“Think of Chaos as Dancing Raspberries”*
Chaos!
Dancing Raspberries.
I love that.
Raspberries dancing around the stock exchange?
Tall raspberries, to fit in with the humanoids?
Or perhaps,
Raspberries dancing around a certain chief executive’s office?
Sorry for that image—cancel.
I have absorbed, I am afraid, dear friends, much external chaos this week.
And—what a surprise—I feel a tad jittery, maybe a bit reactive.
What a surprise.
Is there a subgroup emerging?
I know, I know—
Since I know
What I’d tell you,
I guess I better tell myself too:
Dear Aruni,
YOUR SERENITY IS NOT DEPENDENT ON ANY EXTERNAL FACTOR.
YOUR SERENITY IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE, TO REST WITHIN, NO MATTER WHAT.
PERIOD.
CONVERSATION OVER.
Dear People,
Our serenity is not dependent on any external factors.
Our serenity is always available to rest within, no matter what.
To rest within.
~~~
One of the things that caught my heart this week and brought me a flicker of solace is this quote from Eckart Tolle:
“Don’t look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender”
Non-peace transmuted into peace.
Jittery transmuted into calm.
Okay! So be jittery and don’t fight it.
So be jittery and reactive and bless it.
Okay.
So be jittery and surrender into it.
Relax into it.
(OH, sorta like yoga on the mat, ya think?)
Accepting it.
Accepting it.
Accepting it.
And it all changes.
I can fully understand, considering my family’s background with money, why I might be a bit freaked this week.
I can fully understand, considering my age, why I might be a bit freaked this week.
I can accept that my reaction makes sense to my personhood.
Mostly, I do not judge it.
Mostly, I do not judge me.
Mostly, I can put it in front of me.
I can surrender.
I can
Let
It
Go.
Well, I can practice
Doing all that.
I will practice
Doing that.
I am practicing
Doing that.
And you?
How might the Eckart quote support you, in the tumble-and-tossed-turn of national/international events?
~~~
Next sliver of almost-inspiration—Here’s a poem I found in my Passover Seder reading, the source of this blog’s title. It brightened me up a tad. It makes me happy to share it with you.
Wage Peace
by Judyth Hill
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in fireman and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red winged blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping
Children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
~~~
And finally, here’s a musical intervention that supported me this week.
Wracking my brain for something inspiring for me and for you, I remembered how much I’ve been drawn to the lyrics of The Times They are a‘ Changin. I thought it might inspire us to remember the power of the anti-war movement from yesteryear, when the Moral Majority was the scourge. I started playing the song.
As it sometimes happens with me and Dylan, I got more jangly listening to him. The harmonica holds some fingers-across-the-damn-chalkboard-reaction for me.
Snooping around online, I found this Dylan cover, so mature and contained and heartfelt. It’s kind of strange, because it’s so different, but for me, it lands as lovely.
The song morphs into something beloved. Check it out:
~~~~
Dear Friends,
May each individual heart reading these words
Be opened
To Grace.
May our collective heart hold us close
And safe.
May all beings be blessed by our shared words.
Stay blessed,
Aruni
~~~
*Dancing Raspberries, quote by Judyth Hill.