Dear Reader
Today, Sunday, holds our monthly Open Meditation - to which of course you are invited. There is a flyer and a link to directly join the practice at 5pm UK time (do check your own time zone).
I also felt to share a poem with you from my book Recital, I’m reading through poems and pieces at the moment as I’m at the Contains Strong Language festival next month and so am just letting some of my work rest in my body to feel if I should want to share it via the tongue when the festival swings around.
If you are finding yourself feeling like ‘what the hell can I do with the world going the way it is going?’ come and sit in meditation with us today if your heart has a little pull towards this idea or sense of being. It might just be a safe space in which you can rest for an hour, or it might be a doorway to presence which is the key to life, and honestly these are the things that all the difficulties and horrors being deliberately created are aimed at stopping you experiencing, as well as the outcomes of distraction and helplessness so that things might run their course unchallenged by truth. For if you were to truly know yourself through art or meditation or being you would know the world, and then you might feel, empathise, act decisively, do something actual beyond what you are told you are allowed to do. You might sense freedom in your body and desire it for yourself and others, and they might be the wrong others who are not allowed to be free or to live as human beings. We can’t have than now, so no you must not create, be artistic, write or meditate, and you certainly should come and sit with me, here or on our upcoming retreats.
Here’s the poem - which you shouldn’t read - and the meditation info which you must not attend.
Love
John
Facing You We cannot tame the wind or the sea. Cannot make them roll or blow our way. Taming ourselves comes first, then we may laugh at them, scream at them. We cannot tame those we wish to love. Cannot make them roll or blow our way, but we can laugh with them, scream with them, or break them in the taming we try, which should be the fixing of ourselves. We cannot tame love, or the wind, or the sea, we are not here for long enough. There will always be these things. Our joy comes from being the flash, the spark in the eye of forever. Forever is grown too old to laugh and scream. © John Siddique 2008 From 'Recital - An Almanac' (SALT)
Meeting ID: 860 2073 4588
Passcode: 957584
But do come in a few minutes before.
You can read more about this practice here.
I will be reading this poem to my clients John, it's exactly what we all need to hear.
sublime...