Gardening Relationships

This new garden of mine (although it seems funny to write that word 'mine', and actually try believing it to be true, that the garden is actually 'owned' by me....I'm a custodian for it, even though I paid the money for everything that went into it, however I'm merely a custodian for all of those resources as well. When I pretend to 'own' things, all this worry comes with it....being a custodian feels so much more liberating and enjoyable. I can enjoy it while it's in my care, and when/if the time comes for something to move into someone else's care, I can let it go. Now I'm not saying I've got this mastered, but I'm in that class!).......so, this newly planted garden --- Wow! What a teacher it's been in just the two and a half days it's been up on the roof. I think about it all day. I have a deep love for it, the smell of the soil combination, the brilliant greens of the plants, the box it's in, the ravens, crows, hummingbirds, hawk, flies, and smaller insects that all seem to be circulating above, around, and on it when I'm up there.....the Sun, Wind, Water, and Earth supporting it.....and the Spirit that moves through me, the Garden, and in-between.

This garden is teaching me more about relationships than I could've known. And while I'm pretty young (37 1/2....lol!), perhaps some of the learning is coming through age/experience. I'm seeing myself letting go of some of the urgency and hurry-up-and-get-there-already mentality that I carried with me for most of my life. I'm finding joy in the cultivation process, recognizing the need for things to work with time....cultivating the soil, letting the roots grow, not having to tamper with the plants just to feel involved in the process, to be attentive to the garden without needing it to be any other way than the way that it is.....these are just a few of the lessons from the garden these last several days.

And this garden IS a relationship.....a very intimate relationship that is filling me with so much love and fulfilment. It comes into my dreams at night, I feel it's living presence above the healing space in my apartment.

And in the process, I've felt the very strong and supportive presence of my ancestors.....who've farmed in this country, and probably the land of their home countries of origin for aeons. In particular, I recognize my Grandfather, Pat McCreary....my Mother's Father. I've felt him around me quite a bit more than usual these last few days, helping to guide my intuition around the garden...showing me his Heart more than ever through his connection to farming and cultivating. He wasn't known as an overtly affectionate man by his family, and yet from spending time with him before he left his body, in the years since, and in particular these last few days, I see and feel the PROFOUND amount of love that circulated through him. It was safer and more comfortable for him to express this love in more overt ways as a farmer than through his human relationships. We all have our own ways and learning processes, and I honor this as his. He has much to teach me about the relationship to cultivation, patience, and nature, and I look forward to learning from him.

I'm sure I'll be sharing more here as it comes!

The Search For Love

"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: 'Seek and do not find.' This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and it's judgment, though severely impaired, is completely consistent." ~A Course In Miracles, p.223

Newly Built and Planted Garden Box

These are pictures of my newly planted Garden Box. It's 4'x4'x8"! Big thank you to my Dad and David Elliott for all the guidance on building materials and detailed teaching around setting it up!!! With each screw going in to the box, with each offering of sage, with each breath through the construction, soil-blending, planting of the first 3 plants, watering, and meditating on the garden I get more and more excited....feeling strong energy flows moving through my Awareness and body.....circulating through my heart and out through my hands. A couple of times last night the garden woke me up from sleep....I can feel it as a living relationship. I can tell that it has much to teach me about all of my relationships and cultivating the highest while engaging with patience, consistency, and LOVE. I'll post more pictures as the garden and I evolve together.

Exchange

When you try to exchange
all your wants and needs for
perfect happiness
through the illusions of
this seeming world
block the Reality of
His exchange with You
always unfolding itSelf.

Let go of this dance
with empty calories,
words without meaning,
work without fruit,
and dances without joy.

Let Him whirl
through your Imagination,
pulsing, throbbing, expanding
his Dance of Creation
in every wink of your
beautiful eyes,
every beat of your
gorgeous Heart
drenched in the nectar of
Love for no reason,
Rollicking laughter with no punchline,
Wild warm embraces empty of need.

You, oh yes Dear One,
You
are His Beloved
Her Beloved...
And you don't have a vote in it!

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/27/09

Who Will You Blame?

Who will you blame
this time for
all of your pain?
Another proposition
campaign,
new number,
different name?

It's time you
take responsibility
fielding thoughts
through the eye of wisdom
not those crackled
taped-up
specks of time
time gone by
imagination run wild
and always ever
not in your favor.

Have you ever
questioned these
oh-so-true propositions
posited by your own
inherited positions
dispositions
and inquisitions?

Maybe it is
all about
you v. pain
you v. blame
you v. mayhem
homespun in
your own brain.

Maybe there is
no hope for that jail
around your hopes
and oh by the way
have you noticed
it's made of
your own disdain.

Jailer and jailee
set yourself free
the keys are
hanging behind
the chain of
unquestioned beliefs
circling round and round
your thought-trained brain.

Freedom is only
one breath away.
Heaven and Hell
living in the choice
between your thoughts.

And when you are Free,
who will you blame then?
Silliest thought of All to
recover the Golden Throne of
your own awakening with
tattered old sheets of
three-ringed paper
scrawled with
jibberish born of
someone else's pain.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/26/09

How Do I Judge Thee...

How Do I Judge Thee

How do I judge thee?
How long have I avoided
counting the ways
means and ends
of this down-world spiral
into complete separation
from all of You.

If I would only let
one little fissure
open in
the secret chamber of
my heart
I could begin
to hear your sweet melody
chanting the chorus of
unconditional Love
through every cell of this
living world of Heart
these fluid brushstrokes of
Your art
Creating and dissolving
Forms, formlessness
Above and below
Expansion and contraction.

Oh life
would that I suspend
judgement and
accept all of Your faces
all of Your smiles
through countless rivers
gorges and lives.

Oh breath,
winding through
the labyrinth of my soul
waking memory of Your face
my face, the One face
in every face...

Oh breath,
a thousand bows
will never be enough to
honor the gift You are.

So for now,
I will just smile
at the next face I see.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/24/09

No More Breaks

No More Breaks

No more breaks in the Circle of Life.

Can you
Will you
Ever release
The Fort Knox lockdown
On your identity as
stuck, broken, alone, not-enough?

How many years
dollars and ears
will you use with
no exchange
to fix something that has
no existence?

A free ego
isn't freedom at all...

This gasping
rasping and grasping for
air
is ridiculous...

How many meatless
old bones
will you add to your collection
sucking on them for some hope of
sustenance?

You ask for compassion
but won't let this
balm of Gilead
permeate your
aching
thick
dry skin...

You plead for time
while running down
pedestrians
on the hunt for
the next great latte
to invigorate the
lifeless listless adrenals
whose lifeforce
you've gambled away on
one too many nights of promise
with no delivery.

When will you
and can you
ever
Wake up?

No more breaks in the Circle of Life.

Oh Great Spirit

Oh Mother of All

Light of Fire

Spirit of Water

Lift of Air

Strength of Earth

Knowing of Truth...

Release the
knot of the Heart
so the ocean of infiniteness
can know itself in
all form and formlessness

No more breaks in the Circle of Life.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 6/23/09

There Is No Other

There is no other
love
like this love
there is no
other love
to love as much
as this love

I have searched for
YOU
high and low
near and far

Where o where
have you been
hiding Yourself?

Why would you
keep Yourself from
me
all this time....these
days of angsty separation
twittering
frittering
wasting these
precious breaths
on grasping at emptiness
for fullness
reaching through ghosts
for a solid hand to
lift me up

You
You have always been
right here

You have always been singing
in my exhalations
dancing in my
inhalations
daring to intoxicate me with
Your LOVE.

Where can I look
What can I touch
that isn't saturated with
Your fragrance?

Where can I step that isn't
Your Holy Shrine?

Where can I sleep that isn't
Your Temple?

Whom can I touch that isn't
Your Body?

Oh LOVE
Burst the dams of my Heart
Flood the veins of my body
Burn down the walls my imagination
with the fire of Your Love.

There is no other
love
like this love
there is no
other love
to love as much
as this love

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/20/09

This Holy Birth

This Holy Birth

I don't know why
I thought it was
only You
that could be born
in such a way

And when the
reflections of
all the mirrors
showed me
this original face
all I could do was
look away...

'oh no not me,
not now,
and certainly not
as I am.'

I'll search
struggle
strive
and never be quite
there
by the way
where exactly
is the Island of There?

Letting go
all this fiction
and dancing without joy
eating without nourishment
sleeping without rest

I turn
to the mirror
once again
to see.

Yes.
Just this.
this Holy Birth
in every breath.

I lost myself in reflections
until I saw the reflections
were all me.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/13/09

Oh Mother, my Mother
Sweet, Dark Mother
Your scent fills my nose
like bouquets
that intoxicate lovers
knitting them in and through
each other for an evening
a whisper
as long as the scent lasts....

But Yours oh Mother
Your flower
never dampens
with the churning of time
through fields of wheat
green to yellow...
Your elixir
in so many cozy grains
of richer than auburn
deeper than brown
soil.

I am beginning to smell
your perfume through
nearly everything that
lives on your sun-kissed
surface.

Oh Divine Mother
Great whirling Dervish,
whipping my Heart
into an ignited
windy
blaze...

I can no
other way
bring You inside of me
than to toss away
this dream called me
this fiction called we
and anything other than
this
just this.

But when,
when oh sweet One
when it is
just this
I cannot revel
in the joy
of worshipping all of
Your forms
on the alter of
your sweet dark Earth.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/11/09

This Miracle

Kinetic
Regenesis
All at once
Rather than gradual
one-by-one
pill-taking
sort
of
half-assed rejuvenation.

Is the Miracle
within,
ie; everywhere, every-when
now?
or only in bottles
on shelves
hiding between the leaves
of dusty books
squirreled away over decades
between days on end
thinking thinking thinking
sipping some oolong or another
under the eaves
round a fountain
who's seen
better days.
In a garden
now only graced
with stacks of memories
whispered through
convoluted conversations on
the Nature of happiness
in a large city
that really isn't
sprawling
expanse
taking up more space
than any object
really can.

Is this Miracle,
this restoration
of the eyes
to themselves....
this somewhat seeming
ripping off of
the bandages of
time and sense
place and placement
location and deviation
guilt, shame, and all the rest
pulled off in one single
OUCH!
Unless,
unless,
it's done more
ploddingly
prolonging the
delusion
illusion
and confusion
for decades more
while gathering
a few additional
little volumes
promising
but not delivering
real
and actual
peace.

So this Miracle?

Will have to wait...

Until the feast of fasting
has reached its nexus
burned out its
center
and I,
I can see without
the me
that constantly
skews
strains
saps
real Vision
has let go.

This Miracle
is now.

~ Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/6/09

How Can I Ever...

How Can I Ever....

How can I ever look
You in the eyes
Again?

How can I ever eat
Your bread
and drink Your wine again?

I will fight
I will strive
I will struggle
I will prove
I will know
I will do it
On.......my...... own.

All

Alone.

Aeons rolled by
over pot-holed
and sketchy roads
trafficked by
all the hungry ghosts.
I met them one-by-one
and all by name.
All with a look of disdain.

Until

Just one breath
Just One breath
and an ever-so-slight
but just enough
clearing in the fog
and I could see your face again.

Your face straining against
those enormous
nearly petrified
pieces of wood
so neatly fitted
together
pressing in against
your beautiful face
your beautiful unwavering
face.

So close I could smell the
salt pouring from your
veins, putting one foot in front of the other
as you always did;
no difference between pulling
the weeds in the garden of my mind
and dragging
dragging
dragging
this weight,
this weight I still stagger with
up the hill to Golgotha.

Quadriceps quivering
at the vision
of Your focus and
Vision;
Seeing Him everywhere
While the body
Rides the edge of breaking
Under the weight of
My illusions.
Oh yes ~
I had to believe
to prop up the belief that
it were all about
me.
How else could I
turn away from You?

Impugnation Agnitae Veritatis
Turning
Turning
Churning
Clenching
Armoring
until the Heart
cannot be felt
let alone
Seen.

Until that
breath....
Haaahhhhhhhh....
InSpirito Sancto

How many forms
of deliverance have
I turned away from?
How many lives
burned through
like forgotten
forests
men must raze
for cattle
to starve and
wander across?
How many faces have
smiled upon me with
Your Grace?

Haaaaahhhhhhhh......

I am ready
To TRUST.
One Reality
One Face
One Heart
One Purpose
Serve ~ Love

Nothing has been lost
but the eyes that
only saw
fog.

Nothing has been found but
That which has been here
All along.

You are the
Life
Light
Truth.

Aham Brahmasmi
I Am That.

Turning ever towards,
I am Yours.


Scott Patrick Schwenk 4/29/09