go to the sea and cry a river to fill it.
Weep for the deaths.
Weep for the brutality.
Weep for a society gone so wrong.
Weep for the wars.
Weep for the enemies “following orders.”
Weep for the loved ones whose bones we stand upon.
Weep for us, victims and perpetrators alike.
We are all in this together;
And we will never get out alive!
And when we have wept that river
Flowing to the sea, it might then be time to
Remember something else:
Remember the love that brought us into existence.
Remember the beauty of the world.
Remember the generosity of the Universe
Offering enough and more!
Remember to offer in return our praise and gratitude.
There is a cycle to the loss and gain,
The constant flow of less and more.
Know wherever we are in this cycle
It will continue.
There must always be time for grieving
Because there will always be loss.
Life is loss.
There must always be time for praising
Because there is always gain.
Life is love.
Live life to the fullest in grief and praise!
©2016 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
NEW MOON IN LEO: Three Haiku
Three New Moon Haiku
Moon Death
Mourn the losses deep!
Moon death carries them down.
But wait; look west. Birth!
Moon Dark
Rest through the night deep;
No struggle, no pain – Moon dark.
Light returns – renewed.
Moon Drift
Celebrate the gain.
Moon drift carries her beyond.
Light breaks to the west!
©2015 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Men and The Goddess 