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A Tuesday Poem: “By the Shore”
Rosemary and I are on a mini-retreat at the ocean, Rehoboth Beach, DE. This is one of our comfort places; we return often to soak up ocean and beach energy. We enjoy off-seasons when it is quiet. We get recharged here and reconnected as we take time from our busy-ness to BE together.
This came this morning as I was writing, another form of reconnecting with myself:
By the Shore
It is empowering to sit
Here by the open slider
Leading to the balcony
Overlooking the sea
As it continuously
Rolls and roars to the shore,
The heartbeat of Gaia!
I take both strength and solace
From this constancy:
Strength comes from the depth
And breadth of the heaving sea.
Solace comes from soothing rhythm,
Ocean’s deep song of presence.
I am here to hear and feel,
To merge with the deep,
Tuning my own heart-rhythm
To that of the Mother.
I am in the womb:
Wet, nurtured, warm, protected,
At one with inner and outer peace.
©2024 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A Poem for post-election Friday
So, that happened on Tuesday. My feelings are still all over the place; I continue to feel them, process both thoughts and feelings, do my inner work, discuss thoughts and feelings, even prayers, with close associates. I do my Qigong and breathing practices…deep breaths!
And I write. Here’s what came today:
Dig down for the joy!
We must go on and see this through.
“This” may turn out to be ugly.
Maybe we must dig down through the ugly
To find the beauty.
There will be joy in that beauty.
Maybe we need to go through the crumbling systems,
The pillars we believed so strong and tall,
To reach the other side,
To discover the new, better way.
There will be joy in that way.
Maybe we need to let go of the old ways, old beliefs,
Old models and “shoulds.”
There is clarity at the end of chaos.
There will be peace and joy in that clarity.
©2024 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Sunday thoughts as we head to an election…
Rosemary and I dropped off our ballots yesterday. We mutter about our effect on the Presidential election…Maryland is far from a “swing state” so our votes for President get lost. They will likely be two of millions more that Kamala receives over Trump Nationwide. But those millions may not matter if swings states go a different way by a few thousand votes.
How did we get here? I journaled the following a couple of days ago as part of my continuing quest for answers to hard questions like this one.
Blog post for 10/27/2024
For the most part men are shit; this is more observation than judgment. We can’t help it; we have not been taught any better. We have been raised in and are part of a patriarchy that has lasted at least 5000 years, 200 or more generations. That is a long time, a lot of conditioning, indoctrination to overcome. It is deeply seeded and rooted, and it is self-perpetuating; it propagates through humanity as an unrelenting plague would. All of our institutions support this propagation and sustainment.
There has been some small progress over the course of the last hundred years or so: women have risen to prominence in many fields once dominated by men. But this progress has been small and slow, and it has been throttled and stymied at every turn. The Dobbs Decision is a case in point where progress in women’s rights over their own bodies has been stopped cold. And the men who would want to stop all women’s progress are still in powerful positions; they have too much, through greed and the perpetuating patriarchy, power and resources.
The election of Kamala Harris to the Presidency of this country could have a hugely positive impact on progress toward equality and freedom. This would have a worldwide impact, but is it possible? I can hope it is possible, but the opposing forces are strong. The money don’t want this to happen. The powerful men don’t want this to happen. And their influence is broad and deep.
How do we overcome 5000 years of power and prejudice? It is not clear to me, despite my hope, that there has been enough time to create a lasting shift. Even if a miracle sees Harris rise to the White House, remember the reaction to the election of a black man in 2004 and 2008. It was fierce; it created MAGA.
I hold out as much hope as I can muster.
I am blessed with this hope and positivity.
All the best for all of us!
My Message from the “Divine Feminine” on October 15, 2024
Rosemary held a “Conversation with The Other Side” on October 15 and I got a message I’ll be working with for a long time. It actually does fit with this blog and at least some of my intention to start it many years ago.
First, here’s the message:
Rosemary: All right. Another poet, another writer another creative. I’m hearing: Just do it. But I also am seeing a future-self asking for something from you, asking for it to come out. It’s not… It may not be a future You. It’s somebody from the future who is saying they want to have study groups to work with the material that you’re here to bring in.
Richard: Yeah.
Rosemary: If you would bring it in, please. And so, sitting on it doesn’t help them in the future. So they’re really asking you to write your poetry, bring your poetry, bring it into books, write books, write blogs, get material that comes through you. You’re one of the… I’m hearing pioneer elders. It’s like a different kind of an elder and the wise man and you it’s like time is running short for you to get everything downloaded that has to come in.
Richard: I know.
Rosemary: So can you please get it downloaded and out, download and out, download and out. That seems to be another theme from tonight. Download it and get it out. Okay. And it may not look the way you’re planning in your head again, another theme. But if it comes into your heart and you just receive it and get it out. Receive it and get it out, no matter what that looks like. Don’t worry about the form on the outside, just like we’re telling the artists. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think through. Just allow, allow, allow. And when you accept, Richard, that you are the elder. that you have been the wise one. I know that you know groups of other wise men, elders, but you’ve been on the path raising your frequency, lifting your consciousness really evolving. and the more you put that out there; beg pardon…
Richard: A long time.
Rosemary: A long time. but it’s not good enough for that to be just for you. And so It’s not even just the poetry. But it’s about the journey, the evolutionary part that men can do it right. That’s the important thing. You can help men figure it out. Yeah. And you’re here to do that.
Okay? All right.
Here is my first response that I downloaded today:
So, the message from the Divine Feminine during the CwTSO on 10/15/24: I am to download content for men and for some men in the future; they are calling for it. And it seems to be more than poetry. “Poetry, books, blogs.” I am a “pioneer elder.” The form does not matter – download and get it out!
So, what is a “pioneer elder”?
I am a man working to better understand what it is to be a man in the 1st quarter of the 21st century. There are many models for this – good and not so good. President Obama vs. President Trump: a very poor pair of examples, but they are clearly modeling behavior of men (not necessarily for men). They are in sharp contrast: a black man who rose to the Presidency from humble beginnings, a scholar, orator, Harvard Law School graduate, Constitutional law expert, family man. We have little insight into his spiritual life. He has seen and known a lot, waged war, indirectly killed.
Trump is nearly the exact opposite.
What are the lessons in these contrasting men? One is the bringer of hope; a forward looking evolutionary who would guide a nation toward a higher standard. His single greatest achievement was “Obama Care” that brought health insurance to 40 million people. He also pulled us out of a deep recessionary period.
The other is the reactionary regressive who would pull us back into the darker times of the 50s, even back to segregation and the repression of women (the first step here was the Dobbs Decision). How is he even a choice in the election of 2024? How did we get here?
There is a lesson we have not yet learned as a nation: desegregation of the 60s was difficult and incomplete. The election of Obama was an amazing accomplishment but triggered an extreme reaction that powered the regression and countered integrative momentum. It gave voice and semi-legitimacy to racial hatred that has been an underlying offense since the founding of the country; perhaps since the emergence of humanity.
Humans have been at each other’s throats for a hundred thousand years (what did happen to the Neanderthals?)!
Yet I hold out hope! I came across this quote while preparing my Qigong class for Saturday:
A human being is part of a whole,
the “Universe.”
Our task must be to free ourselves
from the delusion of separateness,
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN, PHILOSOPHER AND PHYSICIST, TWENTIETH CENTURY
In other words, “what I do to another I do to myself.” What if we lived by that creed? Could it be that simple?
A New Poem for Monday: Radical Forgiveness
I have not written here in a while because I have not written any poetry in a while. For this I forgive myself and hope you will forgive me too.
I’m working with a new and fun oracle deck, “Guides of the Hidden Realms Oracle” by Colette Baron-Reid. Yesterday I drew “The Alchemy of Poison” – here’s the image:
So you can see where I got the title of today’s poem; and my question.
I have been receiving multiple signs and messages that I have been neglectful in not writing. So to deepen my exploration of “radical forgiveness” I wrote about it and turned my musings into this simple answer:
Radical Forgiveness
What is “radical forgiveness?
I think it’s finding forgiveness for everything—
All misdeeds,
All slights and oversights,
All mistakes from the past, now, forever;
All times, events, actions
When I have missed the mark,
Fallen short,
Left so much undone.
All this applies to
All around me who are
Falling short as well,
Whether toward me or
Toward others, or
Toward themselves.
Radical forgiveness is a practice
To repeat over and over again.
It is not for the one slight,
One time; it is for
All slights for
All time.
Weekly, daily, moment to moment,
Practice radical forgiveness.
©2024 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Happy Poetry Month!
So, this was fun: Laura Di Franco, to celebrate National Poetry Month, is hosting a series for her authors, especially those of her compilation, “100 Poems and Possibilities for Healing” to read a poem from the collection. Here’s my recording with her where I read “A Speculation on Perfection”
A Saturday Poem for February 17, 2024
Hello, Friends! I’ve missed being here with you. I’m back for a bit, who knows how long. Today’s poem touches on this.
Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday; he would have been 103. And I visited a dear friend who is in a rehab center and in hospice care. He seems to be slowly slipping away not unlike how my Dad left the earth plane. I wrote in my journal when I returned from that visit and this poem kind of fell out as I reviewed the day and thoughts and lives I touched. Don’t worry, it’s not melancholy. See if you can slip into a sweet place with this:
Long Life
The comings and goings,
The rises and falls
Are endless–
Part of the pattern of the flow
Of consciousness.
And the flow is just now,
And only now.
Just this: the slow,
Long vibration
of All and Nothing.
Just this: It is an
Infinitely long and
Infinitely short vibration
Of Empty Allness.
It is so slow it seems
To be fully at rest.
It is so fast it seems
To disappear into that
Emptiness from which it
Arises now.
It is the quick “hello”
And the long “goodbye”
All wrapped in the
Blessed bliss of
This.
©2024 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
I’ll be a published poet in January 2024!
In September I and 30 other author/poets began collaborating on a new book: “100 Poems & Possibilities for Healing.” It will be published soon by Laura Di Franco and her company, Brave Healer Productions: https://www.facebook.com/BraveHealerbyLaura/
I look forward to sharing with you the excitement around this book! To begin here is a video interview with me and three of my co-authors from earlier this week. Enjoy and please share!
Remembrance: a poem about surrender
I’ve been in a soft place lately pondering my resistance to a chant that Deva Premal and Miten offer frequently during their Gayatri Sangha gatherings on Saturdays. The chant is one Miten wrote: “Into your hands I lay my spirit, Into your hands I lay my life…” When Miten wrote this years ago he did not realize these were basically the final words attributed to Jesus as he was dying on the cross.
So, my resistance is partly a result of my Christian background and my own negative reactions to the conditioning I am working through and beyond. And a piece (peace) of the “beyond” is to soften if not release the resistance.
As I contemplated this yesterday the Sufi chant, the Zikr (Remembrance) came to mind; I learned this during my seminary days and have often embraced it as a comforting prayer: “La Ilaha Illa Allah.” And then it finally hit me: if there is no reality but God, then anything I chant or recite is part of that godliness!
Here’s a poem to explore this:
Remembrance
I feel a distance that is not there,
separating, carving an empty gulf
that’s not real, only imagined in a
foolish mind.
As the distance narrows, disappears,
I sense resistance pressing hard to
release the powerful pull of a
longing heart.
As the resistance softens, collapses,
remembrance grabs my wandering
soul. The Sufi Zikr lights the way
showing all I need to know.
Mergence is that simple way, no distance,
no resistance, only remembering:
There’s no reality but God;
There is only God.
©2023 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
New Year poem: “New Year”
I received two great books for Christmas: “Cosmogenesis, An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe” by Brian Swimme, and “The Dao De Jing, A Qigong Interpretation” by Dr. Yang, Jwing Ming. They are both excellent and have my mind swirling around the center-point of “being/not-being.” What is this life, this consciousness, this reflection of the material, manifest creation back on itself, all about?
So here’s my reflection on time as it slips through our consciousness at an ever, seemingly, faster pace. Happy 2023 to you all!
New Year
They say it all began with a bang.
Somehow the ISST blew up:
What Hawkings named, inelegantly,
The Initial Singularity of Space-Time.
Out of nothing, Sunyata, Wuji, Dao,
Came something, Rupa, De.
All manifest reality—boom!
And we were there.
One outward pulse pushed the Universe
Through the black hole of emptiness.
Echoes of that birth reverberate
In every birth, breath, beat, death.
Every twitch, tick, ebb, flow, cycle
Marks a memory of that first pulse.
Every calendar change by sun or moon,
Reminds us it is always a New Year.
©2022 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Men and The Goddess 