Overcoming worry and stress

Hello friends, Teilhard wrote about the enormous value of doing ordinary things, much like the mindfulness of Buddhist practice. Feeding the cats, making coffee, watching birds from the porch: my aging has given me a perspective that I was too busy to know during my years of writing and teaching. In a way this “ordinary mind” is a gift that comes daily at my home on the Oconee River, and encompasses the small things that act as a healing process to the worry and stress which can be a part of growing older. Best, Gene

 

Healing of Ordinary Mind

My late eighties are a time to revisit
the power of positive thinking,
since it’s harder to bring about.

Stiff joints and deeper fatigue,
naps to get by, my life force
running down, no easy cure.

Suffering of sentient beings
in Job, Lear and other classics
testify to universal pain at every turn.

Yet our age of plenty wants to reject
every ache of ordinary consciousness
with dangerous drugs and thousands of suicides.

My Italian ancestors found uplift
from lives of work without recourse
to pills and needles, only to homemade vino.

In an age of Pharma for every discomfort,
these elders would have let the cure
of the everyday penetrate awareness,

like my two cats following me to greet the day
on our screened porch enveloped in birdsong,
with the smell of fresh coffee bringing hope.

It’s about opening to such beauty at hand,
giving it time to warm breath and soul,
healing our moments even in decline.