Think Twice About Leaving the Sidelines

Think Twice About Leaving the Sidelines

You might think twice about leaving the sidelines 
of love 
where you are allowed to dwadle. 
I wouldn't enter the real playing field
unless you had no other choice.
But does anyone? 

         It is inevitable that as humans we will one day "leave the sidelines" and enter the great playing field of a game called Love. It will be in this arena that we experience all the emotions of joy, hurt, beauty, betrayal, triumph, and timelessness. As I read through the exchange of letters between Mary Haskell and Kahlil Gibran, I've come to see that she was a very gifted writer herself. In two personal journal entries less than two weeks apart, I love how she openly expressed the longing that comes with a lit heart-fire as well as common doubt. Common doubt I define as feelings of maybe-I'm-not-good-enough that I'd wager every girl experiences at least once in her life. Mary, being ten years Gibran's senior, struggled with not knowing if Gibran abstained from sex because he needed to (he claimed his Love operated on only a spiritual wavelength) or if it was actually because he did not feel attracted to Mary. (Of note, Gibran eventually would openly discuss his feelings of physical attraction for Mary, but would continue to believe that sex would undermine their relationship for the duration of his life.)

Mary's journal December 20, 1914: " It seems to me that if I were ninety and he eighty, I should still long for the touch of his body. I should live just to have it next to mine." 


Mary's journal December 29, 1914: "K whispered, 'I just wish that I could show you how sweet the thought of you is to me, and how I love You.' As he said this, he looked at me. I was gray and lined and old-looking."

Just a Kiss (2011), Lady Antebullum

Visiting a Foreign Country

Visiting a Foreign Country

If you were planning to move to a foreign country
and thought you might never return, 

would not it then be prudent to acclimate yourself 
to any custom they might have 

for in heaven what can increase your soul's 
expanse is all that is ever served. 

     
       During the summer months, when her teaching job let out, Mary Haskell would travel out west. Usually she ventured to California, equally enjoying passing through the mountains of the Midwest until she reached her destination in a secluded wilderness part of California. In her July 19, 1014 letter she writes: "I have found a treasure for you - a tiny Indian arrowhead - what I have wished for you every year in the Sierra, but never saw before. I love it so much - I climbed the rocks to get this for you. It grows only in certain limits and where it can climb a mountainside. Like you, beloved Kahlil."
       His reply, dated July 22, 1914, reads: "Your letter is a wonderful message, beloved Mary. It thrills my heart - and makes me see the stupidity of any other way of living. It is a mighty thing to go with love to those regions beyond these days and these nights. But how much more wonderful it is, beloved Mary, to know you as I do. You have freed my life."
       Gibran's reference to "the stupidity of any other way of living" means that life lacks so much without travel and adventure. He acknowledges it is good for both the body and the soul to experience life in forms newly happened upon. So travel, explore, adventure, for "what can increase you soul's expanse is all that is ever served".

Sierra Mountains 

The Miracle of Darkness

The Miracle of Darkness

Now, with illuminating spheres appearing 
whenever I turn and something even greater,

tell me God, more of your miracle of darkness 
I can see in other lives. 

I once cried for what was not in my hand,
not knowing it was there. 

Finally you pointed out my misconception,
and darkness would be thought of
as a miracle to me now. 

         In a July 7, 1914 letter from Mary she speaks about how just conjuring up memories of Kahlil and simply knowing he exists is enough to bring her peace in the trying times of her life, which she defines in terms of "continuous clouds" and "raging storms". She writes of those shadowy times: "Always at least I am not without you - even when all else is vague or ghastly. And this I should feel, even if you were for days without thought of me. Because thought is only a small part of us. We are more together than we know, even though our knowledge of it grows. And when I turn to you, Kahlil, something loosens and dimness clears - and something is sweet and there is warmth. I am never in a storm now without you."

Scare Away the Dark (2014), Passenger 

Hidden

Hidden

Even the shadow of God is brilliant, 
so much so that God has trouble looking 
at Himself 
unless He is more disguised,
hidden as He can be in us. 

          Today Maya Angelou passed away at the age of 86. She was a marvelous poet, remembered the world over for her touching poetry, poetry that spoke to the soul and deepened the spirit. And like all revered poets, she attempted to address the big questions, what does it mean to love? To live? To have regret? To express forgiveness? The stanza below is the last stanza in When Great Trees Fall, the last poem in Angelou’s, I Shall Not Be Moved:

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

      So what happens when great souls die? It's safe to say Angelou already knew the answer, we are better because they existed. Like many others on the internet tonight, I have selected my favorite five quotes by her: 

• “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” 
• “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” 
• “A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.” 
• “I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.”  
• “The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.” 

"The world knows her as a poet but at the heart of her, she was a teacher. 'When you learn, teach. When you get, give.' is one of my best lessons from her." - Oprah Winfrey

Everything In Your Kingdom

Everything In Your Kingdom

It can't forsake you, Love.
For I know the kingdom of each mind
stretches so far. 
Is there anything not in it? 

Would not all your moments of grief, and their residue,
end at that juncture where the Sun is walking 
toward you 
and you toward it 
creating a union as certain as anything ever was. 


         I love this Hafiz poem, there is nothing that extends beyond the kingdom of Love. And when you greet the kingdom, in all its varied forms, it is the "juncture where the Sun is walking toward you". And moreover, he says that this union is created "as certain as anything ever was". Isn't that what we want to believe about our soulmate? The person we feel destined to spend the rest of our life with? The person we want to be doing everything with? Don't we want that to be "as certain as anything ever was"?
          Gibran knew that one of the ways love evolves (or perhaps is noticed in the first place) is that you desire to see the world with them, to see all that is beautiful and breathtaking. He writes in a May 7, 1911 letter: "Just came from the museum. O how much I want to see these beautiful things with you. We must see these things together someday. I feel so lonely when I stand before a great work of art. Even in Heaven one must have a beloved companion in order of enjoy it fully. Good night, dear. I kiss your hands and your eyes."
         And a year later on October 22, 1912, he again speaks of this mutual walking: "The most wonderful thing, Mary, is that you and I are always walking together, hand in hand, in a strangely beautiful world, unknown to other people."
          On June 14, 1914 he puts into words the idea that another person's support gives you a separate and distinct, yet equally powerful freedom, for now someone believes in you and that emotion conferred by another is enough to give one wings: "The biggest thing you've said to me Mary is; 'I am fighting for life - and never anyone but you to stand by me. I know you must stand alone most of the time, but if there is room for a foot by you, I want my foot there.' I put myself in your hands. You can put yourself in another person's hands when he knows what you are doing and has respect for it and loves it. He gives you your freedom."

I Was Just Thinking (2003), Teitur

Just One Great Prophet

Just One Great Prophet

If we were smarter, it would have been 
enough that just one great Prophet 
would have to make a personal appearance on Earth. 

He or She probably could have easily fixed some 
important things forever,
written a book that really gave us the total lowdown
and that no one would dare edit. 

God in human form, 
could have shown us the herbs to cure any illness 
humans would ever know.

But looks like it does not work that way. 

          "He kissed me as he has a few times before when I have been in trouble, with a tenderness beyond dreams, as God might kiss a child in his arms." - Mary Haskell's journal September 2, 1913. Throughout history there have been many times that humans have said God walked among, but perhaps even more times when we've needed God to walk among us. In those we love, we get small glimpses of God or at least the version of God that appears to our hearts. And to Gibran this was in part a miracle, for in his July 8, 1914 letter, he wrote: "My knowing you is the greatest thing in my days and nights, a miracle quite outside the natural order of things."

Morningbird (2003), Forest Sun

Maybe One Like

Maybe One Like

Your soul could have chosen 
a different kind of body,
one that was not nearly as fragile,

and actually, it did try that, your soul, 
being like other things,
but then decided that a form like yours
was the best. 

       On April 26, 1914 Kahlil wrote to Mary, "You've given me my life in a literal sense. I could not have lived - except that you gave me life. So many actually die for lack of some such person as you to save them. It was not just the money but the way you gave it, the love you gave with it and the faith, the knowledge that there was somebody who cared. I wonder sometimes whether ever in history one soul has done for another what you have done for me."

       If that last line is not one of the most powerful lines in love letters, I don't know what is! When you are looking for someone to love, you doing one of the most important tasks in "soul-searching" that you ever will. The physical looks of a person will fade, the money might not always come in, their health could deteriorate, but if you "love souls, you will find them again" (one of the famous, and oft-quoted in my blog,  lines of Victor Hugo). So how do you decide if you're attracted to someone's soul? If the connection is deep enough that it will continue to fascinate your curiosities, that it will continue to encourage your dreams, that it will grow and change with you, it's likely more along the lines of soul's desire. Gibran often addressed Mary as "you the mountain climber, you the life hunter, you my beloved". These three things are emanated by the soul. He also speaks of the soul's own wavelength with beautiful eloquence: "You are always near me. There are times when I talk to you by the hour. There is telepathic communication between us. I knew that ages ago. How could two beings, such as we are, understand one another without that silent communication? You always make me put my hand on the brightest spot in my soul. Until Sunday, Beloved." - December 19, 1913

All That You Have Is Your Soul (1989), Tracy Chapman