attachments

Oh, man. I just had quite a fright. I couldn't find my Hawaiian nose flute CD: Ahupua'a by Anthony Natividad. I needed to hear that Cd, and now. Don't know why, just did. Alas, after a bit of searching, it appeared under a random stack of books. I am so attached to this CD. It is beautiful music which goes straight to my soul. I could listen to it it over and over again for hours. 

Funny how some things just resonate from the get go, and some people, too. I am horrifically attached to several people and to loose them would be devastating. I think of poem 303 by Emily Dickenson which says,

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more. 

To me that poem speaks to heart connections. Where would we be without the people in our lives? Some of mine are relatives, many are not. I am thankful for sisters and brothers of the heart.

Besides people, I try not to get too attached to very many things, but I love this troll doll, which I have had since the fourth grade. I have hardly anything from my childhood, so I like knowing where this doll is at all times. That is silly, but life is silly. 

I like this poem by Thomas Merton, who was a Christian monk with Buddhist sensibilities. This poem has taught me a lot about getting myself out of the way, about reverence and wonder. I love Thomas Merton. 

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

            

                -Thomas Merton