Heaven Takes Root at the Little Shack of Insight

I am planting Gardenia's everywhere around the Shack so the fragrance will hover over the Property.  Perhaps the Incense of Heaven on Earth will take root.

The idea was brought to mind in early summer when the Gardenias bloomed. The scent still lingers from the flowers I picked for my wife one early June morning. Smiling, she pressed them in her favorite books as she whispered, "The perfume is always sweeter with age!" I laughed and said, "The Wine in the Bottle!" Inspired, I have begun to make cuttings from that special Gardenia bush. The Gardenia symbolizes Grace; it has been associated with the visiting scent of Saints. I find pleasure in growing plants, something I've learned through trial and error. To me, it is one form of co-creating in harmony with that mysterious purpose of Nature. For the aging and disabled, it definitely can become a synergistic exercise: Spiritual (co-creating, cultivating in harmony), Physical (hands-on shovel and pail, caressing the soil over a stem) and Mental (visualizing, mapping the completed growth) --a practice that can't be accomplished at the Gym! I have had good results with all kinds of plants, from cactus to fruit trees, making cuttings--an ancient form of cloning! While there are many sites on the internet with pictures and techniques, my simple way is: I find a fresh green stem about 6 inches long, cut it with a sharp knife--oval with a point not straight across, leave 2 or 3 green leaves at the top, moisten the stem, then poke it in powdered root stimulator. Poke a hole in any pot filled with potting soil, insert the stem, keeping it moist, not wet, for several weeks, out of direct sun. In a month's time, the Gardener becomes the Midwife for Nature, handing over the sprouts to a proud new day. A new birth, a resurrection, occurs in the plant!  In this harmony with Nature, we too are renewed.  Here is a wonderful description of this miracle:

Cuttings (Later) by Theodore Roethke

“This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet. “

Perhaps in a few years, we can get can get together, you and I down by the Shack, have tea or coffee and inhale deeply the scented breeze of Heaven on Earth, Rooted in the form of Gardenias!  (With a little help of co-creation!)

The Mimosa Tree

I usually read a page or two of some book before I go to bed. Recently, I was reading about Jung's decision to try to discover the myth by which he personally was living. He asked himself, "What was the game I enjoyed when I was a child?" Joseph Campbell asked a similar question: "What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that made you forget time?" That night, I began to drift in my memories, as aging people do. I drifted to a day when I was a preschool child with my mother, who was visiting her friend for coffee. In the back yard was a large Mimosa tree, cultivated in that rustic, branching, natural way by Sun, Wind and Rain - an image of Eastern Asia, with its fine pink flowers and mystic perfume. As I climbed high up a branch,  hanging on, hugging it, the sun entered my bones like an X-ray with a warmth and brightness boring deep in my essence, leaving a moment of "All is Right with my World" framed in memory -- a glowing happiness. This feeling has returned to me my whole life, whenever I see a Mimosa tree.  

My memory floated again to my old home where I grew up in Houston. There was a large elm tree in the back; the seeds always reminded me of bunches of bananas! I would climb high up the tree, perhaps looking for that timelessness of the Mimosa. One day, the first day of Spring, a Finch with green and yellow feathers landed right next to me. We looked at each other in a natural innocence and she sang a song to me.  I said, "Hello, little bird." There was magic in that moment as she turned her head inquisitively! Everyday I would climb the tree to see if my new friend was there, but she never was. Then the next year's first day of Spring came and I climbed the tree again, hoping, hoping I would see her once more. To my complete surprise she landed next to me. There was no mistake--it was her!  She sang her Song and gave me her eyes. I was hers.

Oh, of timeless days                                                                                                               when we are but a child.                                                                                                     Simple breezes of                                                                                                                   eternal moments,                                                                                                                  framed in our hearts,                                                                                                       magically change into                                                                                                                  our essence.

Thank you,                                                                                                                                  O Lord,                                                                                                                                       for blessed memories                                                                                                                      clinging to us,                                                                                                                               lightening our burdens,                                                                                                                and sweetening our rest.                                                                                                                           

Tumbleweed Visits the Little Shack of Insight

An Old Friend of mine, Tumbleweed, came by today. I was really surprised! Have not seen him in ages. As usual, he walked from God-Knows-Where... Last time I heard, he was living in a culvert in Austin, Texas. The City tried to get him to move but he somehow got a lawyer to help him and he was allowed to live there--nice cozy place! From what I heard from people that knew him in school, he was a real academic guy, headed to a University, with a bright future ahead of him. Then he had an accident while working part time in a warehouse. A long heavy metal chain with a hook on it came loose, swung back and hit him right between the eyes! Knocked him out and he never was the same. Most thought he went mad. He told me once that it was his “Hard Knocks Transfiguration!”

After the accident, he lived in a cabin (really a Shanty, but he called it his cabin) near a family-owned creek that would flood from time to time. I would go check on him and he would be up on the roof talking to the water rushing through the creek below. Once there was a group at my home and a Neil Young concert came on the TV. We both started singing along to the “Old Laughing Lady.” Someone said, “Shut up Tumbleweed and let Jack sing,” so of course Tumbleweed started singing at the top of his voice. We ended up singing a duet that sounded like two tomcats howling! After the song we started laughing so hard, the nails and doors started to fall out of that house!

While he was visiting me last night, we stayed outside for a while. There were violent flashes of “heat” lightning. Tumbleweed would laugh and say, “You know that storm is a living being!” He began talking about reincarnation and then about the Man in the Moon. With his long beard, hair and bamboo walking stick he reminded me of a Prophet of old.... We made him a bed on the couch and in the morning I got up to make him coffee but he had already gone, headed for “God-knows-Where.” He left me a gift though: a fossil rock he picked up somewhere in his travels--but that's not all. He left me with that JOY that seems to abound around those with a certain wild freedom the world sometimes calls “madness.” An old poem popped in my head from Kahlil Gibran:

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen — the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives — I ran mask-less through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me. And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a housetop cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman. And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.    

...Goodbye Tumbleweed; Happy Trails to You!

PREVIOUS POST

from "My Wilderness": I read all the books. I had many teachers, many paths; I had my moments of Satori's and stretches of Samadhi. But when I was turning 60, spiritually I became very dry, on a plateau. I began to pray intensely: “Something must happen!” (click here to continue reading)

My Wilderness

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.
They are plans for good and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

— Jeremiah 29:11

I read all the books. I had many teachers, many paths; I had my moments of Satori's and stretches of Samadhi. But when I was turning 60, spiritually I became very dry, on a plateau. I began to pray intensely: “Something must happen!” I imagined a New Teacher who would give me his/her Juice!

Well, I had my yearly health checkup and the Dr. reported: “ You have cancer, a tumor as big as a fist and I saw spots on your liver as well, probably stage 3 or 4. You need to get into chemotherapy right away!”

Shock! Panic! Denial, Anger, Terror! These were my emotions. I retreated into my imagination. In my mind's eye, I put up a large canvas tent for refuge. Let me explain – Years ago I bought a 16' by 16' Army Surplus Tent and pitched it behind my late ailing Mother's home, while I took care of her (she was suffering from dementia). She had been an Army Battlefield Nurse  near the Front Lines during WW2. This seemed to help her remember things about her past and she spent many days speaking of her experiences with the brave ones: healer, healing and dying. Cancer became my battlefield, the tent-- my struggle with healing. I wrote and wrote everyday, while I underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Alone in the tent, poetry began to flow:

“Rainy Sunday Afternoon

At the Tent

Resting by the Fire

Worn Out From All This Intensity

Listening to Healing Rain Drops

Relaxing on Warm Soft Canvas”

This was the beginning of The Little Shack of Insight. I looked Death in the Eye and It said “No more bullshit!” “No more lies!” and repeating again and again: “Authentic! AUTHENTIC!” 

I remembered the quote of Castaneda's Don Juan: “Death is the only wise adviser that we have.” I made Death my ally, my New Teacher.

Slowly I began to heal and Death did not take me... Now, 4 years later, inspired by recovery, I had an insight that I needed a grounded place for meditation, creativity and sharing musings of what my confrontation with Death taught me. I am converting a small shed into my Little Shack of Insight, on an 8 acre track surrounded by forest.

“Wilderness is Salvation”

— Joseph Campbell

A Teacher once told me “All of us live in a Wilderness with no path, just the one we make.” I began my own unique journey from the spiritual plateau I found myself on and began a mountain climb to freedom. I became a Pilgrim like the film hero Jeremiah Johnston. To those who are not familiar with the film (and let me say now, despite the violence played out at times, I see and experience this film as a story of spiritual experience and awakening!)  Jeremiah is a battered war veteran in the 1800's. He leaves everything behind to become a Mountain Man in the Wilderness. His first year in the Mountain Country is very harsh, but he meets the elderly and eccentric  Del Gue, nicknamed “Bear Claw,” an experienced Mountain Man who mentors him on wilderness living. As Jeremiah survives, in spite of tragic loss, Bear Claw  returns and the conversation goes like this: “These are the finest sculptures” (the wild beauty surrounding them) “and there ain't no laws...and there ain't no Asylums...there ain't no Churches except this right here...and there ain't no Priest...except the birds...on this Great Map of the Magnificent!” 

I hope one day to hear my inner Bear Claw tell me as he told Jeremiah, “You come a far Pilgrim.”

I will respond, “Feels like far.” 

“Was it worth it, the trouble?”

...and like Jeremiah,  with new acceptance, in the clarity of Awakening, I will answer:   “What trouble?”

Build your sacred space, your refuge, find your own path in this Wilderness. Follow it like your life depends on it: Because it may bring you to your very own:                                                                                                                                                                                    “Great Map of the Magnificent!”