Who is my friend?

He whose heart is on active service.

 Who is my friend?

He whose mind is above earth-fogs

      And world-smokes.

 Who is my friend?

He whose soul keeps my victory banner

      Flying high, very high.

 EUROPE-BLOSSOMS, Sri Chinmoy (Poem #920).

Today marks the beginning of winter.  Last night was also a total lunar eclipse which could be viewed from about 1:30 to 5:30 am.  Luckily, I spontaneously awoke at 1:45 and was able to see the beginning of a shadow crossing the moon’s surface.  I set my alarm and made another attempt at 5:00, but the sky was too cloudy to see any more of this phenomenon.

I like to look at the sky.  It makes me feel grateful for the existence of beauty.  If you are wondering what the connection is between this and the poem above,  I am about to include the beauty of friendship among the things for which I feel grateful. There are only a trusted few on whom I depend for the active service heart, the clear practical reliable mind and the encouragement of that which I understand to be my soul’s vision.    I hope, that they in turn when asked the question, “Who is My Friend?” will consider me as having those same qualities….an aspiration for the coming year…..

 “My 50 Gratitude Summers” is a collection of poems that Sri Chinmoy had completed upon the occasion of his 50^th birthday – August, 1981.  One of the disciplines I try always to maintain or to revert to whenever the others seem to be slackening is to read Sri Chinmoy’s writings on a regular basis.  I am inclined more towards poetry, but despite the huge selection of work among which to choose, I often get a strong inner feeling about a particular collection of poems to read at a given time.   Last night I had a strong urge to reread “My 50 Gratitude Summers”.  It had been printed as a special volume – a milestone volume and contains many special and significant additions.  Each page has a printed poem in Sri Chinmoy’s hand writing along side a full page photograph of him in meditation.  The book is blue and the pages are gold, with small drawings of Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna Khala artwork in each of the four corners of the page.  It is a heavy book, one that needs two hands to hold.  It is a book that revealed itself in new and manifold ways as I began to read, and as someone who feels the Divine most strongly through the arts, seemed appropriate to me as a Bible, each page resonating with Sri Chinmoy’s living presence and as such, an overwhelming joy.

 The poet Gregory Orr best expressed the experience in a poem from his collection “Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved”;  

When you are sad

The Book grows larger

As if to comfort you.

When you despair

It can narrow

To a single poem.

And when joy

Arrives-hard

To read at all.

Blinking at

Page-dazzle;

The words

Breaking apart

Into letters,

Dancing there,

Unable to calm down.

 “You are the only person I know who could get so excited about finding an Italian ice stand”, my friend said, which is actually not true, since I have two sisters raised by the same mother.  The excitement of finding a place is possibly genetic or at least inherited.

My mother had the rare knack of making adventure from the ordinary.  Partially an economic necessity (not having money for family vacations) but more so her better nature, we took our “mystery” trips on Wednesday summer afternoons on my father’s day off from the dry goods store he owned and operated in New Jersey.  The only time it was a dead giveaway was the beach trip when the cooler had to be prepped the night before.  Otherwise, my mother’s lips were sealed.  I recall trips to Idlewild – now Kennedy Airport, the Statue of Liberty, Hacklebarney State Park and a tour of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery (we munched pretzels).  It was not simply the destination which caused her so much joy, but the care she took in selecting a place and then playing up the mystery to full dramatic effect.  I doubt to this day whether a trip to Rome or Paris could have rivaled our happiness or sense of the exotic.  She had a broad spectrum – the world to choose from, the only prerequisites that it be within driving distance and free.   Something more, though she never said, finding the sacred in the mundane is what she considered to be a rich life.

Today, truly my mother’s daughter, I carry a small book of daytrips, places close by to visit.  It takes some energy at times to get myself going, but the spirit of adventure and newness drives me.  My meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy encouraged us always to seek newness through any means which gave us (his words) – “innocent joy”.   I am sure finding the Italian ice stand would qualify.

I would like to think that my neighborhood was the most tolerant in America, whether true or not is another story, but for my own personal narrative I can see these signs emerging like small glimmers of light…

Each area of America has seen waves of immigration and all have shared the hope that this in fact is what the American dream represents.  At one time we were all strange and strangers to someone and then forgotten as we were assimilated and quickly replaced by another group.  I entered a largely Greek neighborhood as a member of a collective group of spiritual seekers belonging to no one particular race or culture.   Nearly thirty years later, my neighborhood has welcomed an international array, some who were eager to assimilate and others strongly aligned with their cultures. 

It is a peaceful neighborhood, not without its challenges.  Quite honestly, it is difficult to have an immediate response of warm welcome to every new member, but that is the hope and in some sense, the respect or simply the willingness of each neighbor to allow for the other, no matter our personal preference, is our perpetuation of the American ideal.  In time, we may become genuinely tolerant having aspired and achieved freedom from prejudice.  For now, I am content to observe a work in progress and to walk the streets of a peaceful neighborhood.

What is common sense?

            Aspiration.

What is aspiration?

            A blessingful gift from God.

What kind of gift?

It is God’s Love for you

In a most tangible form.

Ten Thousand Flower-Flames

Part 23. 2217 

Growing up, an often heard lament in my house was “She is smart in school, but has no common sense” – I often wondered about this mysterious and elusive gift so prized by my parents but never discussed at length in school or among friends.

It wasn’t until I become an active participant in the world that I found myself echoing the same—prizing and distinguishing those who have it from those who do not.

It gave me joy to work with those who not only had an intellect but most importantly, an intelligence that could be applied to the pragmatic, that was focused, inclusive, action oriented and relevant…in other words common sense.

We have a tendency to overprize the mind’s intellect rather than the heart’s wisdom, but one does not seem to do much good without the other.  Our own self-worth seems indistinguishable at times from the value society places on our IQ’s. Yet how often have we valued a targeted response to a situation, whether in crisis or not and have quietly cherished our own intuitive response when we have had the confidence to act accordingly. 

Common sense is the capacity to be grounded, to sense one’s place in relationship to oneself, one’s location and the other.  It is often the response which is life affirming and life saving.  It is a gift to be valued.

If you can create harmony
In your own life,
This harmony will enter
Into the vast world.

Sri Chinmoy

.

From time to time, I experience my New York City subway ride as a convocation, an almost ecclesiastical like gathering of devotees, dedicated to preserving their peace for the duration of the ride.  Consciously or unconsciously, we are unified by the unspoken agreement, “I shall do you no harm” and in a limited space and time agree to tolerate one another for the length of our confinement.  This group of uniquely diverse New Yorkers can manage a stillness and equanimity that feels like silent prayer.  I admit not as joyous on Monday, when it is a contest of endurance, but more so as the week progresses.  Even the very occasional disruption is often tempered by a tacit agreement not to escalate under any cost, lest we are unable to read, sleep, text, do last minute homework, listen to IPODS etc.

So here we are, training in inner poise, a microcosm of world harmony, in my case for 45 minutes or so, a pilot project of peace that could be utilized globally if we were inclined to consciously extend the application of this phenomena beyond the limits of the subway—from the personal to the universal.

Artists are instruments and have a choice to move towards either an earthly or heavenly direction.  It sounds lofty, but in actuality every unique talent has a calling.

Art in its purest form is a calling to use imagination as the guidepost to articulating reality—not as it is manufactured, but as it is, both ever-new and ever-ancient, a lit-filled illumined reality.  Those of us who aspire upwards may have the good fortune to be blessed with the grace of inspiration and if so, it is our responsibility to make ourselves more receptive to its omnipresence – to silence ourselves within so we can become more faithful to its true manifestation without.

Premise: Technology has set us back to such an extent that we have accepted electronic exchange as adequate replacement for human contact.  This is  inherently a world of isolation, because it seeks to satisfy the mind rather than the heart.  Taken to the extreme, it is responsible for many of our contemporary maladies and much of our social misbehavior.  The more we can distance ourselves from the “other”, the easier it becomes to experience the other as something alien from ourselves.  In this vein, it has set us back in terms of our global dreams for world peace.

What is the role then of poetry and the artist in this age of isolation?

Is it to reaffirm a reality which is essentially false, more virtual than real, or to reconnect us with our highest ideals—to envisage a oneness world, inclusive of all humanity, inclusive of the Divine.

If we hold to the role of artist as harbinger, then Sri Chinmoy’s poetry of transcendence bravely lays claim to such a world.  It is poetry which serves to reconnect us to our hearts and rekindle a message which is ever ancient and ever new that peace, both inner and outer, is essential for defining our humanity.