Snow Day Haikus
Snow falls flake by flake
I can breathe through all my pain
Peace is a blanket.
Peace waits for no one
Peace waits for everyone who
Waits for true healing.
Haiku
released by time into eternity
"Easy does it" ... even as we mourn the people we love and are saddened by some of the ways of the world.
I'm thinking of all the people I lost last year. It reminds me of a custom in some places - Japan, China, Korea - to write death poems because so often I wish I had a little handwritten note to treasure among the memories, something emblematic of each cherished being. It's a downside to the computer age. Our boxes of notes and letters have grown quite lean.
My impression is that the death poems tradition was mostly honored among Buddhist monks and Japanese Samurai. The three classic forms were haiku, waka and kanshi. The gentle death poem that follows is a famous one by Yaitsu, but thus far I have been unable to find much information about him.
Note: In the West we tend to title h
Just Be It
Recently, I was researching Sabbath (Shabbat) meditations. I ran across one at My Jewish Learning titled: Shabbat and Meditation: Just Be It. It is a marriage of Mindfulness and the Shabbat experience.
Shabbat is a day of being, not doing. The day’s multitude of do’s and don’ts are essentially about not making anything, not destroying anything, and simply taking the world as we find it–for one day.
What would life be like if we took it just as we found it, even for one moment? With out destroying anything or needing to build something or change someone? Accepting all of creation for exactly what it is in this present, precious moment?
I believe, in that moment, we would find peace. A time to be.
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One of my favorite spiritual practices is haiku. Haiku is definitely a practice of mindful