Speaker 1: I am angry, I am happy. Now there is anger happening,
Speaker 1: there is kindness happening. Is that who I am? Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we have Roger Housden who has been
Speaker 1: on the show before, back on episode one two. Roger
Speaker 1: founded and ran the Open Gate, a conference and workshop
Speaker 1: center in England that introduced the work of Ramdas tikno
Speaker 1: Han and many others into Europe. His work has been
Speaker 1: featured many times in the Oprah magazine, The New York
Speaker 1: Times and Los Angeles Times. On this episode, Eric and
Speaker 1: Rodger discussed his book Ten Poems for Difficult Times. Happy
Speaker 1: New Year everyone. The changing of the years is a
Speaker 1: time where a lot of people reflect on the year
Speaker 1: past and think about things they'd like to do differently
Speaker 1: in the new year. If you're in this place and
Speaker 1: you're looking at what you'd like to do differently in
Speaker 1: the new year, and you need a little help get
Speaker 1: it done, if you'd like to see real change and
Speaker 1: real transformation in two thousand nineteen, then I encourage you
Speaker 1: to check out the one you Feed Transformation program. It's
Speaker 1: one on one coaching with me. Go to one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash transform And here's the interview with
Speaker 1: Roger Hasten. Hi, Roger, welcome to the show. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I am happy to have you on your
Speaker 1: a second time guest. So you're in elite company. Now,
Speaker 1: there's not been very many of those, so welcome back.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about your latest book called Ten
Speaker 1: Poems for Difficult Times. But before we get into the book,
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, it's the eternal and
Speaker 1: ongoing parable that you see all over the world, which
Speaker 1: essentially is the struggle between the light and the dark
Speaker 1: in each individual. And so the way in which that
Speaker 1: plays out in my life is really through the practice
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and the willingness when I am able to
Speaker 1: remember two be aware of my own thoughts and feelings,
Speaker 1: and not to climb on the back of them, but
Speaker 1: rather to simply give them space and allow them to
Speaker 1: be there without identify going with them. And so if
Speaker 1: a wave of sadness or anger, or whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: it comes comes into my mind, m the intent, anyway,
Speaker 1: is to be able to have perspective, not conceptually, but
Speaker 1: actually viscerally. Two give that feeling space and not identified
Speaker 1: with And actually it's the same with positive feelings, joy, kindness,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. As long as I think I'm
Speaker 1: the one being kind, then I'm not really reaping the
Speaker 1: full fruits of that action of kindness because I'm identifying
Speaker 1: with it and because I thinking, I'm thinking I'm the
Speaker 1: good one. So tell me about how poetry helps us
Speaker 1: with difficult times. Ha ha ha ha, I don't think. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you followed what I was saying there, so
Speaker 1: you skipped to the poetry. I think this is true,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Eric? Now I followed you. I follow you
Speaker 1: about about not taking full credit for our actions, because
Speaker 1: then the motivation is coming from a place that's less
Speaker 1: useful to us. But the same with the with the
Speaker 1: darker emotions. You know, I mean the operative word there
Speaker 1: is feed. Now you know how do you feed either
Speaker 1: the good or the bibb wolf. Well, you jump on
Speaker 1: the back of it, off the feeling, and you go
Speaker 1: wherever it takes you. Okay, in other words, you believe
Speaker 1: it's you. I am angry, I am happy, No, there
Speaker 1: is anger happening, There is kindness happening. Is that who
Speaker 1: I am? That's another question. Well, I think we may
Speaker 1: get back to that topic. It's point as we work
Speaker 1: through a couple of the poems, because that that idea
Speaker 1: shows back up. It does what did you ask me? Yes?
Speaker 1: How does poetry help us in difficult times? In the
Speaker 1: aftermath of nine eleven? You know, in New York when
Speaker 1: people all over the city were wondering, wandering around in
Speaker 1: a days, the main form of communication you see, you
Speaker 1: saw on every street and I was there, you saw
Speaker 1: on every street corner were poems pinned up on the wall.
Speaker 1: So it was as if this event leven was so unspeakable,
Speaker 1: you don't know how to what do you say? What
Speaker 1: do you do? Poetry somehow speaks to the impossible. It
Speaker 1: actually gives voice to that which is unsayable. So poetry
Speaker 1: really reaches down into the essence of human feeling. And ideally,
Speaker 1: if it's a great poem, it will speak to that
Speaker 1: essence in as few words as possible, even if it's
Speaker 1: a fairly long part. Each word will matter and have
Speaker 1: its place, and it will articulate the readings, the feelings
Speaker 1: of the reader. In a way that not even the
Speaker 1: reader herself was able to do. And so you recognize
Speaker 1: yourself in the part you go, oh my god, that's me.
Speaker 1: I totally understand what this guy is talking about. So
Speaker 1: poetry is invaluable and difficult times because it casts and
Speaker 1: shows a light on our own challenges from a perspective
Speaker 1: we may not have articulated before exactly. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that you mentioned also, the power of poetry
Speaker 1: is with attention. And you say, when I pay attention,
Speaker 1: something in me awakens, and that something is much closer
Speaker 1: to who I am than the driven or drifting self
Speaker 1: I usually take myself to be. When I pay attention,
Speaker 1: I am straightened, somehow brought into a deeper life. And
Speaker 1: I I love that line that you wrote there and
Speaker 1: again back to your where we began this, you know,
Speaker 1: back to that what we take ourselves to be. Yes,
Speaker 1: you and I must have similar tastes in poems, because
Speaker 1: several of the poems you had. One is Ellen Bass,
Speaker 1: who has been on the show and I'm a fan of.
Speaker 1: Another is Maggie Smith, who will be a future guest
Speaker 1: on the show, and another is William Stafford, who is
Speaker 1: someone I surely wish it could be a guest on
Speaker 1: the show. Obviously his his time has passed. But I
Speaker 1: was really struck as I looked through it. You know
Speaker 1: you've you've picked some of my my favorite poets. And
Speaker 1: so let's start with Maggie Smith, who actually lives in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: where I live. She's in She's a small suburb of
Speaker 1: Columbus called Bexley. So let's start off with her poem
Speaker 1: good Bones. Yes, so she wrote this I thing about
Speaker 1: three years ago. I think, yes, good Bones. Life is short,
Speaker 1: though I keep this from my children. Life is short,
Speaker 1: and I've shortened mind in a thousand delicious ill advised ways,
Speaker 1: a thousand deliciously ill ambised ways I'll keep from my children.
Speaker 1: The world is at least terrible. That's a conservative estimate,
Speaker 1: though I keep this from my children. For every bird
Speaker 1: there's a stone thrown at a bird, for every loved child,
Speaker 1: a child broken, bagged, sunken a link. Life is short,
Speaker 1: and the world is at least half terrible. And for
Speaker 1: every kind stranger there is one who would break you.
Speaker 1: Though I keep this from my children, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: sell them the world. Any decent realtor walking you through
Speaker 1: a real ship hole chaps on about good bones. This
Speaker 1: place could be beautiful, right you? You could make this
Speaker 1: place beautiful. That is such a stunning poem in so
Speaker 1: many different ways. Tell me about why you chose it
Speaker 1: for a book about difficult times? How does it help
Speaker 1: you with with difficult times? Well, as you say, there's
Speaker 1: so many layers in this poem actually, and so there's
Speaker 1: so much to it. I mean, she wrote the poem
Speaker 1: actually for her children, or at least she wrote it
Speaker 1: thinking about her children. And I think it was very
Speaker 1: soon after one of these terrible school shooting tragedies that
Speaker 1: she wrote this, like, what is how can I protect
Speaker 1: my children from this world that we're living in? And
Speaker 1: you know, in this poem, she she clearly exaggerates. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's making a point. I mean, this is you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, for every kind stranger, there's one who breaks
Speaker 1: you know, the world as at least terrible. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we can argue that, but that's not the point. She's making.
Speaker 1: The point that is terrible as it seems to make
Speaker 1: it personal. As difficult as my life may seem me
Speaker 1: the reader, as difficult as my life may seem. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's very life that I'm living this very world that
Speaker 1: I'm living in could be beautiful and to have that
Speaker 1: sense of the possible Eric I think with she's deliberately
Speaker 1: painted a really black picture, but then this shaft of
Speaker 1: light comes at the end, right, not that it's all
Speaker 1: going to be beautiful, but that it could be beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you just bought a house and
Speaker 1: it's a fixer upper. So she's saying, you know, the world,
Speaker 1: but not just the world my life, your life as
Speaker 1: a fixer upper, where my life certainly feels like a
Speaker 1: fixer upper. You know, there's always stuff to repair, and
Speaker 1: so she's opening a door there to the possible. And
Speaker 1: I find that deeply heartening, warming and consoling. So that's
Speaker 1: why this bombs in the book. It's also the first
Speaker 1: powerm in the book, and the reason for that is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just so direct, straightforward, and it's speaking
Speaker 1: for the next generation, our children, like what kind of
Speaker 1: world are they going to be living in? And are
Speaker 1: they gonna what are they going to do with it?
Speaker 1: I love it for so many different reasons. Also, I
Speaker 1: love it because it tells the truth, you know, and again,
Speaker 1: we could argue about whether the world is terrible or
Speaker 1: what percent, but some some percent is you know, there's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I love that, you know, I love that
Speaker 1: it tells the truth. And me, I think that's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things about you know, when I first
Speaker 1: looked at Buddhism, that just hit me right over the head.
Speaker 1: I was like, ah ha, the truth. Like right here,
Speaker 1: someone is telling the truth, like okay, sometimes this sucks
Speaker 1: and um, you know, and then I love the way she,
Speaker 1: just like you said, at the end, flips it around
Speaker 1: on you and you know, you could make this place
Speaker 1: beautiful and it's it's such a great poem. Actually, I
Speaker 1: love that you say that there, because really it's a
Speaker 1: bit like a century rendering of the four Noble Truths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the person noble truth is life sucks. I
Speaker 1: don't think he quite used those terms, but everything is something.
Speaker 1: Life is suffering. But then at the end of those
Speaker 1: four Noble truths, the there is a way through. Now. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's looking at a whole other level, but essentially
Speaker 1: that's what she's saying, there's a way through, yes, and
Speaker 1: that idea of a way through shines through a lot
Speaker 1: of these poems that you have in this book. Let's
Speaker 1: go on to the next one that I'd like you
Speaker 1: to talk about. And I cannot remember. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: we had Ellen Bass on the show and I had
Speaker 1: to read a couple of poems, and I cannot remember
Speaker 1: which ones I had her read um off the top
Speaker 1: of my head if she very well may have read
Speaker 1: this one, because I love this poem. But why don't
Speaker 1: you read it for us now and we'll we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about all the better. Actually did
Speaker 1: read it, because you know it's the kind of poem
Speaker 1: you can read or hear over and over again. All
Speaker 1: these are all of these are they are? They really are? Yeah,
Speaker 1: This palm is called the thing is. The thing is.
Speaker 1: The thing is. The thing is to love life. The
Speaker 1: thing is to love life, to love it even when
Speaker 1: you have no stomach for it, and everything you've held
Speaker 1: dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat
Speaker 1: filled with the salt of it. When grief sits with you,
Speaker 1: it's tropical heat, thickening, the air, heavy as water, more
Speaker 1: fit for gills than lungs. When grief waits you like
Speaker 1: your own flesh, only more of it. An obesity of grief,
Speaker 1: You think how how can a body withstand this? Then
Speaker 1: you hold life like a face between your palms, a
Speaker 1: plain face, no charming smile, no violet eye, and you say, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I will take you, I will love you again. The
Speaker 1: thing is to love life, to love it even when
Speaker 1: you've no stomach for it, and everything you've held dear
Speaker 1: crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled
Speaker 1: with the silt of it. When grief sits with you,
Speaker 1: it's tropical heat, thickening, the air, heavy as water, more
Speaker 1: fit for gills than lungs. When grief waits you like
Speaker 1: your own flesh, only more of it and obesity of grief.
Speaker 1: You think, how can a bo do you withstand this?
Speaker 1: Then you hold life like a face between your poems,
Speaker 1: a plain face, no charming smile, no violatize, and you say, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I will take you, I will love you again. Beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say that you think of her as a zen poet.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? Alan buses subjects is
Speaker 1: the ordinary, every day mundaneity of our life. She finds
Speaker 1: the exceptional in the ordinary, and somehow illumines what seems
Speaker 1: to be of no value, nothing, a passing moment, whatever,
Speaker 1: it may be she somehow manages to give her attention
Speaker 1: to it where most of us would not even have noticed.
Speaker 1: She notices the hidden line in the ordinary, everyday objects
Speaker 1: of our lives and also feelings of our lives. So,
Speaker 1: you know, remembering another poem of hers, you know, where
Speaker 1: everything seems designed to be causing her trouble. The dog
Speaker 1: on the floor is snoring, She's on somebody's couch, which
Speaker 1: is too short for her. You know, she's in New York.
Speaker 1: There's a noise of the street outside, and it's so
Speaker 1: hot that she could hardly wear anything, and all of
Speaker 1: this and suddenly, in that she goes, I'm alive, I'm alive,
Speaker 1: and everything suddenly, the snoring dog, the taxi, our side,
Speaker 1: everything has its proper and proportionate place in that moment
Speaker 1: of her life, which is completely irreplaceable. So Eliba shows
Speaker 1: us that any and every moment of our life is
Speaker 1: completely irreplaceable. And she does this by paying attention. So
Speaker 1: that's why I call him, because I likened her to
Speaker 1: his end poet. Yeah, back to that topic of attention.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in the book you quote Mary Oliver, who, in
Speaker 1: one of her poems says, I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beautiful line. Yeah, so she's acquainting, isn't she in those lines?
Speaker 1: You know, a prayer with the giving of attention. It's
Speaker 1: really a kind of active devotion, isn't it. You know,
Speaker 1: when we're actually really attending to someone or something by devotion,
Speaker 1: I only and you know there's a felt quality that
Speaker 1: is being conveyed which is deeply intimate. So yeah, these
Speaker 1: are poems Alambuss's poems of poems of intimacy. And we
Speaker 1: can only really be intimate when our attention is awake. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You also, when you're you're writing about this poem, you say,
Speaker 1: if we love, we suffer fastest poem reminds us that
Speaker 1: the only way out of that suffering is through it.
Speaker 1: We will be brought low by it, softened by it,
Speaker 1: opened by it, and ushered finally into a love still greater,
Speaker 1: a love for our own exquisite and painful life as
Speaker 1: we experience it day by day. And I love that.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you a question about that,
Speaker 1: because I was having this conversation with somebody the other
Speaker 1: night and we were talking about how with age, there
Speaker 1: has been some increase in wisdom and kindness and all
Speaker 1: of that. But the observation also is that not everybody
Speaker 1: ages well. Not everybody comes out of suffering opened by it,
Speaker 1: or um softened by it, or ushered into a love
Speaker 1: still greater. So in your mind, what are the components
Speaker 1: that help us take these difficulties and have them work
Speaker 1: on us in a way that we would ultimately consider positive.
Speaker 1: I actually I don't like the way I phrase that,
Speaker 1: but you get where I'm going. Yeah, it's not that
Speaker 1: they're positive or negatives, right, Um, I would say that,
Speaker 1: so they my own experienced personal experience. What can allow
Speaker 1: suffering to be a part of life that does soften us,
Speaker 1: that that in some way serves as a kind of
Speaker 1: alchemical process and opens the heart? That that can occur
Speaker 1: when we fully bowed down to whatever it is the suffering.
Speaker 1: So in this poem by Ellen Bass, she is bowing
Speaker 1: down to. Now. I don't know what she went through
Speaker 1: to be able to write that poem. I suspect she
Speaker 1: went through a quality or a kind of grief, probably
Speaker 1: much deeper than I've ever known, But she fully gave
Speaker 1: herself two in this case, to the grief of her experience,
Speaker 1: and she also was able through that two open up
Speaker 1: to a larger life, where the end of the poem,
Speaker 1: she says, yes, I hold life's face in my hands,
Speaker 1: and I say I will love you again. I will
Speaker 1: love you again. So that this is a very dangerous word,
Speaker 1: but the words surrender comes to mind, and surrender is
Speaker 1: not the same as giving up. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think with you to say that the only way to
Speaker 1: the other side of suffering is through it means that
Speaker 1: it never works to deny it. It never works to
Speaker 1: try and be strong and push it away or to
Speaker 1: soldier on, even though you may have to soldier on
Speaker 1: in your life. But internally, I think there has to
Speaker 1: come a moment when you just let go into the
Speaker 1: truth of your experience at the moment and let it
Speaker 1: move through you like a wave. And the point is
Speaker 1: you can't do that as a strategy. I was like, oh, no, listen,
Speaker 1: I know I read that somewhere. You know what you
Speaker 1: do is it doesn't work. You cannot fake surrender. You
Speaker 1: can't make it a kind of strategy or a technique.
Speaker 1: But there can come a moment in our lives, and
Speaker 1: you know, most is in one way or another probably
Speaker 1: had a sense of this where we just we give up,
Speaker 1: but give up not in a sense of being a victim.
Speaker 1: We know that we cannot make this good on our
Speaker 1: by our own efforts, you know, our own efforts somehow
Speaker 1: not enough. And in that moment when there is that surrender,
Speaker 1: and what are we surrendering. We're surrendering our attempt to control.
Speaker 1: In that moment, something else can happen, but there's absolutely
Speaker 1: no guarantee. So you're absolutely right. I think for most suffering,
Speaker 1: especially really difficult suffering, actually is backbreaking. It's not a
Speaker 1: transformational thing necessarily at all. You said it, well, I
Speaker 1: do think some some version of of surrender. I think
Speaker 1: back to what we've talked about, some degree of attention,
Speaker 1: being willing to pay attention to what's happening with us
Speaker 1: in the middle of that, and and some of that is,
Speaker 1: as you said, not always running away from My experience
Speaker 1: of like deep suffering at points in my life is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: some of the time I was like, I'll do anything
Speaker 1: I can to find a way to run away from this.
Speaker 1: But then there were other moments whether either I simply
Speaker 1: couldn't run away, there was no there was no path
Speaker 1: to allow me to do it, or some other wisdom
Speaker 1: said okay, stop, you know, stop and and be here
Speaker 1: for a minute. Those are the things I think that
Speaker 1: helped to me as some quality of being willing to
Speaker 1: be with it. I think of what Tara Brock I've
Speaker 1: heard her ask before, which is, you know, just the
Speaker 1: simple question can I be with this? So I think
Speaker 1: that's great, And I think what you're pointing to there
Speaker 1: is two different kinds of experience that we have and
Speaker 1: can have. The one, which is much more common, is
Speaker 1: happens primarily in our mind up here and up here,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're trying to create strategies, we're trying
Speaker 1: to find a way out, we're trying to manipulate, we're
Speaker 1: trying to sort things out. We're getting angry, you know,
Speaker 1: with the situation, whatever it is. Um when you say stop,
Speaker 1: he's still for a moment, that does not come from here.
Speaker 1: It comes from the heart, the different layer or level
Speaker 1: of experience. And I think what you've just pointed to
Speaker 1: was for a moment, even a drop upping down into
Speaker 1: our bodily experience of whatever it is we're experiencing. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the intro. A lot of us spend
Speaker 1: this time where one year changes to the next, really
Speaker 1: reflecting on the year prior and looking at what we
Speaker 1: would like to do differently in the upcoming year. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to make two thousand and nineteen the year
Speaker 1: that you finally take a lot of the things you
Speaker 1: hear about on this show and put them into practice.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get to the point where you're
Speaker 1: exercising regularly, meditating, eating, well, if there's a creative project,
Speaker 1: you want to start a business, you want to launch,
Speaker 1: any of those things, the one you Feed Transformation program
Speaker 1: can help you. It's one on one coaching with me
Speaker 1: weekly and we do daily email checkens to keep you
Speaker 1: on track. If you'd like to learn more, I invite
Speaker 1: you to go to One you Feed dot Net slash
Speaker 1: Transform Again, that's one you Feed dot Net slash Transform. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that it's obnoxious to say to somebody who's
Speaker 1: in great pain, well, one of the benefits is or
Speaker 1: here's a growth experience, right. But what those have done
Speaker 1: for me is, as somebody who it's very easy to
Speaker 1: spend my time in my head, is that they force
Speaker 1: me into my heart. I don't really have a choice
Speaker 1: about anymore. I'm suddenly there. Yeah, I think when you
Speaker 1: said that, I sort of realized that that's one of
Speaker 1: the Again, I don't like this word, but I'll use
Speaker 1: it for brevity. One of the benefits of of suffering
Speaker 1: for me is that, um, it takes me to that place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the opportunities. Really. Yeah, that's a better
Speaker 1: that's a better word and benefits. Yeah, And there really
Speaker 1: is no guarantee. So yeah, every moment new moment, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, if I bowed down to some great
Speaker 1: difficulty in my life yesterday and was able therefore to
Speaker 1: absorb it, it's really about absorbing And doesn't mean to
Speaker 1: say that I'll do the same tomorrow, you know. You know. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the thing about a great suffering
Speaker 1: is we don't have to always handle it gracefully, as
Speaker 1: you said or or about. And you know, my experience
Speaker 1: again was a great suffering gives me plenty of opportunities,
Speaker 1: some of which I actually take for benefit and the
Speaker 1: others I don't. But but there's enough in it, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's enough in it. But I just am very
Speaker 1: interested in this question of how to suffering and difficulty
Speaker 1: make some people better, kinder, wiser, stronger, and and not
Speaker 1: do that for others. I just think that's such a
Speaker 1: fundamentally um important question for people who are trying to
Speaker 1: live a better life, because inevitably, as you know Maggie
Speaker 1: Smith said early on, you know, a large percentage of
Speaker 1: of the world is going to be very difficult, and
Speaker 1: so knowing how to work with that in a skillful
Speaker 1: way is so so important. And this, you know again,
Speaker 1: I think this is what these poems do. They point
Speaker 1: us in that direction. It just in the direction of possibility. Yep.
Speaker 1: So I think we have time for one more. If
Speaker 1: you would be willing to read one more, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a couple of choices and allow you
Speaker 1: to pick the one that you would like to do.
Speaker 1: Either Cutting Loose by William Stafford now you know the
Speaker 1: Worst by Wendell Berry, or Annunciation by Marie how I
Speaker 1: think any of those three would be a great thing
Speaker 1: for us to do with our last poem. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: leaning into Annunciation, all right, let's do it. I often
Speaker 1: don't usually don't read this poem because, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: very mysterious, and it's the very last poem in the book.
Speaker 1: And I put it in there because it points to
Speaker 1: a whole other dimension of experience, quite out of the ordinary. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is not unlike Ellen Bass or Maggie Smith,
Speaker 1: This poem is not dealing with the every day. This
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary epiphany that happened to Marie. How that,
Speaker 1: of course, potentially in a different way, it can happen
Speaker 1: to you or me. So the palm annunciation by Marie.
Speaker 1: How even if I don't see it again, nor ever
Speaker 1: feel it, I know it is, and that if once
Speaker 1: it hailed me, it never does, and so it is myself.
Speaker 1: I want to turn in that direction, not as toward
Speaker 1: a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as
Speaker 1: one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
Speaker 1: it isn't. I was blinded like that and swam in
Speaker 1: what shone at me, only able to endure by being
Speaker 1: no one, and so specifically myself. I thought I'd die
Speaker 1: from being loved like that? Can I read it again,
Speaker 1: these poems, especially this poem, But these poems need to
Speaker 1: be ideally read two or three times. Allowed yea to yourself,
Speaker 1: even if I don't see it again nor ever feel it.
Speaker 1: I know it is, and that if once it hailed me,
Speaker 1: it ever does and so it is myself. I want
Speaker 1: to turn in that direction, not as toward a place,
Speaker 1: but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns
Speaker 1: a mirror to flash the light to where it isn't.
Speaker 1: I was blinded like that and swa um in what
Speaker 1: shown at me, only able to endure it by being
Speaker 1: no one and so specifically myself. I thought I'd die
Speaker 1: from being loved like that. Such a wonderful poem. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you say as you're as you're
Speaker 1: writing about that poem afterwards is we can be blessed
Speaker 1: at any moment by the startling realization that who we
Speaker 1: are is so much faster than our familiar identity. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's what this poem points to. Yes, Yes, And I
Speaker 1: love that it made me think of something. Um, it
Speaker 1: made me think of I was on a I was
Speaker 1: on a silent retreat with a spiritual teacher. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe four or five months ago. He's been a guest
Speaker 1: on the show. Listeners have heard Audi Shanti and that
Speaker 1: phrase about turning in the direction not as towards a place,
Speaker 1: but as a tilting within myself. And I just remember
Speaker 1: him pointing it that, in other words, this sense of
Speaker 1: that there isn't anywhere really that we can go to
Speaker 1: be closer to ourselves. We are. There's no move you
Speaker 1: can make to take you closer to yourself. But that
Speaker 1: idea of a tilting is just I just I love it.
Speaker 1: And it made me think of of I'm not explaining
Speaker 1: what he said very well, but it was that idea
Speaker 1: she talks about is not towards a place. We're always
Speaker 1: trying to move towards something. If I just reorient myself
Speaker 1: in this way or that way, then I will have
Speaker 1: this experience and and she points towards that's not it's
Speaker 1: not a motion towards anywhere, but that the tilting towards
Speaker 1: myself is a is A is a beautiful way of
Speaker 1: saying it. And so this poem is in the book
Speaker 1: really because you know, it just hint Saddle points to,
Speaker 1: as you're saying, a far larger reality then the reality
Speaker 1: that most of us are consumed in day to day,
Speaker 1: which is the passage of our own challenges and difficulties
Speaker 1: and and hopes and fears. I'm gonna read a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what you wrote after that poem, because
Speaker 1: also I think that the way you say this is
Speaker 1: really great. You say how feels that tilting within herself
Speaker 1: a reorientation, as it were, a recalibration that turns her
Speaker 1: inner gaze her awareness back on itself and blinds her
Speaker 1: with its light. Her familiar self has to be blinded.
Speaker 1: She has to become no one in order to experience
Speaker 1: her true personhood, her unique core in which she knows
Speaker 1: absolutely that she has always and forever loved. And I
Speaker 1: love that paradox in the poem and the way that
Speaker 1: you pointed out that is this concept of being so
Speaker 1: much more than we are, this idea of we're not
Speaker 1: just this limitedself. The poem talks towards you know, we're
Speaker 1: so much more than that, and we are absolutely and
Speaker 1: utterly that at the same time. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: she says it beautifully and you follow it very well. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: she really does say beautiful. It's just that last line,
Speaker 1: you know, and able to endure it by being no
Speaker 1: one and so specifically myself, I mean wonderful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever was happening to her then, you know, there was
Speaker 1: very clear insight. Yeah, the true nature of things right, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that that true nature that we've we've
Speaker 1: you know, you sort of started us off in that direction.
Speaker 1: But also what's so interesting to me about that is
Speaker 1: that it is often by being so utterly focused, with
Speaker 1: true attention on the specificity of exactly what's here and
Speaker 1: give being our attention to the very specific, that can
Speaker 1: open us up to this much greater reality. Makes me
Speaker 1: think of Leonard cohen Um, who I don't, I won't
Speaker 1: get this quite right, but in talking about writing about
Speaker 1: a song once he said, it's by being very specific
Speaker 1: that somehow you are able to hit a much more general,
Speaker 1: broader tone. You know, you know, yeah, And so you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't talk about a tree, you describe the very tree.
Speaker 1: But that very specificity and that attention to that level
Speaker 1: of detail also opens it up to something way bigger
Speaker 1: than itself. Absolutely, and so a poet, as in that
Speaker 1: example of Marie House poem, when a writer in general,
Speaker 1: when a writer or a poet is able so specifically
Speaker 1: to articulate their own concrete experience, it can be felt
Speaker 1: experienced by thousands of other people. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: through the deeply personal that we can move into the
Speaker 1: universal certainly throughout yep yep, and it it sounds paradoxical,
Speaker 1: but it's it's absolutely the way it works. Yea. Well, Roger,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to be
Speaker 1: on the show. You and I are going to continue
Speaker 1: with a post show conversation where we are going to
Speaker 1: do another poem by William Stafford, who is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite poets, and we're going to uh talk about
Speaker 1: William Stafford and we're going to talk about the power
Speaker 1: of silence. So listeners, if you are interested in that,
Speaker 1: people who subscribe at the ten dollar level uh get
Speaker 1: access to post show conversations that you can listen to
Speaker 1: write in your podcast player. You also get access to
Speaker 1: add free episodes as well as an extra mini episode
Speaker 1: every month. So when you feed dot net slash support
Speaker 1: for that, well, Roger, thank you so much for another
Speaker 1: wonderful collection of poetry, and also thank you so much
Speaker 1: again for taking the time to come on the show
Speaker 1: with us. Great pleasure, great pleasure. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast
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