Saying For Today: A quiet tenderness, a way silence holds another or self or both, not with arms but heart-with-heart, with or without the other knowing and may never know.
Winter Outside a Window (2)
Inn Along the Way/Chapman Farm
Damariscotta, Maine
NOTE:"Life," as meant in this series, is not my life or your life. Life is the liveliness, the mystery, the surprise of existence itself. Life gives vitality and wonder to our ordinary, extraordinary existence, otherwise, spiritually speaking, we are not living, we are existing biologically, we are not awake to the timeless, we are passing time here as a body manifesting a particular psychological makeup. Life itself is an ecstasy, from still and quiet to exuberant and vocal - before a whisper to after a shout.
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A Jewish prophet, Jeremiah (b. ca. BCE 650), to his fellow citizens...
However, if you still refuse to listen, in secret, I will weep... my eyes will flow with tears...
*Book of Jeremiah 13.17
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 in 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 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.
*Kahlil Gibran. The Prophet.
Lyrics below video
The world is covered by our trails Scars we cover up with paint Watch them preach in sour lies I would rather see this world through the eyes of a child Through the eyes of a child... Darker times will come and go Times you need to see her smile And mothers' hearts are warm and mild I would rather feel this world through the skin of a child Through the skin of a child... When a human strokes your skin That is when you let them in Let them in before they go I would rather feel alive with a childlike soul With a childlike soul... Hey oh, oh hey Oh hey Ah-ah hey Oh hey Hey oh, oh hey Oh hey Ah-ah hey Oh hey Please don't leave me here
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I sit in my third-floor room, maybe more to be consoled by her presence than for anything she could say to help me understand what is happening. I had sensed something was out of harmony. The body was registering something the mind could not put a word to. I cannot find an answer: "Is this about my own pain arising from the past into now?" Then, the question arises, mental, not heartful as the previous one: "Did I do something wrong?"
There was nothing to hold to, no explanation, only to embrace this sense-feeling wholly. This arising within bodily had not been felt in a long time, not to this degree. Tears lingered just below the surface, felt but not seen. The word arose - tenderness.
A quiet tenderness, a way silence holds another or self or both, not with arms but heart-with-heart, with or without the other knowing and may never know. In itself, tenderness does not need to be spoken; it is timeless, eternally alive and fresh. Indeed, to think upon, rather than only feel intimately, can separate me from the tenderness in its first, pristine arising.
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The adjective "tender" arrives into English, early 13th Century, via Old French tendre, "soft, delicate; young." The French derives from the Latin tenerem (nominative tener), "soft, delicate, of tender age, youthful." Akin words are Sanskrit tarunah, "young, tender," Greek teren, "tender, delicate," and Armenian t'arm, "young, fresh, green."
Following the Way leads us back to tenderness, a recapture of innocence, the pliability and sensitivity of the young tendril flowing with the subtle breeze. Sensitivity and agility are often buried and forgotten in our quest to survive and make a way in the world of competition for goods and success.
We may be shaken when innate tenderness, long-forgotten, pushed away out of fear or thinking we should be beyond such feelings, emerges suddenly. We may perceive such sensitivity as a threat to our hard-won show of strength and competence, having proven we are dutiful adults. But what have we lost in appearing competent, strong, and having it all together? In appearing as we now appear to others, have we lost something we once cherished, something the child knew?
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Children seem born with a natural sensitivity, or wakefulness. This sensitivity is a visceral awareness of what Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, refers to as "the magnificence of the world around us."
As a child, I remember walking alone to the church a few blocks from my house to light candles. I didn't have a firm idea about to whom I was offering them. I had no concepts about faith or any shoulds or shouldn'ts, dos and don'ts, surrounding spirituality. I just felt attracted to the light. The experience of awe and humility that I sometimes encountered inspired this early impulse to devotion and aroused in me a longing to express it. I intuitively understood that this was something that arose deep within the nature of my being, and it didn't occur to me to name it. Whether as a child or as an adult, we are all susceptible to moments when we emerge from our habitual reality. In these moments, we glimpse the magnificence of the world around us.
*Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. The Logic of Faith: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Certainty Beyond Belief and Doubt.
Do you recall when you were surprised by a sudden sense of deep tenderness? Were there other feelings that arose with that sense? What might be words that indicate this tenderness and accompanying feelings? Have you had deep feelings of sensitivity you could not name? How do you nurture a sense of "the magnificence of the world" around you? When was the last time you felt so alive and awake you decided the only fitting response was to remain silent?
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and notation of title and place of the photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
