The Daily Hardvark:Blogito Ergo Sum

Greetings and Salutations fellow T-Cells.

After my initial email that shared an amusing animation I was filled with breath each time I found one of you in my inbox with such lovely words and sentiments. This entry is an attempt to share a few such words and sentiments through a medium that is very much me.

My thoughts on T-Groups or any other frame that sometimes works and sometimes does not:

Perhaps some future system of categories will enable us to understand how to skip playfully from frame to frame — each frame a style of understanding the present condition. Perhaps life could then be lived somewhat like the children’s game of hopskotch? The I Ching could even be seen as providing one such map interrelating frames — couild one but understand it as a whole. The art of the game would be to avoid undue attachment to any frame — and to gain a sense of what it means to move.

Ojibway Prayer – traditional

Grandfather,

Look at our brokenness.

We know that in all creation

Only the human family

Has strayed from the Sacred Way.

We know that we are the ones

Who are divided

And we are the ones

Who must come together

To walk in the Sacred Way.

Grandfather,

Sacred One,

Teach us love, compassion, and honor

That we may heal the earth

And heal each other.

To White Cloud,

I dedicate this Framework to you.

Let us take a moment and remember that some works can never be framed….

To u, To u

I would not have been a poet except that I have been in love and alive in this mortal world, or an essayist except that I have been bewildered and afraid, or a storyteller had I not heard stories passing to me through the air, or a writer at all except I have been wakeful at night and words have come to me out of their deep caves needing to be remembered.

If I never meet you again in this life, let me feel the lack.

There Is A Pain

There is a pain we hold

When we remember what we are connected to

And the delicacy of our relations.

Opening to this pain

Becomes an act of compassion toward life,

The life we so often refuse to see

Because if we look too closely

Or feel too deeply,

There may be no end to our suffering.

Opening to this pain moves us

Beyond our suffering

And sets us free.”

and to each of you…

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

and one final cautionary thought that I remind myself of everytime I grow impatient with the unfolding of myself, others, or the group:

“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

I thank each of you for being exactly who you are and doing exactly what you needed to do. What impressed me most at various times in each of you was your ability to create space for me and others to do the same. I will treasure that weekend always.

Thank You
Andreas