You arrive and greet
This morning of Rakshabandan.
As always, in full bloom
With unequivocal light and love.
This symbolic yellow rose
Stops me in my tracks
As you, brother, embodied
It’s rich depth and warmth.
Saving me from my sorrow
I see how love transverses all.
Physically no longer side by side
Yet our spirits still unite.
Our bond is clear
My brother dear,
As you remain with and between us,
Your loving sisters.
Today is Rakshabandan, the day of celebrating the bond between a brother and sister. The yellow rose is the symbol, my two sisters and I chose, that represents our departed beloved brother, Dipak.
From an unknowing third party, what should the universe send my way today of all days, but a yellow rose surrounded equally by three buds! What an image of our sibling unity!
In the dark,
Shivering and cold,
I remember you.
Laughed at, ridiculed
Ashamed.
Needing to disappear,
I remember you.
Searching for that look
Of approval.
Wanting that comforting
Hug.
Instead,
Feeling unseen
And left behind.
Now all grown up.
But I still remember you.
I remember you
Because I was you.
I saw you
And I see you now.
I held you
And I hold you still.
With a kindness,
A guidance,
A protection
Divine,
I have grown.
Grown to know
The great power of true love.
The kind that holds
The stars in place,
The sun at bay,
The moon for play.
Is this a fairytale
Or supreme astrophysics?
Either way
I must be loved.
How else
Could I be protected,
Be free to witness
Explore and come to know
The Might.
That surrounds
Nurtures and holds,
Both me and the stars.
For some,
I am a representation
Of their enamor with another.
Comes natural to the hermit
Enforced on the convicted.
A sort of imprisonment
Intended to safe guard.
And today,
The likes of me and you
With access to the essentials
Water, food and light.
But little preparation
With unheeded forewarning,
The mind is unconditioned
The body unable to relax.
As sources of entertainment fade
The confines close in,
And the loss of freedoms
Begin to set in.
What is most amiss?
The face to face
To see and feel
To interact, to feel of significance.
At heart we are social.
Beings in need of beings.
So here lies opportunity
To reach out in solidarity.
Break free of the concepts,
Traits of greed and fear.
Evolve to enable
Humanity at its best.
Perhaps the greatest outcome
Is yet to be seen,
As from our strife and grief
We learn the truest meaning
Of the real ‘Shelter in Home’.
For you are the home
Where the grandest one
Chooses to reside.
So take the time now given,
To acquaint and befriend.
Meditate in your solace
On the place most neglected.
Uncover your buried gifts
Your allies, your strengths
Your inner peace and joys.
The key to this realm
Is to deflect and rebuke
The noise, the distractions
Of the exterior, the illusions.
With these layers
Of shelter in home,
Be kind
Be gracious
Be in gratitude.
For you are ‘home’
And in home
Of the greatest of arms.
From the maddening crowds
Masked with mayhem,
To voluntary quarantine
And prohibited movement
The making of mass hysteria.
Heads rise above the cellphone
Our seeming invincibility
Suddenly cracked open
Finally we see each other.
Is it with empathy or fear?
Is it with comradeship or disdain?
With opposing forces
Hand in hand
How are we to survive?
How are we to accept them all?
Looking to Mother Nature
She shows constant dichotomies
Where the unlikely
Co-habit and even thrive.
On the hardened brittle bark
Beauty resides
As blooms spring forth
Soft and sumptuous.
From murky stagnant pools
Emerge the pristine lotus flowers,
No looking back or down
Just rising with a divine grace.
So this March
Is like no other,
Tests and trials
All yet to come.
Let not madness reign
As the confusion may prevail,
Rather rise with fortitude
And generosity of heart.
What comes, must pass
So lose not sight,
And ask of yourself
What are my powers
Which are constant,
Restoring and sustaining.
Sitting on a bench
Sharing our stories of
George Eliot
The pen named writer
The high school we all attended
The hospital where you were born
Once in the forefront
Then the backdrop
Of our lives
Sitting on a bench
Sharing our stories of
Riversley Road park
With the parading peacock
The pristine bowling green
The wading pool and bandstand
And of course the Museum
Once in the forefront
Then the backdrop
Of our lives
Sitting on bench
Sharing our stories
Outside
Abbey Theater
With new friends in times of need
Old ones re-acquainted
Once in the forefront
Then the backdrop
Of our lives
All these memories were fortunately made
So stories now can be re-told
And I can still cherish you
No matter how quickly
The two years have flown by
As the ‘passage way’
Of parenthood,
We’ve strived to be.
From nurturing to
Nagging,
As cheerleaders to
Protectors.
But actually,
With our smiles
Our laughter
And even the cries,
It’s Companions
We have grown
To become.
We’ve won as parents!
We hope you did too!
As despite any time
Apart,
We always feel that need
To come on back.
Back to the place
Of our togetherness.
So as 21 years
Rolls on in,
We have only to give
More of what
We’ve been blessed to have,
More WE.
From dream
To reality
You have emerged,
Definitely
A gift of complete
God-liness.
As beauty radiates
From inside out,
May you leave
Little gems
Of a life well lived,
Where ever
Your story unfolds…
Happy Birthday, Honey.
Flat as crisp clean sheets
Artwork courtesy of Nathan Sawaya
“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” poet J.D. McClatchy wrote in his beautiful meditation on the contrast and complementarity of love and desire. And what we choose to attend to — our fear or our faith, our woundedness or our devotion to healing — determines the quality of our love. How we navigate our oscillation between these inescapable polarities is governed by the degree of courage, openness, and vulnerability with which we are willing to show up for and to our own hearts. “The alternations between love and its denial,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum observed in contemplating the difficulty of knowing ourselves, “constitute the most essential and ubiquitous structural feature of the human heart.”
That is what the great Lebanese-American poet, painter, and philosopher Kahlil Gibran(January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931) explores in one of the most stirring passages from The Prophet (public library) — the 1923 classic that also gave us what may be the finest advice ever offered on the balance of intimacy and independence in healthy relationships.
Kahlil Gibran, self-portrait
Speaking to the paradoxical human impulse to cower before the largeness of love — to run from its vulnerable-making uncertainties and necessary frustrations at the cost of its deepest rewards — Gibran offers an incantation of courage:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
Illustration from An ABZ of Love, Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite vintage Danish guide to sexuality
In a sentiment John Steinbeck would come to echo a generation later in his beautiful letter of advice on love to his teenage son, Gibran adds:
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
The Prophet remains a timeless trove of wisdom and a mighty clarifying force for the turbidity of the heart. Complement it with Gibran on why we make art and his stunning love letters, then revisit Adrienne Rich on how honorable relationships refine our truths, Erich Fromm on the art of loving and what is keeping us from mastering it, Leo Tolstoy on love and its paradoxical demands, and this wondrous illustrated meditation on the many meanings and manifestations of love.”
