Black and White, or Grey?

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomenon of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged.

The Chün Chou Record of Huang Po *

It was grey this morning. I kind of liked having the morning be grey. Or, at least, I wasn’t bothered by it.

We seem to live in a world that worships black and white divisions of people and things. You must be this, and if you aren’t this, then you are that, and so forth. I have a feeling that the purpose of polar extremes is to diminish and separate people, rather than build them up and unite them. These days, spin can be spun in either direction, one way or the other, and the power behind the spin can flip-flop at will. If you don’t keep abreast with the current direction of the pole, you could find yourself off the map of the known world. The black and white discussions and arguments and ideologies and wars do not lend themselves to progress, or even regression—more often than not, they lead to paralysis.

We are not yet near the end of December, but the two faces of Janus are in our face, recording our doings as wishy-washy and indecisive. Stuck. Janus was not meant to symbolize being in a rut, however—this Roman god was all about beginnings and endings; about transitions, not paralysis.

Janus is the open door, not the closed mind. Janus is really all about the middle ground, what I call the grey area.

I prefer to enter and center myself in the grey area. The grey area seems more spacious, or at least pleasantly removed from all the one-sided black and white discussions, the flip-flops that go nowhere and the cultural paralysis that seems to plague our world just now.

The grey area seems very like the zen, described as void in the quote above. There is freedom there, and openness to possibility. Freedom to think, to judge, to move and act omni-directionally.

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* Blofeld, John (translator). The Zen Teaching of Huang Po On the Transmission of Mind. Rider & Company, 1958. Page 31.

Here Now

—an homage to John Lennon

Only dimly aware of where you have been,

I really don’t know all the ins and outs,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

You don’t know where I’ve been,
sometimes stuck in fears and doubts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

Coming of age from the children we’ve been,
we’re learning to sing by softening our shouts,
but none of that matters now,
because you are here with me now.

And Wow! Now is why we are here, then—
the now, the how and the why withouts;
simple, but not so that it matters,
because we are together here now.

Here is where we go from where we’ve been
to where we’ve never been, before or about,
and really nothing else much matters,
because on we go, together from here, now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Message in a Bottle

        for Nina Shuman

A Love-O-Gram,

to put in the pram
of your thoughts
            as they billow thither,
full sail on the yacht
Unbound.

A Love-O-Gram
from where I am
to wherever you may be,
            and to where you see all
that sun and moon trace:
the revolution that is each day.

O, Love-O-Gram,
come only as I am
to your thoughts,
            speak only as I can speak,
with fullest of heart,
to toast the beauty of your art
and you.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Within the Embrace

Between sound and silence,

one kiss, one embrace,
one bed of contemplation.

Speculations as to
which one is holding the other?
—an irrelevant conversation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

From a chapbook entitled “Brief Encounters With Fluidity” © 2008 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen, this poem and others from this collection have been set to music by composer Carson P. Cooman in his cycle for solo voice (unaccompanied) Brief Vibrations op. 870.

Indivisibility

Through now’s vast dreaming space,
light passes through and through the me I know as mine,
enlivening, crystallizing, enlightening, singing
--singing within me, singing through me, singing of me--
to every other facet of now as it passes through happening,
carrying my essence,
like a delicate thread,
to gently weave,
with all the others,
into a pulsing brocade of Being.

Light,
unseen while visible worker of miracles,
interleaving, interweaving, transporting, transforming
each uniqueness from simple melody into a symphony of life
by the mere whispering of each name through every other,
a subtle grafting of every loose end or fragment,
onto every complement that could ever be devised,
and some beyond imagining,
until all endings and all beginnings blur… blur… blur…
so that there are no more boundaries
and there is but a single name
carried on the head of the mystery called light:
an invocation of all-that-is, of all-that-could-be,
of all-that-shall-ever…

--One body streams
across the shadows of yet-to-be
unfolding into the awakening smile of now.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Tower of Babel

Creation hangs on one word alone.

S’truth, one was the word, and
of one accord was the song,
by which the tower was begun.

But each ascending storey
found diversion and division.

The word splintered from one
into a world of words;
the people from friends
into nameless ranks of strangers.

At every turn, every new height
the plans and styles change;
right hand knows not left,
nor wants to.

The Witness had only to watch,
with heaviness of heart,
as the great structure
began its collapse from within.

unraveling into flames,
consternation and war.

From that time forward,
diversity has yet to discover
its sacred power to build.

No human tower shall ever reach God,
until the daughters of woman,
and the sons of man
remember that

Creation hangs on one word alone.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen

A Season of Giving (All Year Long and For A Lifetime)

Give, give, give. And when you have given, give more.

I am no preacher, but I think on words from the Bible, every once in a while. Last Sunday, we read what John the Baptist (in Matthew 3:1-12) said about trees. Trees either bear fruit or they don’t. John said that the trees that bear fruit will be cultivated by the farmer, while those that do not will be cut down and consigned to the flames.

Of course, this preacher man was talking about people.

This time of year is called “The Season of Giving”. I think this is a sad commentary on our culture. Giving is not something to be shoved in a month or two, but it is an everyday event, week in and out, every month, all year long.

Here is a riddle: How can genuinely generous people limit their generosity? Well, the answer is they cannot, you cannot make them do so, and they simply won’t.

This season we call “The Season of Giving” is really about taking, isn’t it? How much money can the marketplace take from consumers? How much can consumers take for personal consumption, while under the guise of doing for others? How much more can government take or borrow or steal from public programs, public schools, public health and public parks, so that the rich can take bailouts, bonuses, undeserved tax cuts and lucrative government contracts, and take our people’s jobs overseas to bestow on others? By their absence of fruit, we know them only too well; there is an absence of generosity toward the average person in these dread deeds. These trees do not bear fruit; these are ornamental trees that suck up more nutrients than they need, starving the rest of the orchard.

We, the People, are being taken for a ride.

And yet, and still, the spirit of giving is alive. It is not in the running around and buying of things. It is not in the rushing and the stress.

Giving is alive in the magic of the unexpected. The smile from someone, waiting in line just like you are. The tokens of friendship that start with a warm cup of tea and radiate outward. The giving of food, not just to the Food Bank, but to your neighbor—just because. The passing on of kids' clothes to younger children of another family. Freecycling any and all things that you no longer want or need, so that someone else can extend the life of perfectly good manufactured items. This is good fruit.

This good fruit is all day, everyday giving. These are trees that bear fruit and prosper, in spite of all the taking that goes on around them.

As for that other kind of tree, the preacher man John said there is an ax, waiting to cut down those non-fruit-bearing trees. In history, we have seen this come to pass. It is a sad story, and innocent people are also hurt. How it will play out in our time, we cannot see.

What we can see (and delight in and give thanks for) is that there are many lowly and unassuming trees bearing good fruit everyday, whether or not they are properly nourished, whether it is asked of them or not. There are no limits to what good trees will bear. There are no limits to what good people will do.

God bless the beautiful people that make everyday a gift!