Open To The Year Retreat - Evening Meditative Experience 1

 

Start this meditative session by sitting comfortably and just be silent for a while. Whenever you're ready proceed to read and listen. Stop often, let it sink in.

On a retreat, where the focus is on a specific poet, mystic, author or artist, we try, if possible, to include an interview with that person. It is good to hear her/his voice.

Here then, an interview with Mary.

Mary was attentive to nature with poems flowing out of that. Ludovico Einaudi channels those experiences into music. 

Mary often talks about her fondness for "dead poets" and their influence on her life and work - Blake, Rumi, Whitman, Emerson, to name a few. 

We too need the dead poets and their words:

Excerpt from Dead Poets Society

O Me! O Life!

By Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

"What will your verse be?"

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Close by holding all for a few moments in silence.