Fallen log on the forest floor

Sue treated me to a rich, rainy Sunday, alternately sitting with Rodney Smith and walking wetly outside, soaking up wisdom from 800-year-old trees in the forest surrounding Still Meadow Retreat Center. (Photographs cannot do justice to the quiet peace and grandeur of these ancient trees, but there’s one in Extras.) Still Meadow is only a 40-minute drive from Portland, and another world. So quiet.

Smith says the Stillness never leaves you. You come from it, it holds everything that ever happens to you, and you die into it. The Stillness, he says, is present for global atrocity, for the ravaging of the planet. You can drop into it at any moment, and no matter what you may be feeling, it is there, connecting you with everything, because we are connected with everything. 

You don’t have to belong to a faith, he says. You don’t have to do prostrations or sit on a cushion or strive for the impossibility that is Enlightenment. These may be good tools for some people, but don't make them another kind of suffering, an opportunity for failure, self-blame. If you are a decent person, an upright person, kind and capable of deeply connected listening: listening to other people, yes, but also listening to the trees, the rain, the secrets of stones, the miracles all around you. That’s enough. He read us poems, including Marie Howe’s poem, Singularity.

Thank you for the wonderful comments on the Saturday blip. I am writing this on Monday morning, and I need to go meet Margie, but I'll come back and respond to comments, and maybe catch up with some of your blips, if I can find the hours.