This is What You Have Been Waiting For

The Gate
by Marie Howe, from What the Living Do

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

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See also:

• "The Poetry of Ordinary Time," On Being, April 25, 2013
• Howe, M. (2008). The kingdom of ordinary time. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (library)
• Howe, M. (1998). What the living do: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton. (library)
• Howe, M. (1988). The good thief. New York: Persea Books. (library)

Training Individual and Collective Adaptive Capacities

"It's really important to be able to come back to the present moment. This is where change can happen. This is not just adaptive capacity for individuals, but it resonates out to collective adaptive capacity: more resilient organizations, more resilient communities, more dynamic, flexible institutions. These are the capcities that can face any possible future. We don't have to be able to predict, because we can't. Humans can't. But then we can really show up and meet any experience."

~ Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, from "Optimizing the Caveman within Us," TEDx Talks, October 2013   

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See also:

• Mind Fitness Training
• "The Biology of Risk," by John Coates, The New York Times, June 7, 2014 
• Clark, T. (2011). Nerve: Poise under pressure, serenity under stress, and the brave new science of fear and cool. New York: Little, Brown and Company. (library)
• Linden, D. J. (2008). The accidental mind: How brain evolution has given us love, memory, dreams, and God. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap. (library)
• Ryan, T. (2012). A mindful nation: How a simple practice can help us reduce stress, improve performance, and recapture the American spirit. Carlsbad, California: Hay House. (library)
• Stanley, E. A. (2009). Paths to peace: Domestic coalition shifts, war termination and the Korean War. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. (library)

Everything That Happens

Everything that happens will happen today
& nothing has changed, but nothing's the same
and ev'ry tomorrow could be yesterday 
& ev'rything that happens will happen today

~ David Byrne & Brian Eno

What's Worse?

What's worse, the falling rain, or your resistance to getting wet?
The changing winds, or your battle against them?
The grass as it grows, or your demand for it to grow faster?
This moment, or your rejection of it?
Consider the possibility that Life is never 'against' you.
You are Life.

~ Jeff Foster

Rain Room at the Barbican, 2012 from rAndom International on Vimeo.

Now and Now and Now

Elliott Alley, January 9, 2014

"You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive."

~ Wendell Berry, from Hannah Coulter

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See also:

• "Trust your memory? Maybe you shouldn't," by Jacque Wilson, CNN, May 18, 2013
• "You're Still Mindful," short explanation from Shinzen Young regarding the content of thoughts versus their composition