When Love Beckons to You

For Ingrid, lover of love:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

--Kahlil Gibran

The Root of the Root of Your Self

I've been thinking about this Rumi poem lately for a couple of reasons. First, I went to a talk in which this Korean American pastor described himself as a "recovering cynic"--someone that wants to believe in the goodness of people but must continue to be vigilant about trusting less he slips up and falls back on what's easier, which is cynicism. I've also recently heard from an old friend who seems to have lost himself somehow as he's dealt with different heartache and betrayals from people he's trusted. Over the years, as we endure hardship and find that our youthful idealism seems inadequate, it is easy to become jaded and bitter. Rather, Rumi's poem gives us a way to rethink this tendency and to return to the heart of who we are created to be.


Don't go away, come near.
Don't be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of yourself.

Molded of clay, yet kneaded
from the substance of certainty,
a guard at the Treasury of Holy Light --
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Once you get hold of selflessness,
You'll be dragged from your ego
and freed from many traps.
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are born from the children of God's creation,
but you have fixed your sight too low.
How can you be happy?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You were born from a ray of God's majesty
and have the blessings of a good star.
Why suffer at the hands of things that don't exist?
Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

You are a ruby embedded in granite.
How long will you pretend it's not true?
We can see it in your eyes.
Come to the root of the root of your Self.

You came here from the presence of that fine Friend,
a little drunk, but gentle, stealing our hearts
with that look so full of fire; so,
come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

Our master and host, Shamsi Tabrizi,
has put the eternal cup before you.
Glory be to God, what a rare wine!
So come, return to the root of the root of your Self.

--Rumi

In Remembrance

My friend Tim who was the consummate older brother to me at Cal passed away on June 14, 2011, after a long fight with cancer. He leaves behind his wife Chae and daughter Lydia, the baby girl they adopted from Korea about a year ago. Even though I haven't kept in touch regularly with Tim over the years, it's somewhat surprising how devastating and grieving such news can be. I hope the words from Mary Oliver's poem "In Blackwater Woods" can be of some comfort to those who will miss him sorely:

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

How Surely Gravity's Law

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.



If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.



So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God II, 16

My Student Gave Me Worms!

I realized that enough whining will eventually cause someone to take pity on you and make you a worm bin! "I don't really know how to put one together," I whined. "I don't have a drill!" Eventually Jason took pity on me and put a little one together for me, complete with a starter set of worms. It fits right in my kitchen cabinet and my only complaint is I can't stuff more organic matter in there for them. And I love that I can say my student gave me worms!



Poor Paul who knit all these funny (yet disturbing) finger puppets never finished the course because it turned out he had cancer. He says he's going to be back and I sure hope so. He was a lovely man who drove around with over 200 finger puppets in his car and plenty in his pockets. Putting these guys into a little landscape scene makes them even more bizarro, methinks.

Writing: An Intimidating and Impenetrable Fog

The Eternal Mystery

The eternal mystery of oars
Plowing back as the boat floats forward,
So our deeds and words plow toward the past
For the body to go forward with the person inside.

I once sat in a barber's chair at the edge of the street
And in the big mirror I saw people come toward me
And suddenly disappear, swallowed by an abyss
Beyond the big mirror.


And the eternal mystery of sunset in the sea:
Even a professor of physics, who knows, says:
Look, the sun sets in the sea, red and beautiful.

Or the mystery of words like
"I could have been your father" or
"What did I do a year ago today?"
And other words like these.

--Yehuda Amichai

Halcyon Days

Ike had been skipping class for about two weeks when I got this email, titled "hello teach," (a moniker that I hate because it sounds like we're in high school) from him. My co-worker Paul thought I should print and post this so that when I'm old and wrinkly and no student ever would even think of hitting on me, that I could remember the good ol' days:

I do not want to offend you by eney means!!!... ms.shen im not sure why i pay attention to small detail but I do.......anyways I wanted to ask you a bold question...maybe on the account that I haven't seen a wedding ring on your hand......would youlike to go out some time and maybe have dinner or some drinks......maybe maybe maybe? if not i apologize for being to forward I just think a woman with your intelegence and know how is something great!!!! please let me know .....no disrespect intended!!!!!

Is it terrible that my first reaction is, "Couldn't he have at least spell-checked the darn thing?" Halcyon days, indeed.