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| late summer flowers at the Temple |
Here in New England, the last day of summer is beautiful -- temperate weather, a mild breeze and clear blue skies. Just as I was beginning to write this entry, a motorcycle on the road outside the Temple stopped at the traffic light, and blaring out from its speakers were the lines from the song, "Leaving on a Jet Plane." "So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me, hold me like you'll never let me go..."
The poet David Whyte reminds us that we are not alone in the universe. In the terrible suffering and tender joy of this burning world, the flowers at the Temple are blooming for you, and the motorcycles and tea kettles are singing for you.
Here is David Whyte's song (Thanks Anita for sending me this old favorite!):
Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
As if life were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions.
To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.
Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice.
You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things to come,
the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.
The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink,
the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness
and seen the good in you at last.
All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves.
Everything is waiting for you.
