Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Holy Ground
by Ivan M. Granger

Let the vision
of the vastness
you are
leave you
in glorious
ruins.

            the wreck
            made this empty plain
            holy ground.

— from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger

/ Image by Stuzal /

I thought I’d share one of my own poems with you today…

So often we imagine our spiritual journey to be one of construction. We want to build a great shining monument within ourselves. It comes as a terrible shock how much the real spiritual work is actually about tearing down our structures.

Watch a wild field at dawn. Sit among the uneven grasses and opening wildflowers. Look at that empty space all around you. It is empty, yes, empty of our own constructions. But it is filled with life. It is an inherently holy space.

The same is true of the quiet depths in the heart. No perfect construction of spirituality is needed. We need to reveal the holy life that is already the foundation of our being. With courage and supreme balance, stand back and do nothing. Staying poised, just look. Notice all those fine structures we’ve erected over a lifetime, proclaiming, “Here I am!” Look closely, look long enough, and we start to see fine cracks appear. When we don’t actively shore them up, the cracks quickly expand. And then, all of a sudden — RUMBLE — the whole facade collapses.

THAT is the moment we’re waiting for! That is when we discover the empty plain beneath our feet. And we are a part of that living space.

The saints and sages of the past, the great artists and visionaries too — we imagine the grandeur of spirit they attained. But the truth is that their greatness was attained in their own collapse, amidst the ruins… and the giddy open spaces they then discovered.

Recommended Books: Ivan M. Granger

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

Ivan M. Granger US (1969 – ) Secular or Eclectic Yoga / Hindu : Advaita / Non-Dualist

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It’s the questions that awaken the soul.
Certainty is the end of growth.

Gift
by Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no man worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man didn’t embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
On straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

/ Image by Christine Tutunjian /

A moment of pure, natural bliss.

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There is such relief for the spirit in the lines–

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no man worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

We imagine that there is so much to do — to provide for ourselves, to ornament our lives, to right wrongs — but they can be a terrible burden. The burden is not in the effort of accomplishment; rather, it is because we have taken the joy and the wholeness that is inherent and always present within ourselves and we have externalized it. We tell ourselves, “I can experience happiness and rest when I make this happen or when I have corrected that.” But this and that are never fully attained, so we strive relentlessly while depriving ourselves of the fulfillment that is our birthright.

All that can be healed with a holy moment, a quiet moment in the garden at dawn with the fog lifting.

In my body I felt no pain.
On straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Have a beautiful morning!

Recommended Books: Czeslaw Milosz

New and Collected Poems 1931 – 2001	The Collected Poems	Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness	To Begin Where I Am: The Selected Prose of Czeslaw Milosz	A Treatise on Poetry
More Books >>

Czeslaw Milosz Poland (1911 – 2004) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Christian : Catholic

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Ideas of this and not that
cannot approach the open field of what is.

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
      I see or hear
            something
                  that more or less

of the world,
      the ocean’s shine,
            the prayers that are made
                  out of grass?

— from Why I Wake Early, by Mary Oliver

/ Image by Kristopher Roller /

I’m back. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. It has been a few weeks since the last Poetry Chaikhana email. A busy time with my day job and helping my wife with some important projects. Mary Oliver seems a good poet to welcome us back…

Every so often I come across a poem by Mary Oliver I haven’t read in a few years, and rereading it I get to say, “Wow!” once again.

Read this poem a few times. Each statement rings in the air.

Sometimes I can appreciate a poem more fully when I read it as if the line breaks weren’t there, allowing me to really take in the meaning and imagery (then, when I reread with awareness of the line breaks once again, I can insert the sense of rhythm and stillness they imply)…

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight…

that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

That phrase to be killed with delight startles us. It is disturbing and yet somehow joyful. I take it to mean that we are so swept away with delight that the normal functioning of the self and our constant concerns all comes to a halt. We disappear in the midst of the beautiful moment.

Notice, by the way, how I have reshaped the line breaks here so you don’t miss the rhyme in the middle of the second and third sections? Worth saying out loud to appreciate it.

It was what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world —

That’s such a great line, isn’t it? “To lose myself inside this soft world.”

to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation.

There is a fundamental delight to the encounters and experiences of each day — but we must continuously “instruct” ourselves in it. Each time we recognize that joy, we are learning. The opposite is also true: each time we ignore it, we are forgetting.

Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations.

I think this is the poem’s true epiphany. The delight she speaks of, the magic in the day, is not discovered through having some sort of extraordinary experience. It is, surprisingly, in “the ordinary, the common,” the eventless moments.

How do we see? The title tells us — through being mindful. Through paying attention. Through stillness of mind, accompanied by relaxed, open awareness. It is then that the day’s delight reveals itself and we come to see even the most mundane moment for the immense landscape it truly is.

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these —

The day is teaching us. Are we being a good scholar? Are we paying attention to the lessons in awareness presented to us each day? Are we drinking in the joy given to us? It is there, when we are mindful:

the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

Have a beautiful day, noticing the untrimmable light of the world!

Recommended Books: Mary Oliver

New and Selected Poems	Why I Wake Early	Dream Work	House of Light	Thirst: Poems
More Books >>

Mary Oliver US (1935 – 2019) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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We don’t actually have histories.
We make up stories about ourselves
to connect our memories and discover meaning.
We can change those stories at any time.