Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Strange

Strange

Imagine for a minute
How strangely
Arranged the world
We live in might be---
Well, you can be certain
That no matter what
You happen to imagine,
It's arranged stranger than that

Everything that lives has a soul---
Tiny bits of the divine
Distributed in equal measure
Among many trillions of living beings
When comes the day
You happen into your own soul
You'll likely think you've found God

We all live in a giant sea of life
On a tiny blue dot up in the sky
Life here extends fifty thousand feet
Up into the air
And about eight thousand feet
Down into the ground
Look around my friend, you live
About eight thousand feet
Up from the bottom
In a grand ocean of souls
And most of us live our entire lives
Without ever knowing it

Pretty much everything
In the Universe is connected
To everything else
In a vast, vast, intricately woven
Sea of connections
And those goofy little ditties
Of creativity that we call intelligence
Are just the ability
Of our minds
To notice and utilize
The tiny, tiny fraction
Of all those connections
That we are adapted and able
To find relevant
And the links of causation
We've built our sciences
And logic around?
Those are just special cases
Of inference that we're adapted
To perceive and use

Life is art in motion
An artist is one who is able
To find tiny pieces of what's enchanted
And put them to paper,
Canvas or string
Though often it remains hidden
By the illusion of our waking dreams
In our Universe, love, humor,
Grace and beauty prevail
And deep in our souls
We each already know it

Dewey Dirks

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Monday, January 11, 2016

Dances

Dances

There have been times in my life
When I've felt unspeakable pain and fear
And times when I've seen
Those whom I love
Suffer mind breaking pain as well
While I watched, unable to help
Of the two, I can tell you
The second is far, far worse

I've known love with another
That runs so deep in our souls
It will never know death
I've also seen and felt
To the very core of my existence
The simple joy
That quietly lives in all things
Like a pond of pure, clear water
And I've listened to something
Of the great lilting melody
To which all life moves

Joseph Campbell once said
"Find a place inside where there's joy,
And the joy will burn out the pain"
Which, I think, are very wise words
That couldn't be more true

When I was a young man
Hanging out with my dad,
When he was talking
Every once in awhile
He would become so emotional
That he'd almost burst into tears
At the time, I didn't know
There was no shame in it
And I was embarrassed by his openness

Now, many years have gone by
I've crossed many deep canyons,
Danced grand dances
With those whom I love very much
And I've climbed many mountain tops,
And, I too, find myself with tears
In my eyes welling sometimes when I talk
And now I know what dad
Was feeling way back then;
His tears were memories
Of the dances he'd danced
Dropping by to visit him

Dewey Dirks

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Saving Yourself

Saving Yourself

There is only one person
who can save you
and that is yourself.
The only things you need
to save yourself from
are your own
fear and prejudice.

You overcome your
fears and prejudice
by learning to
care for yourself
as Mother Earth
cares for you.
When you learn
to have compassion
for your own shortcomings,
you also learn to have
compassion for the shortcomings
in everyone else
and all the world as well.
As your fears and prejudice
begin to subside
you'll become ever more aware
of many things that
you've been doing right all this time
and many things
that life has been doing for years
to help you along.

A lack of compassion for others
is a sure indication
of a lack of compassion
for yourself.
If you want to do your part
to save the world
you need only to set yourself right
after that everything
will fall into place.
Lighting the bright flames
of love and compassion in yourself
goes far in lighting
the flames of compassion
in all whom
you come into contact with.

In the fullness of time, you'll find
the world doesn't need saving
so much as it needs
to be loved.
Likewise, you'll come to find
that you don't need saving either.
What you need is to love
and to be loved.

Dewey Dirks