Right speech stuns to silence.
It emanates from the emptiness of nothing left to lose.
It is abundant in its starkness.
It touches each soul,
no matter their position in the array of infinite positions,
exactly where they are asking to be touched.
Right speech churns like a galactic hurricane through fixed concepts and obscurations,
shredding all veils and unbinding the wings of freedom. wrg
Here are some songs from the sangha of Right Speech.
The Origin of Speech
Listen, the sound of whispered murmurings.
Of measured tympany, stone against rock.
Dancing melody, weaving wordless presence.
Drip, drop,
Stalactites call to the Earth.
Voices and response echo in dim shadows.
Flames move features into fear, awe.
Human stroke paints a vision.
I am, we are.
-Linda Atwater- https://www.ghanacommunitypathways.org/our-team.html
This is me
Deeply submerged
Dreaming
Still as death
Floating
drifting
Navigating rapids
Swimming to the shoreline
Waking up to
to
to
all of the kingdoms
holding me up.
-Angie Alkove – https://waterhorsewriting.com/
I’m celebrating 30 days sober while stuck in Chicago-O’Hare overnight. I got this coin the first time on September 6th, 2017. I lasted maybe six months in the program. I liked it until I didn’t. I lied a lot. I used to do a thing where I would tell a story about my life that seemed to fit the place that I was telling it to. So I told a story about being an alcoholic for a while and listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen while feeling like some kind of straight edge badass. I also started doing drag. It was not an entirely true story. I’m still not sure which if any of mine are. I still have some literature whose title is “You Think You’re Different?” and every time it pops up in shuffling things I laugh and laugh. What I know now is that my life moves in and out of meaninglessness and ecstasy and always has. What I know now is that I love extremes. What I know now is that I can’t pay attention to something unless I love it, and that I don’t always have a lot of love in me, and that other times I have so much I can only scream at oceans and busy highways to properly express it. What I know now is that when I drink and smoke and stare at my phone all day for the next like and subsist entirely on spoonfuls of JIF and cheezeits and cruise ambiguous affections as a primary means of connection for days on end like a ghost fishing off a dry dock I cease to maintain any grip on the tether that hooks me in to what little I truly do love in this world, and that I truly do want to love in this world. I made it all the way through 2020 then drank a toast on New Years Eve wondering if I had just imagined how bad it could get. I hadn’t. And now I’m back. Holding the tether again like it matters. I don’t like AA. I think inviting folk to wallpaper over a name for God when you’re not actually willing or able to do much to change the bones of a very specific mid-century theology with a very specific view of what it is to be human is dangerous. But I must acknowledge there’s real magic in the rooms. Lately I just go to listen, and it helps me. I don’t speak there, or about this in church, because I don’t want to tell half-truths about it again, and I find it difficult to be honest and feel heard by some folk who are very religious about the program. I’ve seen it save lives, though, just like I’ve seen folk change through other means, too. Abstinence helps some, shades of grey help others, everyone has to figure it out. I have a sincere desire to not drink or use. I believe I have received that desire by asking for it. I believe it’s given me my life back. And I believe folk who’ve come to know where their own solitary power ends and another one takes off can change their lives and be good for the world, one day at a time.
– Loretta Lordchild – https://www.facebook.com/loretta.lordchild
Each Sunday a group of folks join virtually to practice Tonglen meditation and inquire into the challenges and joys of being human. Everyone is welcome to drop in whenever the inspiration strikes.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89989680789
We look forward to sitting with you!