Merlyn Is Back

Wizard's never go away. 

Sometimes, however, they take long journeys.

Let's just say, I had a long vision quest.

A Budding Biologist (to Richard, wherever you are these days)

Poem by Richard Pauloo

---

hiking in the Berkeley hills

a seed crests by my body

white sphere of life

nearly weightless in the wind’s breath

i turn back with an urge to capture it

to understand its beauty

and dissect it with logic

i pause

ashamed

my hands cannot hold

the true beauty of the seed which is

its effortless waltz with gravity

its gentle surrender to the ground beneath

the promise of new life it carries

the first green sprout

the animals that will play

on its gnarled branches

the growth and decay

of a forest

all contained within the soft small shell

of a seed

trailing

in the wind

Café Samadhi

Café Samadhi

     sunrise a'coming

I sit back

     in quiet wonder

     hearing the OM

     of refrigerators

     soft morning wake up jazz

     workers making espresso drinks

Café Samadhi

     stillness within-without

     worlds motionless

     I am the motion

     I am the stillness

Friend!

     You are the One

     Remember that!

Kiva Time

Terry Penttengill cartoon
Click image to enlarge.

It is our quiet time.
We do not speak
because the voices are within us.
It is our quiet time...
We do not walk
because the earth is all within us.
It is our quiet time.
We do not dance
because the music has lifted us to a place where the spirit is.
It is our quiet time.
We rest with all of nature,
we wake when the seven sisters wake.
We greet them in the sky
over the opening of the kiva.

- Kiva Time (from the Cliffdwellers)

With what do we buy our money?

With what do we buy our money? Many years ago, I was giving a talk on wisdom in the world. At the end of the talk, I was approached by an old man. He came up to me and said, "I want to ask you a question." I said, "What's that?" He said, "With what do you buy your money?" I thought about it for a minute, and said, "With your life, of course." He said, "You're right, and I wish I had known that when I was much younger. For all my life, I worked for money. I put all my time into working for money that I thought I would enjoy later on."

He explained that he just never thought about anything else except working to save money, to put money away, to plan for the future. And the future had arrived, and here he was, an old man. And he expressed that he had a sense of bitterness about that, that he hadn't achieved an earlier understanding about the importance of living life, and that he had indeed bought his money with his life.