Happiness Waiting . . .

Strong Northerlies and mainly sunny skies greet Northeastern Okieland this Freya's day . . . I am happy about that, but . . . the mailbox?

The World Happiness Report, recently released, shows that the US dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since 2012. While older people in the US did well, it was really the youth where the shift was most noticeable. Of the 143 countries surveyed, the US ranked 62nd for people under 30! Drilling down, it becomes apparent that we have spiritual crises underlying our current circumstances. – Soren in Wisdom 2.0

The latest technology and ethics confrontation:

Pig kidney organ transplantation into human recipient.

Birth control misinformation rampant in online media.

Otherwise, there were positive remembrances:

Billy Collins is celebrating his 83rd birthday. My present all time fave and Poet Laureate of the U.S. was born on this day in 1941 New York City. For an excellent but all too brief taste of Collins, check out a TED presentation. More about Billy Collins.

Today is also the birth date of Stephen Sondheim. The Broadway composer and songwriter (Into the Woods) was born in 1930 New York City.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. / … To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. / … Put down the weight

of your aloneness / and ease into the conversation. /

The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink. /

. . . All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

– David Whyte, “ Everything is waiting for you,” River Flow: New & Selected Poems, Many Rivers Press, 2012.

Everything we ever held in our hands is given away.

– David Whyte, “Letting Go,” in Everything is Waiting for You, Many Rivers Press; 2003.

March Marching

It's Thor's day … a cloudy and likely rainy day in TulseyTown . . .

Garrison has a plan . . . such as it is, if he can find his glasses.

Speaking of gods: Johann Sebastian Bach, was born on this day in 1685 Eisenach, Germany

From March 7th thru the 25th, 1965, American civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., began protest marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Committed to non-violent demonstration in support of voting rights and against state suppression, none of the marchers fought back against a vicously violent attack by state police on March 7th. The third and successful march began today, the 21st of March

Not seeking enlightenment for ego's personal benefit, you no longer have need for territory. So your space becomes a public park, a common ground. Gone is the desire to be a buddha. Remaining is rather the work with sentient beings (including yourself) toward the resolution of confusion. – after Chögyam Trungpa

Creativity, love, light, compassion – none of these come from your effort. They come through you. Allowing this is your task.

Uncontained Longing – prompted by Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours.

For your sake poets, painters, creatives

sequester themselves only that the world,

so transient as made in each moment by moment instant,

might be given to you once again.

Lovers are the poets in the briefest of hours,

who gather your inheritance. Awkening desire,

they make a place where growth happens

with all its joy, pain, suffering and laughter –

all the longings that had slept

now awakens to weep in a stranger's arms,

streaming into you when things and thoughts

cannot contain it. – jab

Predictably unpredictable

It's Odin's day … The vernal equinox is under way today across the contiguous United States. It's the earliest in 128 years. And it's my birth date.

The Roman poet Ovid was born 2067 years ago on this day in 43 BCE, Sulmo, Roman Empire [now Sulmona, Italy]

It's Henrik Ibsen's birthday. The playwright was born in 1828 Skien, Norway.

Spike Lee turns 67 today. The writer/director and multi-award winner was born on this date in 1957, Atlanta, Georgia.

Good company, my birthdate companions. As noted, it's also my date of birth in Tulsa, one day before Spring that year. Since 1942 – or maybe longer, who knows for sure? – I, like Rilke, have been living my life in widening circles around that primordial tower reaching out across the world. Circling for thousands of years, I still don't know if I'm falcon, a fish, a storm, or a great song.

120 is my new target date. Aging to 120 and dying happily? No longer beyond imagination, nor for the rich.

More International Women's month: Lion's Roar sponsored online women of wisdom celebration begins tomorrow and runs daily thru the 25th.

Spring Morning Before an Overnight Storm

An orange balloon loosed from

once upon a time moorings

has found itself stuck in the leaves

and twigs of a Tree of Heaven

growing wild in my small back garden.

Bouncing and bobbing freely, but imprisoned

somehow in a world of non sequitur,

of course, it will eventually give up

the air that presently sustains it’s life.

For now, a stiff breeze

fortelling late evening thunderstorms

has taken aim, its orange plight

pushing through leaves into the sky.

A mile to the North

another enamored poet,

another empty coffee cup,

another heavenly tree.

– jab 5/12/11