PREACHER'S POEMS By Mike Young Published in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu 2500 Pali Highway, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817 uurevmike@hawaii.rr.com CONTENTS FORWARD 4 POETRY Come, Sing to Me of Truth 5 A bud is perfect 5 A Circle of Giving 6 Basic Principle 7 Becoming Conscious 9 Behold, my soul 12 By the Pond 13 Decision 15 Enter the Dance of Life 16 Every Time We Try 17 Execution 18 Flesh of the Gods 21 Friends and Enemies 23 From the First Question Asked 25 From the Moment 26 Hymn to Fire 27 Hymn to the Goddess 28 I am ! 30 I Was Raised to Believe 32 I'm Not a Stranger Here 35 Indra's Net 36 Invoking the Center 37 Kindling the Flame 38 Let Go 39 Man and Woman 39 More To Life 40 My father wept 41 Nothing that is fixed forever 41 Nude on the Grass 42 Open your ears to quietness 44 Rainbows and Waterfalls 45 Something Erupts as Flesh 48 Sons and Daughters 50 Spirit, Pneuma, Ruach, Breath 51 The Hall of Mirrors 52 The Meaning of Meaning 54 The Primary Purpose of Mind 55 The Universe is One 57 The Way 58 There is 59 To My Father 60 Transformations 61 Water Slide 62 What Is religion About ? 63 What is Wisdom ? 65 Who 65 Where Did It Begin 66 Who Am I ? 68 Why Must I Die ? 69 Will You Not Stand Naked 70 You have been told 72 MEDITATIONS Arrival Meditation 73 Morning Meditation Vision 75 One Point Meditation 77 LITURGY PIECES Bread and Water Communion 79 Interfaith Call to Gather 81 Joseph Remembers 82 The Original Eden 84 Whatever future is hidden 85 You are married 85 From SERMONS I Am Some Body 86 The Human Touch 91 Three Poems for Solstice/Hanukkah/Christmas The Prophesy 94 Calling the Gods Back to Life 96 The Real Miracles 99 Forward to Preacher's Poems, by Mike Young My wife, Nancy, often reads me a piece she has written and asks, "Is that a poem ?" She is a very fine poet, and my answer is always, "Yes." But the question is even more appropriate for much of the following collection. Created over a period of 40 years, they were written for or have been used in church services. They are celebrative, but also preachy. Hence, "Preacher's Poems." Many of them have been published elsewhere; usually without permission, often without attribution. I quoted from one (My father wept) at a ministers conference once, only to have a colleague join me in duet. "Where did you learn that ?" he asked. "I wrote it," I said. "25 years ago." He pulled out his wallet and showed me a tattered copy of it, clipped from someone's church newsletter. He said, "I've been carrying it almost that long." That was the motivation to finally print the collection and make it available. The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu seemed an appropriate occasion. Here you will find this preacher's poems; but also meditations, marriage, memorial service and other liturgical pieces, as well parts of three sermons. These latter are included because I keep getting asked for copies, but also because this is the form in which "preacher's poems" often occur. I am indebted to the encouragement of the Unitarian Universalist congregations I have served. They have indulged me in passing my own life through the fire of thought, as Emerson described preaching. Sometimes, over the years, I have seen ideas appear in my writing before I knew that I held them. The Unitarian Universalist congregations of Palo Alto (1965-1968), West Los Angeles (1969-1982), Tampa (1982-1995) and Honolulu (1995-the present) let me share my own internal religious odyssey with them in the process of ministry in their midst. The highest compliment paid to these preacher's poems was when a member of one of those congregations introduced me as "our minister and resident poet." It is to them that this volume is dedicated. Finally, a special appreciation to my wife and partner of 42 years, Nancy "Salt" Young. She has always been there for me, encouraging, tolerating and stimulating this preacher as a full partner in ministry. The material in this book is the property of Mike Young. Any part of it is welcome to be used, copied or reprinted; but, please include credit and attribution. Also, a note letting me know when and where would be appreciated. Mike Young Come, Sing to Me of Truth Come, sing to me of truth ! My life is cluttered up with pieces Chosen for their smooth edged fit With my existing prejudice. Sing to me of truths That sting the mind awake to wonder. I walk neat furrows, like a draft horse Broken to the plow, answer to the reins, And accept the fodder of grey habit. Sing to me a song stretching, for I shrivel, wrinkling and slack With words that pass for truth But only coddle my convenience. Sing to me the gift of truth That steals from me the tired wish For wrapped and packaged days. Sing to me of truth And I will sing to you of awe. In our duet perhaps we'll find The courage and the wit To turn our lyrics into life And life to song. Rev. Mike Young A Bud Is Perfect A bud is perfect. A flower is perfect. A seed pod, after the petals have fallen, Is perfect. Each seed cast abroad To find its own way is perfect. Each is different and yet one; Giving forth all it has to give, Being all that it is given to be. They who cannot see that these are perfect, And are not different from every child Born of man and woman, Has not yet seen enough. --Mike Young A Circle of Giving Each of us has been gifted, Beginning with the loving sigh of intimacy That hooked us onto the chain of life. From infancy, each word, each hand, A gift that brought us into being. The helpers and nurturers: Parents, family, friends, even adversaries, Left their mark in and on us; The encouragers and challengers With and over-against whom We shaped our being and were shaped. Many are the paths that crossed ours, Or traveled with us a ways. Each left something with us: A gift, even if not given as such; A gift, the value of which neither Giver nor gifted could know at the time. And sometimes a gift given backwards, By those who permitted us to give to them; The gift of being willing to receive. The demand from us, or even a theft, Sometimes also ultimately a gift. Our lives are a flowing river Of gifts and giving. What is there That we can truly call our own When the truest owning is acceptance ? The very shape and fabric of our lives Is an inheritance, unearned and unearnable. Our birthright, the very mystery Of giving and given that surrounds us; From the ecstasy of the first giving That birthed us, to the last gift accepted As we give ourselves up to the Circle of giving of the cosmos. --Mike Young Basic Principle At the core of my religion-philosophy-word view-faith is the one sure and certain thing that life has taught me: Everything is connected to everything else. There is nothing mystical in this; at least not in the old colloquial sense of an esoteric obfuscatory affirmation of blind credulity thrown like a gauntlet in the face of chaos, or a gratuitous appeal to the illusory order of a boot-strap authority. It has nothing to do with the gods, who, if they were to exist, would be as bound by it as the cosmos they are thought to rule. All human culture resides in the tension between "the attempt to realize this fact and the attempt to negate it, deny it, overcome it, escape it, resist it. The long sidereal laugh of the saint-sage-guru is but the recognition that what already is needs no realization, and its negation only demonstrates it. Those who would attempt to set one against the other; be they priest or scallywag, statesman or anarchist, lover or executioner, angel or demon; demonstrate this fact and their failure to grasp it. The very processes of the evolution of the cosmos are rooted in this tension, and the evolving cosmos is its incarnation. All the laws of science are but attempts to untangle its corollaries. And this, my attempt to resist for a time what seems like diffusion in its universal sea of sameness and rise above it in individuation, is but another of its most marvelous, infinitely diverse and mundane manifestations. So I resist, and affirm what I resist; stand apart, and know myself not to be apart. For I, too, am connected to everything else. Thrown up, as if one unconnected, I am affirmed in and by the throwing. --Mike Young Becoming Conscious Becoming conscious is not an act of will, or a doing But a letting go; not without fear or anxiety And at first, even, a stark terror. The act of responsibility, as a Single obsession. is to cut the rhythms of life into peaks And troughs and to carry them all as a burden upon one's shoulders. The heavier the burden, the more responsible, the less one can do. Responsibility becomes a tying up, an immobilizing. But to be truly irresponsible. to let go even of the desire To control is to let one's acting and doing be a part of the rhythms-- The inhalation and exhalation--of Life. To be able to act by inaction, To grasp by letting go, is to enter the stream of Life, To move the waters of Life by letting them flow through you. The whole illusion of responsibility and control is to make a dam Of what might have been a channel and set it athwart the stream. As for blame or credit, each moment you are reborn spotless. You are responsible for nothing prior to this moment. Speak not of blame or credit, of remorse or pride. All was given. In this moment you may choose yesterday or tomorrow. To be responsible for your past is to choose tyranny, guilt and death. To choose tomorrow is to own your past as past. It is but the power That drives you into tomorrow and you are the rudder fixed here, In each succeeding present moment Bound by your past only if owned As present, its dead weight blocking the flow of life. Are we a cult of death that we should choose always To live amongst the dead? Carrying our own dead corpse Fastened securely to us, face to face? Our own present bound Securely in chains within us? Burning, burning to be free? Free to steer us into new unprecedented tomorrows. Are you old? Too old to change, you say? This moment burns yet Within you, chained but not consumed. Do you yearn for yesterday's Tomorrows that might have been? Longed for memories Of risks not taken? That, too, is death. Yet, a tomorrow not even death can bring. Would you have me tell you how to lay hold on life? Tell you with certainty all that will happen? Marked out, The path insured, guaranteed ? Is it not yet clear That, if I could do so, I would be making your future Past, and handing you one more dead thing ? That gift, even if I could give it, a theft. How can I tell you, that terror you feel in your heart When you dare to feel, if only for a moment, The trauma of re-birth; That terror is the cry of pain From yesterday's death throes. And your past Must always die to your present if your future is to be born. The pain of death and birth, one pain; yet, no pain. It is only anticipation which passes with the fact, Even as the pain of your first birth dissolved into life. To be reborn in each moment, dying to the womb, Being born anew into the world of this moment-- That world, too, becoming a womb-- the cycles of birth and death Become the flowing steam of life if you let go And let tomorrow be born through you. What must I do to inherit tomorrow and life ? To let this moment Be the first steps of my future, not the last steps of my past? To be each moment reborn, not still-born? The answer comes, as always, to those who will hear: Life flows through you. You are its channel, Not its container. Let it go. Let it be. Let it happen. God holds the world in his hand only by letting it slip Through his fingers. And is not joy But the tingle of the sand Caressing your skin As it slips through your fingers? --Mike Young, 1968 Behold, My Soul Behold, my soul, the bric-a-brac in which you breath your quiet gasps; Within what laths of paper mache, steeled with waxen locks and hasps, We two with care from day to day dust and polish like connoisseurs, Intent to keep against decay, our gilt edged gods and miniatures. Behold, with all, that darkest ledge which, carefully muffled, velvet lined, Keeps our microscopic dreams hid as if the world, though blind, Would seek them out and write in reams of obscene footnotes in bold face Enough half truths to thwart our schemes and make us move them from their place. Behold again, my soul, the care with which, for fear of being crass, We keep our outer lath's decor. We glance but shyly in the glass And paint quite casually, for someone might think our actions quaint Or we, in looking at the mirror, see what really lies beneath the paint. --Mike Young 1962 By the Pond at Eureka Springs Cold-eyed, attentive patience just above the surface, Hint of truck tire tread below: Alligator waiting for dinner to serve itself. Bulls-eyes of ripples spreading From quick roil of bubbles. Winged busyness, transformed in an instant, Learns to swim the hard way. Top of the pond, bottom of the air, Breeze and water currents shaping ripples. The surface reflects both realms. The poet, watching, Brushes away intruding insect And wishes the fish good hunting. The surface of the pond Is only smooth Between meals. Red and white, the fishing bobber Hangs from a branch way out, A memorial to how many fish Who will continue to feed below ? A dark shape sculls at the edge of shadow Waiting to assist its supper's crossing From airy world to wet. A sudden move at the edge of the pond And here and there on the bottom Small mud storms churn and settle. Everything is connected. Lovebugs flying in formation Two-by-two don't bite, Too busy with each other. Everywhere around the pond Plants turn shimmering sunlight Into every possible shade of green. Its reflection floating on the surface, The sun feeds both realms. A piece of paper out of place Floating on the pond, A hunting blind for fishes. Nothing is wasted. A rich, ripe smell as the wind shifts Advertizes once living things Slowly composting Next Spring's births. Wings flutter desperately Trapped in a spider's web To become the pantry for the spider's nursery. A Chirr-up from hiding Announces a frog. The sun finally finds me Through the canopy overhead. I feel baptized. Children tossing bread crumbs to the alligator Must be careful. It does not know where bread stops And fingers begin. Bread crumbs fed to fish Make the insects happy. Fewer will be dinner Now that fish are fed and fat. However, thanks to bread crumbs, Soon there'll be more fish. Things even out. --Mike Young Decision Oh God, the pain that sears my soul ! That tears my carefully calculated plans To seas of shredded truth. And truth, Welling up inside of me In eddied currents of chaos, Bids me throw my whole self In pursuit of each receding bubble. And so I throw, and so am torn. Oh God, what I would give for one Neat blue-printed map, all squared and scaled; Marked each vortex, curve and channel, Pointing clearly where to turn, Spelled out, unmistaken; with which To order all these whorl-pooled agonies; With which to quell this searing pain. A hundred arrows point the way. Each burning barb makes soul deep scars. I answer every sign, but find They point, each one, at me. At me ! I slump down, caught in labyrinths Of never finished phrases Speaking each their noisy dream truths Warped and twisted by the holy Sound of their own voices raised To spread their rancid breath upon The twilight air. I cry, "Not truth, But silence only, Lord, I pray !" Speak not to me of truth ! Enough. I have whole seas of that awash And throwing maddened waves against My breast; as always and again I plunge into the hourglass' eye And die, enfolded in the spout Of falling silver sand, and long To feel my churning sea. becalmed . . . in mud. --Mike Young 1962 Enter the Dance of Life Enter the dance of life. Let its music move through you. The rhythms of life are alive in us From the quick beat of pulse and the quiet Susseration of breath, the cycles of day and night, Seasons coming and passing away, Birth-growth-maturation and death, The generations that come like waves of the sea Out of past into present; The great circles of planets, stars, galaxies; The flux of eons of life throbbing into being Moves through us. Let the music of it move in you. The bright fire of desire and delight Given and received flows from the depths Of our being and focuses at our deep center, Vibrating through the very fabric of our Relatedness. The dance of life Joins us together in the whirl of its ecstacy. Let us enter the dance of life together. Let us surrender ourselves to its music. For this is what we have come to affirm And to celebrate: The love that dances in our Lives for our renewal and transformation. --Mike Young Every Time We Try Every time we try to grab and hang on We tear something loose. So long as we continue to crave, To grasp and hoard, Just so long shall suffering continue And healing elude us. Every time we try to pull away And withhold ourselves from one another, We break our own connectedness to life. So long as we submit to fear And volunteer for anger, Just so long shall violence continue And peace be absent from our hearth. Whenever our mind strays from the moment, Leaking into a past of if-only, Of resentment and guilt and nostalgia; Into a future of striving and pretense, Of anticipation and anxiety; Into re-run and preview; We come unplugged from who we are And cut ourselves off from life. Every time we start to grab And each time we withhold, May we notice, let go, and return To be centered again in the awakened now. Every time we start to grab And each time we withhold, may we let go, Opening the folded fist of striving, And return once more to the moment. Fully present to this moment, Permitting it to flow through us And slip away; here, Possessing nothing at all, All is ours. --Mike Young Execution I claim no right to speak. I have lost no one to a killer's hand, Nor known a single inmate on death row. But I have known both, killed and killer. We are connected by the very air we breathe. That could have been my parent, spouse, child, friend. I, too, have known that aching void Where a loved one once So tangibly was; Have known the helpless emptiness Of all those yet unfinished conversations, Words and feelings left unshared, unanswered, For another time that now forever cannot come; Have known the rage at meaningless events And thoughtless acts that tore the ragged hole In the fabric of my life. I have walked that street, or might have; Stopped in that place or passed through. With only the slightest change in the fall of events, That could have been me or mine ripped loose From the scene of this, life's drama, too soon, too soon. I am a part of this community. Its circle of caring has ushered me to consciousness. I am not alone, and never have been. Family, neighbors, friends, community; Seeing myself in their eyes, I have come to see and know myself. They have been my nurturers, Those who encouraged and against whom I tested myself. They are bound to me And I to them by ties so subtle and mysterious I am awed. And yet, I, too, have known the sense of violation That comes with coming home to find My closet topsey-turveyed by a stranger's hand Culling through the flotsam of my life for valuables. And did the burglar fencing my first flute Get anything approaching what its value was to me ? And what was the worth of my own sense of home That he or she also stole ? And what the cost To me and mine of this creeping fear of violence And my own growing secret violence This chronic fear has spawned. A violence stalks my streets Like a cancer causing chemical To stimulate unnatural growths of guardedness. Burglar bars frame windows now That once glowed warm with humanness. Mace in purses and buzzers on cars, And lock upon lock until now we are More jailed in our homes than the commonest crook. Walled off from one another By our spreading fear technology; Our faces masked in uneasy caution At the sight of every stranger, and--too often now-- Every might have been companion. Remembering the Thrip ! and Sproing ! Of slammed screen door from childhood, Something twists inside my stomach At the solid CLICK of deadbolts Falling into place instead. I object to the slow tearing Of the fabric of my neighborhood; This growing tattered rip of fear. No, I have lost no one so far. But I have lost much In this vague and ugly wish to tear and rend That grows within myself in outrage At the escalating fear and violence. There is within me blood lust vengeance Aimed at those who sit, or ought to sit, On death row waiting the uncertainty of their fate. I am as caged as they, and as uncertain. And that darkness in me feels That in their execution I'll be cleansed. This jail house stench be burned away By cauterizing fire of final retribution. Life for life ! Loss for loss ! But as that rude chair's lightning flares and cools, Each time it cools, I see my own fear prison as sickly barred as ever. Our collective blood lust vengeance has been wreaked, And nothing's healed. The open sore runs pussy yellow as before, And I am left as hollowly empty in my helplessness. Nothing's gained, but that I'm soiled again and still By the acrid stink of one more act of violence. My morbid fascination with my own abhorrence Feeds on the media tales of broken lives, Of killer and victim, and the empty hole Left in the lives of the loved ones of each. The only meaning to each death finally, The aching void of absence. And there in the news stories hides a second horror. With only the slightest change in the fall of events That could be me, a killer; Ripping another in violent anger loose from life. My wife or mother grieving. My father wondering what he did, or failed to do, That left me with one fatal anger more inside me Than I could at last contain. There is a sour taste in my mouth at all of this, Killed and killer, reaver and riven, Victim after endless victim. That taste in my mouth, the beginning of a cry, This heals nothing ! I can but rage and grieve, And grieve with those that grieve, For the fragile fabric of our human connectedness So torn, so torn, by, oh, so sadly many holes. But tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow I can find some small place to begin the healing. Will you help me ? --Mike Young (For James Adams and Edward Brown, and Those That Loved Them. Originally written for their memorial service after they were executed in Florida.) The Flesh of the Gods "All flesh is grass," the Psalmist said; By which he meant and moaned its passing. It sprouts and grows, waives seed heavy heads, Then dies. And the Psalmist grieved This dying of the flesh, longing perhaps For a life that had the permanence of stone. What he dismissed as vanity we celebrate As life itself; the very flesh of sacredness. The Psalmist misperceived both grass and stone. "All flesh is grass," the Psalmist said. His metaphor for transience is true But it is not mere metaphor. All grass is flesh is also true; Flesh of the gods, born of their confluence. Air, earth, fire and water meet, Bear fruit, and are again and again Incarnated, bodied forth to be Transformed and to transform The very transience the psalm decries. Air, heavy with the volatiles of planet birth; Earth's substance eroded into salty seas By water; fired by lightening bolt and sunlight Birthing life. And grass, rooted in rocky soil Bathed by gentle rain where air and sunlight Transform the gods to grain. And we, again, as much the flesh of gods As grass, transform the grain to bread: Wheat, water, salt and fiery oven With a pinch of yeast to fluff its airy texture. And there is still another transformation As we, flesh of the gods, sustain ourselves On bread, flesh of the gods. Truly, it is written, "Hoc est corpus." This is my body, transformed for you. And in this hocus pocus is a truth That breaches our imagined loneliness. Each of us are flesh of the gods; Air, earth, fire and water; Sustained and sustaining one another. We are not alone and cannot be. All friendship, joy and intimacy; All imagined hate and fear and enmity; Whatever moral law there be And every breaking of it Is centered here in bread. We are members, one of another; Joined in the flesh of the gods To live the transformations of the flesh. "All flesh is grass," the Psalmist said. Haleluia ! Praise be to the gods ! --Mike Young Friends, and Enemies -half a dialogue- O.K. I can reach out and take the hand of a friend. I can acknowledge that connectedness. We have shaped each other, Fought for each other's space to grow. Challenged and nurtured one another, Until I hardly know where I stop and the other begins. At times that murky line vanishes and I know That, crazy as it seems, we two so clearly separate I's Are more than we, indeed are one. But those strangers ? They are so un-like us. So unfamiliar. Yet, each friend was once a stranger. And there are pieces of my own insides that now I cherish That once were weirder to me than the strangest alien, O.K. I'll go that far. Some strangers are but undiscovered friends, Bearers of gifts I am yet to receive, connected to me In ways still unexplored. But I see where your going, And I'm stopping here, thank you. Next you're going to try to tell me that I am One with my enemies, too. No way ! I hate 'em, and they've earned it. After all they've done, It feels good and right to hate 'em. I could tell you about some of our battles, man. I've learned a lot, stretched myself a lot, Honed my skills to keenness fighting them. I'm not going to admit I'm one with them. Hey, wait a minute. That was a trap. But, O.K. I'll admit I've grown from them. Maybe more than I would've If everything had gone my way, But they stand for everything I hate and despise. I just can't see any of that being part of me. I'm not one with that. Why, everything they say Shows I'm right to hate 'em. Yeah, they always say I misunderstood. Say I twist things. And, boy, They sure twist everything I say ! Just shows how devious they are. They accuse me Of everything they're scared of in themselves. No, I don't do that. They do ! You suggesting I do that, too ? But you've heard them. They . . . Alright ! Alright ! Sometimes just sometimes, mind you I do that, too. And I'll admit I don't like the feeling that, in some ways I'm becoming like them. Maybe always was, And they bring that out in me. But you're making it sound Like I really need those enemies; maybe even helped Make them like that, sort of. Almost like we were Dependent on each other. Look, I'll admit that its gotten to the place where, With nuclear bombs the size of a suitcase And when one stock market sneezes the rest catch cold; If I destroy them, I get destroyed, too. And, hey. I want peace as much as the next guy, But . . . . Gotta reach out my hand to them, too, huh ? DAMN ! Mike Young From the First Question Asked From the first question asked, Before words ever structured our world Into a syntax of the minds imagining; From the first horizon scanned, Before space split into self and not-self; From the first uncertain groping, Reaching out to stuff a universe Still new into toothless mouth; From the first, we are questors. We spend our lives on paths As if the universe were a garden Cris-crossed with walkways. Though it may well be each pattern, Followed back to its source Leads to the center; Each followed out to its end Returns to the center; The convolutions of each moment Of travel, however far The path may lead, Are grounded in the center; However lost we may become, Or certain of our navigation To a far off goal, The center is here Bearing us up and beckoning us on. So it may be. Still, the way is everything, For we are pathfinders. The paths we choose create us, And in the following The sinews of a life are shaped. --Mike Young From the Moment From the moment my chin cleared the breach Still being squeezed from my mother's womb, I was inundated by fragments of sensation, Looks and words of wanting from me, Stuff pushed at me, "Eat this, its good for you," "Do this, it is expected of you." My life from the first breath, fragments. Knowing no better at first, I carried all; Accepting equally the pieces I found, Those given, those forced upon me, Some I merely stumbled into. Carried the whole jumble And took that to be my life. But some pieces seem to fit, Snuggling carelessly next to that other, And others seem forever to be coming apart. As I use and share and live in my pile of parts They seem to settle into patterns. As I learn to love them, they stick. Sometimes. For awhile. So now my life is lived Trying to hold it all together. In stolen moments, trying to make it fit; Constantly amazed that it does not Come clattering at my feet Like a dropped box of Christmas tree balls. And now and then, a feeling comes, Of keeping all those pieces in the air At once. A juggler of God's grace. A miracle of mendedness. Mike Young 1978 Hymn To Fire Welcome, Fire! Thou, who dwells in fire; of whom fire is the knowing; Whose body fire is; who, burned and burning, Is this luminous universe. Thou, Who consumes us in passion for life, And is consumed hidden in the depths Of every morsel that sustains us. Thou, Whose heat and light calls us into being. Whose light is knowledge, lighting our only sure path. Whose heat is the very blood washing our veins. Thou, Whose presence is the nurturing of a world Forever coming into being. Welcome, Fire! to the altar of our worship. Praise be to you Whose dance of motion in the atom's core Calls worlds of matter into being. Praise be to you Whose sacred touch is the sensuous fabric of flesh. Thou, the fire in our eyes lighting a world of beauty. Thou, the fire in our hearts burning in our loving and compassion. Thou, the fire in our minds yearning to know and to be known. Thou, the fire in our loins to be consumated in Thee. Praise to you, spirit of changefulness; Creator and destroyer in endless variation Of creation and recreation. Thou, Fire! Whose being is this most marvelous day, We are yours. --Mike Young Hymn to the Goddess You bitch goddess, I love you and I hate you. I see your dance of generation And rejoice. In awe I see you weave A subtle growing out of chaos; See you turn that random fall of dice That even Einstein's faith could not embrace Into a building crest of meaning; Floating, raising, carrying This fragile jewel of universe Upon its flowing tide. I see and feel within myself The growing that emerges out of conflict And travail, out of risk taken on the wing, Out of slow and sometimes tedious discipline. When I let my spirit feel your pulse, I see my letting issue forth in life transformed Beyond the limits of my purposing. Were that all, 'twould be enough To make of me your devotee and priest, If priest be one who sings your praises And points the way that others see and sing. My pride in letting spirit feel your pulse And following would burst from me in song, If that were all. But it is not The barest bud-burst of beginning. You make twists and turns And change of costume, But I see you hiding in your changes. Others see the falling rock, The trembling earth, the stab of pain, The fortune turned upon its head; And curse the stars, their luck, Or one another. But I see you. Some invoke the Prince of Darkness, Laying all this chaos at his feet. Some wag their moralistic tongues And call us to repent Some great imagined sin That brought this forth from some Equally imaginary just and righteous God. Some see a blind indifferent universe And call the grandest of your glories fraud Because they fade, or pass, Or do not come on cue. But though they willingly conspire To keep the mask of your concealment Tightly held in place, I know you. I have seen your signature Upon the blackest tragedies. Seen the wreckage you have wrought And grieved at the bloody hands My goddess, shameless, held aloft. I have turned and looked At the noblest pieces of your handiwork, Hoping I would find that they, at least, were pure; A compensation for the ugliness You sign--proud artist-- With the same abandonedness You lavish on your genius. I find but one frail purity: You are consistent. Each creation is from ashes of collapse. Each rotting is for raw materials. The bricks of your cathedrals, The pieces of the lives of all your saints, The very atoms of your crocuses, Are formed of broken bones, Broken hopes, broken beauty. And were this all, 'twould be a burden; But a burden I could bear. The very being of my goddess A dance of endless transformation. My songs would have a melancholy, And now and then a modulation To a minor key; yet would I sing, Even if this were all. But far it is From exhausting all your choreography. For, if I can see this much With eyes that only now and then Can catch you in mid-turn, An arabesque, a pas de deux, Out of all this universe of dance; How much more is there to see, And be, and join you in one day ? What marvels will my molecules, Danced by you, be part of When my requiem falls still ? What masterpiece might I, surrendered, Be useful for this day ? Yes, bitch goddess, Dancing a double edged illusion Of creation and destruction, Dance. I love you and I hate you. Dance ! --Mike Young I Am ! I am! I am ! I am: clumsy Talking-to-myself language For this moment's seeing, Sensing, wondering; Hurting alone I-ness, Joying together am-ness; Knowing and not knowing; The hide-and-seek of being An I with an eye, Seeing things separate And distinct That feel flowing and going with When I am moments move with that all-over-ness of we; Never quite so much I, Nor so little, As when we. I am, and you are: And what is that moment of nakedness That trust turns into nude, Appearing and disappearing Never to be grasped Nor finally really lost. And how is it that moment comes And becomes a place Somehow common to each; Not I and not you; Yet, we. That movement of reaching out And taking off That neither could manage-- I/you can't do it-- Yet, we did. Having never been there before, Or forgotten And never really left. I am: the feel of thinking, Having never really thought Of what it felt like to think, And the sensual delight of we Thinking-out-loud-together I's. Even in our ignorance The universe talking to itself. I am, and you are: the thought Of feeling that all-over-ness Of the prison box skin bag Become resonator Of a million ecstatic events Like an orgasm gone wild And gentle at the same time If we let it. The water through a sieve Endlessly feel of it As if the sieve were making water. I am! I am ! The laughing, crying joy-pain of it! We, sowers and reapers Of endless sensation, The universe happening to itself. --Mike Young 1968 I Was Raised to Believe I was raised to believe that God had revealed his WORD, his intentions for humans. I was a serious child and so I studied that revelation very seriously. It quickly became clear that to accept that revelation I had to reject most of the evidence of my senses. To believe it, I had to assume that this God had equipped me, his creation, with a brain apparently intentionally designed to lie to me. That revelation described a world almost wholly at odds with the evidence presented to my senses. It portrayed a God who imposed punishments on his children more vicious than even the most severe human father, who suspended the natural order miraculously on behalf of those who pandered to him out of fear of those punishments, and who rewarded those who could most successfully convince themselves of what was clearly contradicted by this very God's own supposed creation. I drew several conclusions. First, if I was to mistrust my senses, then I must also mistrust this revelation since it came to me through my senses; passed down from person to person by people whose senses were presumably as flawed as mine. If God's word were true, then I could know nothing, including that God's word was true. Second, if this God was so devious as to pull those kinds of tricks on his creatures, he was certainly unworthy of any trust. Therefore, if forced to choose between his revelation and the evidence of my senses, I must choose my senses. Being, as I say, a serious child, I applied myself with equal vigor to the study of the evidence of my senses. Here I quickly found that my senses, indeed, lie to me ! The solid stuff of my world was not solid at all, but mostly space in which mass and energy jumped back and forth between their respective states. Almost everything and everyone turned out to be something other than they appeared to be. What seemed reasonable to me turned out as often as not merely what was familiar. The things I was told were true by those who were supposed to know turned out as often what they wished were true, or what appeared to them--often mistakenly-- to be in their best interest to claim to be true. If I exercised incredible rigor in observation and testing of everything, I could discern some reliable patterns. But what my rigor most frequently yielded was more uncertainties. I further observed that few others exercised the rigor in observation and testing that I did, and those who did did it only in a few areas of their lives. And I couldn't maintain it very well either. Where did this leave me ? I could return to the alleged certainty of God's revelation. I no longer had the impediment of its contradicting my senses, since now almost everything did that. But faced with a choice between untrustworthy certainty and uncertainty that was at least reliably so, I chose the latter. Being still a serious child, I turned my attention on the only interesting subject left. I applied myself to the study of this person who sought certainty: me. I studied how I got to be me; all the sources that had contributed to the creation of this identity. Family school, community; all their respective histories. My body, and--since its not independent--my environment. And I became fascinated. It was endless. Every piece led to other pieces. I came to the inescapable and wholly insane conclusion that it took the whole universe doing what it was doing and had been doing for billions of years for me to be me. They put people in the funny farm for that, so I turned it around and looked "within". Where ever that is. I slowly peeled off accumulated pieces like roles and habits, the accretions of self-image and guilty conscience complexes acquired from trying to live with and please so many other people. And behind every layer were other layers. Peel, sort, release; I went through them all. And one day, I found myself sitting in the center of a pile of pieces with nothing left to peel. Nothing. The response was curious. It was laughter. But there was no I to be laughing. The laughter reverberated throughout my pile of pieces and its echoes bounced off of all the unsolid surfaces of my world. O.K. I giggled. Now what ? There is still love to be made and people to love, and some few things learned along the way to share. I wonder if that's enough ? So far, it has been. But by this time I was no longer a serious child. I had become a minister. And being a minister is very strange once you've discovered that life wasn't intended to be taken seriously. Mike Young I'm Not A Stranger Here In my childhood they sang a song. "This world is not my home. I'm just a passing through." But I am not a sojourner. I am not a stranger here. I am not just passing through. My treasures here are flawed, its true. For I see much better than I build. Yet, judge me not by my visions, Nor the things my hand has touched. I am not a stranger in a place of trial, Trying to win a far off prize. My visions are as much a part Of this happening mystery we call universe As that accident of eye and sun and rain And angle you call rainbow, and as real. My creations are as natural As nests and lairs and cobwebs. Judge sunsets and volcanoes, Mountain meadows and stormy seas. Know these well enough to truly try them, Then you may judge me. For I am of them. I am theirs. I am not a sojourner. I am not the one on trial. I am part of all that's here. Mike Young INDRA'S NET Each fisher, with homemade net of differing mesh, Catches life's experience sized According to the holes between the knots. Each fisher takes these net-caught meanings For what fish there are. They call to one another, "Your nets are wrong ! Those are not true fishes," And they take the tales of one another's catches For fish stories. They tell heroic sagas Of the ones that got away; for, in truth, There are uncounted fishes That pass through all our nets, and fish so large They tear our nets to tatters if we dare To fish the depths. And how often Do we carefully sein the long familiar shoals And hang our nets to dry, proclaiming, "I have caught all the fish in the sea ?" And who has not scoffed at the youth With hand line, the wrong bait, And in inauspicious waters patiently awaiting The fish that our nets tell us Does not exist ? Words. They are the nets we humans go a-fishing with. --Mike Young Invoking the Center Set to one side for a time the analytic, The counter of beans and drawer of lines, That way of being is to be cherished. Well taught and well valued, it is powerful. Yet it is not the only way to be. For this time and this hour we invoke instead The way of being of lover and poet, The seer of patterns and of flowing currents. We honor and acknowledge the peopled cosmos Outside ourselves, and we honor and acknowledge The private sanctuary of each individual consciousness. Invoking the center, we invoke Both inner and outer, the within and the without. We honor and acknowledge that connection As who and what we are. It is our job And our play to bring that into being, Always and forever to bring that into being. The circle is cast. The center is formed. We are between the worlds where night and day, Birth and death, joy and sorrow, meet as one. The unfolding of the sacred in our midst Is the creation of a new space and time In which we are free to become who we are. Its center is on the boundary of the ordinary, Of the orthodoxies of unthinking habit. Its center is the lives of men and women Who begin to liberate themselves toward wholeness. On the boundary the seconds and minutes are No longer counted. There is time a-wasting, And time to kill, and our life-time is time-out. Centered on the boundary, facing aliveness, We enter a new space and a new time. A place and a pause. Don't hold your breath. We are between the worlds, You can breath freely here. We have come to assemble a new tomorrow Now. --Mike Young Kindling the Flame Here I am, Lighting a lamp in broad daylight. Why is no one laughing, As if all about were darkness That could not be dispelled without my kindling ? I look, as if seeing were something I do, all squinty eyed and wrinkle browed. I listen, as if hearing were something I do, head cocked and ear cupped. I taste, as if flavor were something I do, tongue lapping, lip smacking. I smell, as if odor were something I do, nose all a'wriggle and sniffing. I feel, as if touch were something I do, fingers a'flutter pursuing sensation. Yet, seeing is something eyes do best alone, without focus on what I expect to see. Hearing is better without my attention always on what is familiar . Flavor is more savory without me, no like and dislike constraining my palate. Scent is keener when I am not there to edit the atmosphere. Touch is better with me gone. The thigh of a lover smoother, finer, More exquisitely present and beautiful when no question lies between finger and skin Of where I may dare touch next . Truly, I am a lamp Lighted in broad daylight Whose extinguishing is enlightenment. --Mike Young Let Go ! Let go the cares that daily crowd the mind And blind us to the warm embrace that we, In reaching out to those nearby, might find. Let go. Let go of worry after things, Of pride, of lofty ideology. Let go. The still remembered slight that brings But bitterness, let go. Let go of discord. Let go for now the busy mind that delves Into the hidden meaning of each word, That calculates what mask we should employ. For only after emptying ourselves Can we contain so large a thing as joy. --Mike Young Man and Woman Man and woman, boy and girl; We are all born of the same need and desire. We are the fruit of life's longing for itself. Each of us is the embodiment, the incarnation, Of one and the same adventuring of the universe. In each of us the whole cosmos speaks In a unique expression of itself. This is the paradox of our being: We are all one and we are each uniquely special. Each is impossibly alone, yet in each The same life flows. The very skin that envelopes Isolates us from each other, yet we are bound together By a myriad connections over eons of time. The destiny of each is supremely significant, And belongs to each alone; yet the whole Wheeling scatter of galaxies, the mystery Of life made vulnerable flesh, Breathes in our every act And enfolds and sustains us at every step. Mike Young More To Life (Alternate lyric for Bach's Jesu, meines Herzens Freud) There is always more to life. I will seek it. More than any moment's strife. I will speak it. There is all that set the stage, Ages holding; Past that lit the present's rage Still unfolding. Still unfolding. A hope or promise beckons; Maybe bliss time. Or joy's reversal threatens, Maybe this time. Something unformed moves t'ward birth, Never fallow. Something playful bursts in mirth, Never shallow. Never shallow. Something wicked this way comes. Can I meet it ? Or quiet joy in silence hums. How to greet it ! Still, full presence must I give If I would see; And only in that moment live If I would be. If I would be. --Mike Young My Father Wept My father wept When I destroyed his house To make foundations for my own. Mistaking his tears I thought he cried For broken plaster and shattered glass. Now my own tears tell me What his could not. He still had rooms on his drawing board Whose rubble might have saved My sagging floors. Mike Young Nothing That Is Fixed Forever Nothing that is fixed forever is commanded of you. All teaching is to be transcended. Should you be less changeful than the stones That are today mountains And tomorrow are silt in a stream ? Nothing is final. Even death is but one more transformation. No one has promised to carry you on their backs to the stars. But to tease you into flight More than stars beckon ! --Mike Young The Nude on the Grass Dancing As I arrived at wattles Park, A pocket of jade in jaded Hollywood, There was a nude on the grass, Dancing. I passed by, Then sat discretely on a hill And peeked in lust and wonder. She danced as if she, at least, Knew that she belonged there; As if her sun on glowing curve Cavorting in the altogether Danced the garden into being. I moved on up a path And sat in her creation, Absorbing the sounds of bird and tree rustle And the counter-point of city sounds In the distance. Ears unfocused, As you can sometimes unfocus your eyes So that you see only the play of shape. Thereness, without suchness. Just so, I listened and let the sounds absorb me. Then came a voice; And my ears, so tuned to the human Spoken word, could not blur it into background. The words were disjointed phrases, Repeated over and over again. Meaningless, Yet spoken with great and weighty significance. The speaker moved just out of sight In the labyrinthine paths of the garden. "All we have to do is make our report And we're done with it, surely." Like a single oboe playing its part In a symphony, alone; there was a sense Of a larger hidden meaning, there and tangible. I could guess What this phrase or that was the harmony to; Could imagine what arabesques might surround The line I heard in some silent fugue. As my meaning hungry mind Tasted tentatively for food, I recognized The sounds as an actor rehearsing a part. And then, each other sound in her garden Took on that flavor of silent implied symphony. To how many parts was I witness ? And how many orchestrations ? Is there only one concert ? And do they know They are playing for me ! As I left the park, The nude on the grass, dancing, was gone, But her magic Had expanded the garden to fill my universe. --Mike Young Open Your Ears Open your ears to quietness. Listen to what is not heard. As music is as much the silent Interval between the tones, So life is also filled with quietness The sounds of hurry cannot stifle. Listen within. A quiet mind Needs only to be listened for. It is there in the spaces and the pauses Between the words of chatter. Listen to the calm From which it all arises. Listen to the world. Hear between the sounds Of its continual noise A whistler in a graveyard Trying to distract itself From awesome silence. Listen to the cooling spring That bears the necessary noise Like white caps on its surface. The depths have more to speak of. Let not the mad cacophony Drown out the centering calm. There. In the interval, Is peace always at hand. --Mike Young 1984 Rainbows and Waterfalls Rainbows are not real. I know this for a fact. Oh, yes, I know we all have seen them. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, Banded there across the sky. Always in that order, announcing sunshine after rain. But, they are not real. I have tried to walk To where they bend to touch the earth, And walked and walked. I expected no pot of gold, For I had already learned who the tooth fairy was And no longer trusted the myths of foolish adults. But here was evidence before my very eyes, And it wanted testing. So I walked, and walked. I imagined leaping and dancing in air thick With dewy colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple; All sparkly around my shoulders. l knew it was but sunlight refracted through A billion water drops. For I had made A smaller rainbow of my own with a small glass prism. I had washed my hands in its variegated color And let that pocket spectrum play upon my face. Yet, how could I miss this chance to dance in a rainbow, And so I walked and walked. I never reached the rainbow. It appeared to recede from me, then disappeared; And I know that rainbows are not real. Rainbows only happen when you are in the right place, At the right time, between the sun and the rain. You cannot claim them, catch them, make them happen. They are a sign of grace. A reminder and a promise. There are no rainbows at night, though Once I saw a rainbow around the moon, faint and fleeting; A long shot bank shot gift from the sun On a clear moist night just after sundown. But that was special. There are no rainbows At noon, at mid-day; when the sun is overhead. But in the morning, and in the afternoon, If you are in right relationship With sunshine and with storm, it can happen. I have seen sunlit days that cried out For a celebration of rainbow, The air so lit and alive it seemed It must surely explode into color. And, perhaps somewhere that day, Some one had a storm to share with sunlight And got a rainbow. But my day was too clear and none came. I have known storms that flexed their watery muscles overhead So full of ocean waves stolen from the sea That I longed for rainbows. Longed for the sun To find a way through that steely greyness To relieve my eye with color. They come, But they do not come when we think we need them. So I have learned to save my rainbows. Since they are not real it isn't difficult. I always keep a few stashed away in memory For days when storms seem as if they'd never pass. And, just as importantly, for days when sunshine Drives away all memory of greyness. But mostly, I save them for those dark nights When loneliness presses in like a hostile crowd To scoff and belittle every shred of hope. Then, I bring my rainbow out. And I know that my aloneness Is just as un-real as my rainbow. Both have to do with relationships, Which are very, very real. Take care of them, and rainbows, Like happiness, will come by themselves. No, it is important that rainbows are not real. They only exist when you are in right relationship. And waterfalls. Waterfalls are the place where rainbows Sometimes stay between the storms. They are much alike, rainbows and waterfalls. Both have to do with relationships. On the flat plain, there are few waterfalls. Falling off the plain, or falling onto; Sometimes waterfalls are nurtured by the plain. But it takes a change to make a waterfall. That's where the growing shows itself. As rainbows go with sun and storm, waterfalls Go with heights, with mountains most especially. You can't imagine the power that a little trick Of gravity and water can create. I have seen stones the size of houses Cut from ancient mountains By a patient little trickle of water falling. I have squirmed my toes in ground up bones Of the very earth itself, but gravel At the bottom of a waterfall. I have scrambled up a ruins That would do an earthquake proud To find a gentle little stream Gurgling guiltily among the rubble. A waterfall in hiding. I have seen mountains that stood in such splendor One would think they'd last forever, Brooding over time into eternity. But I know about waterfalls, And mountains are their plaything. Ancient strength is no match for bright playfulness. I have seen waterfalls make mountains of their own, too. Seen them carve a giant continent of rock face down to sand, Layered in an ocean floor at the foot of waterfall Then come back in a million years or so And carve that layered sea floor into chasms Leaving mountains of tilted stripes behind. But sometimes, when the light was right, I have watched mountains making waterfalls, as well. Seen granite shoulders thrust themselves into the sky To catch the fleeing storm clouds And bath themselves in rivulets of rain; And thought that waterfalls are mountain's way of moving here to there across the earth. In watching rainbows and waterfalls, I have realized That nothing stays the way it was for long except in memory. Would you prefer your mountains last forever ? Not me. The price is waterfalls and rainbows. And waterfalls and rainbows are really all there is. Mike Young Something Erupts As Flesh There is something that erupts in flesh Like breath rushing in at birth, A witness looking out through eyes. Suddenly someone home inside the skin bag A few dollars worth of chemicals and water Can't account for. Or is the unaccountability In our ignorance of the subtle power 0f clay ? It seems so ordinary. Bricks and vessels, sculpted playthings For the hand or mind. Its power, Receptiveness. To passively accept The artist's vision or the workman's plan; To receive the stamp of thought And come alive. Born of mind And clay; of dust, of dirt. Breath, life , thought --and dirt. We are still corn fed, but no longer see In corn the ear, the stalk, The rootedness in soil. The earth, For us, is not alive; not soil, but dirt. Sweep this dirty floor ! Wash those Dirty dishes, dirty sox, dirty minds. Soil inconvenient to our purposes is dirt. Can spirit really put on dirty flesh ? They asked. And, knowing urine, pus, and spittle, They concluded thought must only seem To merge with clay's corruption. The form, the pattern, image, thought, Stays pure, shaping passive substance. Dirt despite itself is lifted up By uncorrupted thought's creative power. Spirit calls life forth from clay. And so, we looked for God beyond the most Insistent stuffness of this world of dirt. Life seemed to flesh, a body snatching alien. Flesh seemed to life, a snare and prison. Ahura Mazda constantly at war with Ahriman. God and Satan, good and evil, life and death, Flesh and spirit, sacred and profane. The universe was sliced in two Because we did not understand The subtle chemistry of clay. Form is what substance does. The primal chaos is not formless, But an explosion of infinities of form. With every increasing power Of microscope or telescope, the swirls Of patterns within patterns are found Waiting for discovery. The vision of ordered form emerges From the very stuff on which Our misconceiving mind would press it. We are, perhaps, clay's tool to shape itself; Evoking in the human potter The vision to be rescued from the mud. There is something that erupts as flesh In the unsuspecting chemistry, As unprecedented as each prior eruption was: Big bang and star birth, heavy metal soup from supernova, Cooling blue water planet, and replicating molecule. Its lineage a litany of surprises, This living thought incarnate, This awakened fleshly vessel, This gasp of awe: the realization. The universe is not sliced in two. There is something That erupts in flesh like breath --Mike Young Sons and Daughters Sons and daughters, You have come out of the tumult of the drama Our race has shared for many eons of time. Out of us have you come And into you will we be given. A gentle sigh of loving reaching for intimacy Has hooked you onto the chain. A new link To the past of our emergence. A new link To the future of our flowering. Our drama is rich. It will touch and try your every emotion. Though we will try to give you What we have learned of its mysteries, Your part will be unique And you will have to find your own way. Know only that "for none more than you Is the earth solid and liquid. For none more than you Does the sun and the moon hang in the sky."* For none more than you Does life blossom and bloom New each now. --Mike Young * Whitman (?) Spirit, Pneuma, Ruach, Breath For years I raised my voice to sing, Plucked three fingered chords from my Japanese copy of a Sears and Roebuck guitar, And sought in vain for my own song. Then I was given my magic flute. My breath breathed over its emptiness And a miracle of song emerged. It sings the air's own song. Magic flute and I permit our emptiness To merge, and song is born. Spirit, Pneuma, Ruach, Breath. Music is air's way of singing itself, It sings and vibrates in a symphony Of moving and transforming chords. From the rise and fall of the bass note Registered on a barometer, to the High sigh of the wind in the wires, The air sings everywhere it touches us. It breathes us creatures of the biosphere, Wrapping and sustaining a miracle of aliveness. Spirit, Pneuma, Ruach, Breath. Air sings its own song. It is not my song. I am it's. --Mike Young The Hall of Mirrors I awoke that morning after fitful sleep With an odd feeling about my eyes. I blinked them. They saw. Quite clearly. All was crisp and as it ought to be. Yet, somehow, as it had never been before. I looked about. Yes, there I was. Staring at a mirror like any other morning. . I was there. Yes, I could see myself. I watched myself closely, curiously. For somehow I had never seen me so. It was quite familiar, yet something... I watched myself grow agitated. It had never happened quite so before. I watched myself look at . . . me ? Yes, right at me; and then cover my face With my hands, and run . . . out of the room. I followed myself through the door; Down a dingy, unreal but strangely familiar Corridor; down, into the street. Out. Away. I followed. Not sure why I ran from me, Yet knowing. Fearing I might escape. Fearing I might not. Yet I followed. I could not but follow. That was me Running. I ran after. I ran away. Suddenly, I was in a crowd. All running. All running after. All running away. I ran with the crowd, caught in the surge Of bodies, ensnared by the trampling feet. I saw me through the tangle of flesh, Or thought I did, and ran after, Ran away. Ran breathless through the crowd. I looked with those odd eyes, and there, There again I saw myself. Saw me stop. Saw me see a sign; a door marked EXIT, Or entrance, or escape, or . . . . Saw me go in, saw throu.1h the open door, Stood and watched as I dashed about The maze of twisted forms. Saw me see, Saw me look. The garish forms that swam Before my eyes threatened me with their meaning. Meaning that swam just beyond my grasp. I watched me chase the phantom forms. Forms so familiar, so . . . illusive; Watched me cringe and flee from Nameless terror. Watched me run the maze. Suddenly, I saw me look, eyes aflame, Toward the doorway wherein I stood. Watched me see the open, empty doorway; See only the press of people running past. Saw me dash, felt me crash Headlong into myself. I awoke that morning after fitful sleep With an odd feeling about my eyes. --Mike Young 1963 The Meaning of Meaning Listen carefully. I will tell you the meaning of life. Has an incomplete sentence any meaning? A play has meaning. Completed. Recapitulated. But life is not complete, not finished. It is its nature to be open, changing, responding; Trying new things; doing a familiar thing Again and again, just because it knows how And it feels good. Only things that are ended--over with-- have meaning. There is time enough in death to discover meanings. But life has no time for such. It is busy with the next transformation. Let not the body of death set goals upon you, Nor heed for a moment their judgements Of your success or failure at those goals. Let Sisyphus push his own rock Endlessly up that mountain. Center yourself, and take that center adventuring. You have heard it said, "A journey of a thousand miles Begins with the first step." But I say to you, A journey of a thousand miles Is only one step. This next one. --Mike Young The Primary Purpose of Mind The primary purpose of the mind Is awe. It is highly skilled at taking things apart, At analysis. This is the mind's delight And the root of its greatest deception: It is a marvelous dismantler. But, by itself, all that it creates Is still-born. The body of truth Is wrenched apart at the joints And reassembled in new combinations With bailing wire and band-aides. But it remains a Frankenstein monster, This creation of the mind alone, However clever the invention. The tree grows, the wind blows, Water flows, the cock crows; As flowers blossom, earth peoples; All with no mind. The creation of that which is alive And truly connected to aliveness Is an act of the whole, not the part. The artist, the scientist, The technician, the teacher, Whose creation has been allowed To grow from the fullness of being Into living relatedness; These have used their mind For the minds own purpose-- For awe. This is the gift of mind. In this is its glory. In this, it appears, we are unique. No other beast has stood before The flow and transformations Of this most marvelous world, Struck with awe. Our self-devouring technology, Our soul destroying bureaucracy, Our dead law, our dying cities, Our lovers lost in enmity, Our children warped, our priests Made shop keepers, Not from mindlessness. Mind drips with our blood. The very earth travails From the wounds of mind. But here and there, still, The spirit soars in awe. And here, in this one pure gift, Is the reunion of all our scattered parts, In that sharp in-take of breath, In awe. --Mike Young 1981 The Universe Is One The universe is one. One unfolding event And one only. From the heart of star heat Starting the chain of thing making Out of pure exhuberant motion, Unbroken; to the tight coils of life That crawled from cooling seas, Unbroken; to dream making man and woman Awed by the mystery of knowing. One event. One being. Who am I ? Thou art that ! Fooled by point of view Into lonely isolation. Filling imagined void With a heady stew of superstition, Dream-time truths misperceived And impossible reports of soul travelers Scared crazy by the visions of that One. Building out of fear and guilt An angry judging moralist Petty potentate of a god To condemn the imagined sin Of selfhood. Who am I ? Thou are that ! The exhilarating adventure Of trying every form and formless Possibility; each of us A point of view from which The universe observes itself From within itself and awakens To look out of and into its own eyes. Each incarnated point of view unique And impossibly important; For even the gods do not know . . . . And because you are that one ! Such a one ! It is your incarnation To be this fragile individual To the hilt. --Mike Young The Way The way is not self-fulfillment, but self-emptying. The goal of a plant is not the flower Nor even the scattering of seeds. Life sows, nurtures and squanders itself In endless variation. If you would have leanness; Take, keep, hoard. For, those who would fill themselves Shall see emptiness. If you would have inexhaustible plenty; Give, share, surrender all. For, those who empty themselves Will never see the reservoir depleted. And those who are full Will be emptied to the last. The way is filled in emptying. The way has no goal. As if the plant, having once flowered, ceased. As if the mountain, having once thrust Rocky shoulders up, ceased And stood in passive death forever. Life's search is not for endings But a path, and yet another path. The withering of blossoms is earth's way Of richening the loam for other seeds. Another path, another day. The slow eroding hillside Is a harvesting of stones for waterfalls; A silted delta for a future valley floor; One day, a bright, striated cliff wall For another winter's ice and rain To wear away. The way is flowering, sowing, Fertilizing for another summers garden. The flower seeks not oneness with the way Nor tries to bend the way to crocuses. --Mike Young 1977 There Is There is, Inside my half-awakened consciousness, A place, a moment Or a movement of the soul; Part mythical perhaps, As intimations of reality must be. I know it In my most awakened moments; Know its freedom And its bondedness. It is where my sweetest And most gentle juices are. There is that total anarchy Called joy. But 'round its need To touch and fly My soul is wrapped in layers of Repressive banal niceties. No chains; Just piles of wadded Kleenex And stifled yawns of boredom. No-no's and naughty-naughty 's Tsk-tsked at every honest feeling. Each generation's finally accepted Mediocrity made manners. Fondest wish and flight of fantasy Turned in upon itself like sour mash Fermenting in a copper still. The soul's own substance Filters through those layers, And comes out common vinegar. I suppose there is a point Somewhere in those filter layers Where that juice is turned to wine, If I could peel off just enough-- They will never let me peel them all, And without help I doubt I could. But what comes through so often now At best, excusable; at worst, Corrupt. And how long we've been deceived That of such the soul is made. --Mike Young 1968 To My Father I don't know what to say on Fathers' Day this year. Another of my own just turned 18 And graduated High School. I've told him all he'll let me, And still I know that what he needs to hear Can't be told. He seems strong, well equipped; Even sometimes almost wise. I've given him my strength to push against, A little space to try his wings in semi-safety, And now it's time to let go. . . Or say I have. Time to tell the final fatherly lie: To tell him that--although in truth He takes my very heart along-- I have let go. He's on his own. I will do it; but it is so hard. I had no way near enough wisdom To have done what I did--right and wrong-- On purpose and on cue. So much of what is good and beautiful in them Is despite us that it's terrifying How easily it could have gone awry ! Why didn't you warn me ? My God ! How naked it must make one feel To see your sons trying to improve upon The fathering you gave them ! Thank you. I had no idea. Happy Fathers' Day to both of us. --Mike Young Transformations Grape juice to wine; Grain and yeast to bread; The undignified coupling of woman and man, Come and joy juice Into the miracle of life; And the myriad ways life has of continuing itself. Polyps afloat in the ocean; Thistle down on the wind To settle in heavy ground and root; My daughter, a toddler, small and curious To a blossoming woman, full and wise; My son, a speeding missile in a hai lai game, Sprouting soft down in hidden places And learning to make the hard metal Of modern civilization serve him; My wife, my child bride, they said, Seeing only her youth and freshness, Lover to mother to skilled professional To wise and perceptive poet's voice. Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Transformations, life to life--form to form. So familiar they blend into background For the routine mechanistical trivialities We mistake for our daily lives. But, look! See it once. Fresh. As if for the first time. Incredible! The very matrix of our lives Is steeped in mystery! --Mike Young 1981 Water Slide I sit in leaf filtered sunlight On a mossy rock at the top of the waterfall Gathering my courage. The sound of water finding its way Over worn granite and winter debris Roars in my ears at the top of the falls. Water and rocks form a swirling pattern Of motion and stability locked In an intimate dance of power. But which is motion, which stability? I ride the curtain of water into spray Over the falls to the pool below. My feet crunch into the gravel Scoured from an ancient mountain side. Water frozen into ice wedge has split-- Now roaring torrent, now gentle stream, Has ground and polished--primal stone. Each in its way transformed and transforming. Creation and destruction fused in beauty. --Mike Young 1980 What Is religion About ? Religion is not about what separates us, But about what binds us together. It is about making love, and having babies; about nurturing and protecting, and freeing and letting go, and watching with a lump in the throat to see where they fly on their own; about laughing and crying and grieving together; about working and building and playing and failing; about falling down and getting up on your own, and about picking each other up and dusting each other off. And it is about fighting and about cooperating, about seeing how high you can reach and how far you can go. And it's about sunsets and rainbows, waterfalls and sunny days and moonlit nights, and storms and cold and gloom. And it's about spring again and about young never again. It's about the sharp pointedness of being alone and the dull ache of loneliness; and it's about loss--and sometimes so very much loss that your heart breaks with it. It is about singing happy songs and sad songs, and get down and dirty ditties, and old songs sung around a campfire or poignantly remembered a long time later. It is about flowers and trees and paths in the woods and 'Where is the poison ivy ?' and about garbage and garlands and thermonuclear devices. And it's about making love again, to the same lover again who knows your every move and there is no longer even the possibility of any surprise but that you still want to do it. And it's about making love so new that you are both virgins again, whether you ever were or not, and it's terrifying and it's beautiful and you can't wait for it to begin and you can't wait for it to end. It's about dying. A lot of it is about dying: the little deaths every day, and the abandonment of the other, and senselessness and waste and never knowing how it turned out, or would have turned out; and the lingering death that refuses to be over and the hard-edged vacant space that cries out to the silent absence of the missing, missing other. And it's about things said, and left unsaid. Enough said. And it's about politics and fiddlesticks; about too much and too soon, and too little too late; and sometimes--when you least expect it, or seldomer after careful effort--sometimes it's just about right and you try to hold on to that moment, and always it slips away. It's about good things getting all twisted up somehow, and about vicious, mean, evil, beautiful, ecstatic, joyous times all muddled together until the spicy taste of it leaves you laughing and crying at the same time, and wondering in awe that love still gets made, and babies born and how can anyone bear all this and death too and not die ? --Mike Young What Is Wisdom ? What is wisdom ? he asked. It is knowing just the right thing At just the right time. You cannot catalog it For future reference. Yesterday, it was nonsense. An hour later, useless. This ! Ah, yes. --Mike Young Who ? Who was the "I" that died that day ? And who is the "do-er" who wonders each morning What to do with the corpse ? --Mike Young Where Did It Begin Where did it begin, this march to death ? Some say it all began back there At the dawn of human consciousness. Some Cro-Magnon humanoid Adam and Eve disobeyed. Ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; The poignant anticipation of the consequences of their acts Without the fruit of the tree of life for the long view That would give them the wisdom and the power To make intended consequences come true. Instead, they got the second guessing Of if-only. . . . and of unintended collateral damage: Got only the soul twisting knowledge That yields guilt and bitterness. Or, perhaps it all began with sweet nostalgia To be a nation again. Another son of David on the throne, To take up the ancient covenant with Yahweh once more. Perhaps this march to death up Skull Hill started With the alleged virgin mother's fantasy Of a visitation by the angel That left her pregnant with the child she'd tell-- And anybody else who'd listen-- He's virgin born, a son of God. Or maybe it was at the Jordan River. John made so much of the young Rabbi's baptism No wonder it scared the High Priest And his cozy accommodation with the Romans. Or, his time in the desert. He'd come back with a vision so clear Of the kingdom of God growing already in our midst. A mustard seed, a lump of leaven in the loaf; An unexpected pearl of great price. And maybe it was all the people, The crowds that followed him believing That God would somehow intervene And forge a happy ending out of all this chaos. Was it the healing ? Or, more likely the "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." And the, "You have heard it said of old. but I say unto you . . . ." That got this death march moving. Sadly, he knew it couldn't be the teaching. So absorbed in by-what-authority-he-speaks, They hardly heard the words themselves. They did not have ears to hear. One day the legend makers might well tell tales Of: '"No room for them in the Inn." This world, indeed, Has no room for "Unless vou become again as little children You shall not enter the realm of the Spirit."` And, ironically, it was not the Roman conquerors. Pontius Pilate saw how revolutionary His simple teaching was and still could not conceive That mere ideas could ever threaten sharp Roman Legion swords. Yet, the path led inexorable to his climbing up Golgotha. And the terrifying certainty of a death by Roman gibbet. Tied to a post to wait tor death While his disappointed faithful jeered below. Still. there were those followers, weak as bent reeds. If the seed that was his vision was to sprout and blossom, It would only be as it arose again in their midst From the bloody soil and ashes of this messy, tragic end. But, no. This is it. It ends here. Eloi, Eloi ! Lama Sabachthani ? My God ! My God ! Why have you forsaken me ? --Mike Young Who Am I ? Who am I ? "I am a child of God, Freed by His Good News To be a man. " That is how I said it once, When I had nothing but an idea Of who and what God meant; When the Good News was a very precise And comfortably nebulous thing; And to be a man Was a grand, heroic adventure. That is how I said it once When that was none of the experience And all of the words With which I had to say it. Who am I ? Now that I have met What then was not But now it cannot be denied Is God; Met him, her, it: Dying in a hospital bed, Struggling to find a way Out of a terrifying past, Groping for creativity Within the four walls of a household jungle, Trying to wrench meaning Out of the ambiguous rounds of daily toil; Met him, her, and sadly sometimes it, In the tangled relationships Of persons and powers and anonymous ghosts. Who am I in the face of such a God ? I am the he, or she, or it Who must search out Some fragment of tomorrow, And speak it gently From within the now Of Him, Her, It, Us. That is the Good News Which cannot, but must, be spoken. What is what it means to be a man, For that is the God Whose child I am. Mike Young 1965 Why Must I Die? Why must I die? My own death! Not someone else's. That is grief, loss, abandonment. The leave taking of the other Without having asked permission to go; Without having finished the thousand things Which forever must be left uncompleted, And which cannot finally be finished Without that unique other. No. My own death! My leave taking. Never to know how the drama ends. Myself abandoned by all the players. The ultimate abandonment. Did my children grow strong and wise Into a joyous love affair with life? Did the cause I gave my strength to Thrive and flower? Did the apricot tree bear fruit next year? Did we learn to use our handle on the infinite And the infinitesimal to destroy only, Or also to create? And then there are the "if onlys". If only I had not died. . . I would have finally gotten the garden done. My book written. Time to fly the plane with my son. My self-centered shyness overcome. My black belt in Aikido. And on, and on. And finally I begin to know why I must die, And why I must know that I must die. For, though I will miss so many endings, Without my certain ending There would be no beginnings. --Mike Young Will You Not Stand Naked Will you not stand naked before the stars and rise into the mystery of life unbound, unfettered? Who are you to carry all that baggage! Every dent in the fender is moaned over as if it were your own shin or, worse, your own honor somehow marred. Ancient witches turned princes into frogs. We work a weirder magic still. We turn ourselves into things and roles and imagined images conjured into stuff and nonsense, glued like camouflage so successfully that we have disappeared. We are not the things. What thing have you not survived the loss of! What role have you not put on and taken off again like a mask at a masquerade ball! Even this mortal flesh which does seem so substantially you completely exchanges its molecules with the ever-enveloping universe every seven years or so. Your past, what you have done, you are not bound to. Nor your future. If your dreams and desires fail you are not destroyed or if you succeed you are not bound to that either. Will you not stand naked before the stars and know that you have surrendered nothing ? What is it that could be lost? The things are gone but you knew they would crumble. Your image, so carefully manicured, has changed a dozen times or more. Your roles were for the doing of this and that and when this or that are done they are like an outgrown sloughed-off snake skin. Whatever small or large amount of truth and worth was in that image of your self lives in the memory of those who cared about you. That's all you wanted of it anyway. The rest was sham to start with. Your body, too, will change, but it was changing daily; change you got so used to that you hardly noticed. Past and future are as much yours as they ever were. You will be on to other things as you always were for all the anxiety and nostalgia you indulged in. And if you die ? Ah, if you die, your relationship to what's out there has changed, that's all. It always was, from day to day, and is no more or less unknown now than then. Will you not stand naked before the stars and let that icy anxious thrill transform itself from fear to ecstacy ? To set your baggage down and to shed your armor, to peel away the layers to the silent naked center Is not loss, is not becoming less but more. In the stillness of the moment after that sharp intake of breath, Ah ! There ! There is a brief glimpse of a you worthy of standing naked before the stars. Under the layers of all that and all that, Were you not there, before the stars, naked always, after all ? Will you not therefore arise Into the mystery of life unbound, unfettered ? --Mike Young You Have Been Told You have been told That a body is something you have. That is a lie! A body is what you are! Not merely amalgam of cell walls Making another walled cell But square yards of incarnated synapses Firing and fired by the will to joy Of each touch of the cosmos. Desire and caress made one flesh. Skin on skin, not membrane bladders Bouncing off, but universe of feeling Brushed on as if invisible liquid Finger paint creations Flowing over, above, beyond; Past word, glance, gesture. Orchestration of shared being. Being bodies together not unseemly, . But unseemingly doing a mystery, Saying the texture of a vision, Letting the flowing sculpture Of flesh--emotion in motion-- Body be its own poet, painter, musician, Kinesthetic balladeer. Letting it feel there's someone home Upstairs over the vacant lot where you live. --Mike Young 1968 Arrival Meditation You made it. From where ever it was you came, You're here, now. You have arrived. Trailing clouds of a week's hurry and worry, perhaps; But you're here. Relax. Let your scattered pieces catch up to you, And arrange themselves at your feet. Let go, for a time, of all the demands that pull at you. Let go the anticipation of your tomorrows. Release, for now, even the ex