Chris Hoffman - Ecopsychology, Poetry, A Thriving Future
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The Hoop and The Tree Chris Hoffman - Ecopsychology, Poetry, A Thriving Future |
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“A rich volume of poetry about life's flourishing.”– Roshi Joan Halifax |
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| As with a mountain, my losses are part of my shape. OasisOn this clear nighta small watch fire is flickering and waving its tendrils of spicy smoke beside the well in the inner courtyard. Your host has served you lamb with pilaf and sweet tea and now you are alone in the late hours, within these four sturdy walls, watching the stars swing imperturbably as they have for generations. A meteor strikes like a match across the sky. From somewhere, muted by the distance, comes the music of a lute and the rhythm of hands on a drum skin. Looking back on the long journey it seems the days were beaded on a string that led inevitably here, though at the time most were just an effort to discover how to do one’s best, and some just felt like failure. But now the gems of days stand out. And now the name of names forms on your lips, not to attain or ask for anything, but simply in gratitude and to participate in the flowing forth of life; for nothing is ever completed, only renewed. Handies PeakWhen the whole mountainlies under your feet, put there with leg muscle and deep breathing, you begin to see what the mountain sees— distances expanding through the polished air, the steep falling away from this high reach of rock and talus with its scabs of orange and gray-green lichen, the trickles of sky water from snowfields and, far down, the brief summer flourish of alpine meadows, and farther yet and wide away rolling on and on the velvet blanket of the forest to a narrow yellow band of lowland curving at the horizon. Like a cone of seeds, under one of those numberless trees lies your bundle of daily cares, whereabouts unknown. You see daylight and drifting cloud shadows play across the undulant land like a blessing for the largeness of life and a tap on the shoulder for the shortness of days. |