Write our Song

Write our Song

Preparation seems long

Long those days

Delays with passing..

Many hesitations stall

Still we're asked to

Write our Song..

Those scary leaps

Many are forsaken

Then our Song

Most remarkably

Leads us on..

Our Song invites

Find me there

Between Silence

and words

In that space 

Know our energy to

Write our Song...

Big Bang Cycles

  

Big Bang Cycles

Scientists with
peering satellite deep
 finds startling news..
If Genesis to us
means Big Bang
just that once
we need pause
and prepare..
satellite finds Cycles
circular patterns
 movement sublime
a Story before: 
chaos to order to
chaos once more..
Now a vision
Genesis beginnings
in timeless eons
 in time's seasons
beauty not ceasing...

Circular patterns within the cosmic microwave background suggest that space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang but that our universe in fact continually cycles through a series of “eons.” That is the sensational claim being made by University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, who says that data collected by NASA’s WMAP satellite support his idea of “conformal cyclic cosmology.”

Small Landscapes

Small Landscapes

Landscapes

 easily overwhelm

but with persistence

each is multitude

of relational smaller..

recognize and

watch it expand

fill the mind

and universe...

Weeds

Weeds

In our modern

Quantum knowing

entanglement claims

the one reality..

Alas if all

is so entangled

some might say:

These are weeds

much overgrown..

To our rescue

Are two grounds

Fore and Back

new clarity arrives

finds the reality

Beauty deserves...

Imagination

Imagination

Oft maligned in

our Newton homes

Where out there

is what Is..

But this Is

is darkening as

our days prolong..

Cries for connection

are arousing

desire for dawn..

a gift forgotten

this lifeline

cord...

Country Doctor

Country Doctor

The eye of 

his camera in 

 timeless juxtapose  

finds the meaning

of the life 

we live..

two children

emerging from a

dark forest place

find a lighted

garden of discovery..

A country doctor

braces from wind

rendering service to

 those caught in

that same forest..

his wish to

rescue childhood

which now weighs

distant and dim...

For his groundbreaking 1948 LIFE magazine photo essay, “Country Doctor” photographer W. Eugene Smith spent 23 days in Kremmling, Colorado, chronicling the day-to-day challenges faced by an indefatigable general practitioner named Dr. Ernest Ceriani.

“Country Doctor” was an instant classic when first published, establishing Smith as a master of the uniquely commanding young art form of the photo essay, and solidifying his stature as one of the most passionate and influential photojournalists of the 20th century.

The Red Bicycle

The Red Bicycle

Real learning we
learn from
a red bicycle..
Movement is 
conversation of
oppositions..
Without conversation
differences reign..
We soon find
multiplicity growing
and peace disturbed..
Red reminds us
each difference relates
to other differences..
Relating is unifying
bringing the peace
Red turns Blue...

Tangential

Tangential

a periphery sounding

word seems key

to each her own

identity..

each painter explores

what is out there

 in forest and sea

finding those words

which other painters

have already stroked..

our perennial question:

where is originality

or is this distinction

simply and always

Tangential...

Mae's tangent...

3/4 Moon

3/4 Moon

evening reflection

of departing Sun

tonight three quarters

brilliance and shadow

awaiting new evening

a fuller reflection..
our shadows are
of varying fractions..
might we hope
for a fuller moon
 on some days...

City noise

City noise

motorcars and cycles

weaving the fabric

of surround sound..

a dog barks

a honking horn

distant siren

these cut the fabric

offer their names..

is this picture

a dark iteration

of the Field

with creation

interrupting...

Mother bird

Mother bird

is honor beyond

and light concealed

through all creation..

her chicks need

our attention

without distraction

of ego for honor..

Send her away

we are advised..

discover her light

in the nesting chicks

in the beauty

of flower

mountain and plain...

see Deuteronomy 22

Experiential Communion

Experiential Communion 

Beginning is sitting

Sit in shadow

Difficulties there are

Yours and theirs

Nearby and world..

Ascend Center aisle

Enter dark tunnel

Your frontward gaze

Sights pinpoint light..

In Mindful walk

The pinpoint enlarges..

Receiving the bread

Light floods all..

Contact with wine

Recalls the shadow

Bread and Wine

Light and Shadow..

Descend wing aisles

Ending is sitting

In unity's Glow...

Constriction

Constriction

We compose our

poems

each unique voice

from our source

experience of life

ebb and flow..

finding our words

do they speak

to the poet alone..?

or need we

constrict 

find a clarity

to converse

favoring those..

not to forget

our original flow

elevating restoring

a unique soul...

Disruptions

Disruptions

A friend's kitchen 

disturbed and

my mouse entries

must be sealed..

This day dawns

 planned disruptions

What is disrupted..?

is our experience

one of

Disrupted disruption..?

what then if

Mindfulness blooms:

 surrounding wholeness

welcomes disruption

with expectations of

delicacies looming

mice denied entrance

filtered colors ablaze...

Fracking

Fracking

a withdrawal

from 

cycle of life..

water

cycling since

primordial times..

afternoon rainstorms

diminished..

that rain from

earthly stimulation

now her flow

interrupted impure..

is now time

for fracturing

or for

joining and

return...?

Kabbalah and Fracking Don't Mix; or, The Fracking Solution
Rabbi David Seidenberg


Every year, more than 100 billion gallons of water are used in the United States for hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a process that breaks up rock in order to force out millions of cubic feet of natural gas. But if we charged the fracking companies for their use of freshwater in a realistic way, fracking would end in an instant.

Why is that? Well, if you use a gallon of water to take a shower or flush the toilet, that water gets mixed with basically harmless stuff that can be treated. Afterwards the water is put back into the stream of life, back into the water cycle of the whole planet. If a farmer uses a gallon to grow tomatoes, the time it takes for the water to come back into the natural cycle is even shorter.

When a petrochemical company uses a gallon of freshwater to "split open the depths of the earth," most of that water stays deep underground. It needs to stay far beneath even the deepest aquifers and away from the water we use for drinking and agriculture, because otherwise it would poison the groundwater and aquifers near where fracking takes place.

Other extractive industries also use huge amounts of water, but the many millions of gallons of the water used to frack a well are not just used one time and returned to the ecosystem. They are being used up for all the possible times they would ever have cycled through the Earth's streams and seas and atmosphere as part of the lifeblood of this planet, for potentially millions of years.

What does it mean to lose most of that water, essentially forever? According to Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), it could be considered a sin against the water itself.

Kabbalah imagines the world and its elements as yearning, longing, to be raised higher and higher into consciousness, into the process of life and love. This can happen whenever a more sentient life form like a human being takes in a more basic substance (like when we drink water), and it happens through the process of evolution itself, where life comes from the elements and develops greater and greater capacities for connection and awareness.

In Kabbalah, the very symbol of blessing and of divine wisdom, of emergence and life, of Chesed (or "lovingkindness"), is water. If we take these ideas seriously, then the water that stays in the fracked rock is deprived of fulfilling its deepest purpose.

By conventional environmental ethics, one should just be thankful that most of the water stays far below the ground. That's because the fracking company first mixes that gallon with its own proprietary blend of poison that will make the solution flow easily yet still be very dense--dense enough to fissure huge rock formations at high pressures.

When it injects millions of gallons of this solution into the ground, the water absorbs more poisons: radioactive elements, salts, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, etc. When the well starts to produce methane gas, anywhere from 20-50% of the fracking solution (hundreds of thousands to a million-plus gallons) comes back up the well-bore along with gas, in the form of what's called "flowback water" mixed together with "produced water," all of it highly contaminated.

The fracking industry is still struggling to figure out how to handle it. Sometimes, the flowback water gets diluted with freshwater on site and sent straight into our streams and rivers. It can also be deep-injected into isolated rock formations, where it may lubricate faults and cause earthquakes. Or, in a version of recycling unique to the oil and gas industry, it can be added to more freshwater for re-fracking the same well or fracking the next well.

There are other adverse impacts that fracking has on our water supply. Withdrawing millions of gallons of water from an ecosystem, river or well can cause terrific damage in and of itself -- all the more so in drought-ravaged areas of the West and Midwest, where so much fracking takes place. And we don't know whether fracking fluid and natural gas will come up through old abandoned wells that intersect with fractured rock.

One thing we do know for sure, however, is that when a fracking operation "withdraws" a gallon of water from an aquifer or stream, half or more of that is a permanent withdrawal.

It would make a huge difference if the fracking companies were just charged for the "cradle-to-grave" use of all these millions of gallons of water, including the costs of the predictable spills and the technology needed to treat the water that doesn't spill. But we can go further than that.

Let's be very conservative and say that there are 100,000 times that this water could be used that are gone in one shot. How much does a gallon of water times 100,000 cost? More than a cubic foot of gas? More than 50,000 cubic feet of gas.

This magnification of the value of water is no exaggeration. If anything, the price is far too low. In 100 years, the people who are alive will look back in utter horror to think of how we wasted and ruined our precious water resources in order to bring more and more poison up to the surface of this very good and beautiful planet.

For science and ecology, as for Kabbalah, water is the very substance of life. So shall we take this gallon of water, brought here in this planet's early childhood by comets of ice, this gallon that has passed through the forms of sky and cloud and ocean for billions of years, and even cycled through cytoplasm and breath, sap and blood, and remove it from life's cycle? Is that what the water would will, if it could will?

You see, even if we didn't have to worry about tap water catching fire, even if we didn't have to worry about hundreds of thousands of acres of land being taken over by wells and collection pits and truck roads, or about all the escaped methane being driven into the atmosphere (where it will accelerate global climate disruption 20 times more powerfully than carbon dioxide) -- even without these things, fracking, and the attitude behind fracking, would still be a danger to the well-being of the planet.

Ban? Moratorium? Regulation? That's beside the point, once the actual consequences for the planet's freshwater are assigned a cost. If people want to stop fracking, if municipalities and citizens want to take control of their land from rapacious companies and know-nothing state governments, then let's charge the companies for what our precious water is really worth.

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org. He teaches on ecology, spirit and Judaism through his website and throughout North America and the world. His first book, on ecology and Kabbalah, will be coming out this year.

All breathes

All breathes

deeply

solar plexus

cells

even stones..

imagination

forms and

colors 

rising and

falling..

each cycle:

the many

gathers and

transforms

to light..

and light

to

the many..

each and

All breathes...

Charity

Charity

this opening of self

to outside others

is expanding awareness

and a connecting

with Self inside..

Sages report this

repeating awareness

as vital gain

in many realms

higher and lower...

Illumine Solitude (Rilke)

Vase with Daisies, by Vincent van Gogh

Don't be confused by the nature of solitude, when something inside you wants to break free of your loneliness. This very wish, when you use it as a tool for understanding, can illumine your solitude and expand it to include all that is. Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. It is clear, however, that here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living things in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves at any cost and despite all opposition.

Rome, May 14, 1904

Letters to a Young Poet

Discovery

Discovery

as writing poetry..
of surprise
of beauty
of pattern
of symmetry
of unity..
these may be 
the true Joy...

"I wouldn't bother to start a poem if I already knew the ending.
The pen is not just a recording device; it can also be an
 instrument of discovery."

—Billy Collins

Beauty and consciousness.... Nassim Haramein

The Sacred of Geometry

: “Connect with your existence, connect within yourself, connect with this infinite beauty that you are made of. And then express it in the world. Make the world around you an expression of that beauty, of that power, of that consciousness.” -Nassim Haramein

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