Please Hear What I'm Not Saying by Charles Finn

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966

Riley's Route to the Eternal Now

I love this and want to share it with anyone passing thru my blog.

By Wayne Amos

Originally published in Reader's Digest, February, 1965 

What is the secret of those rare moments of ineffable happiness, when all the world is in tune? 

After many years in New York and Europe, I was back in the plains-states visiting my cousin Riley on the farm he had never left. We walked through the fields and sat on a log. Alert, amused, Riley whittled on a stick as I told stories of London, Paris, Madrid.

The leaves of the cotton woods rustled in the summer breeze. A redbird called, its notes so clear they seemed to split the air. I forgot my story as I listened to the leaves and the bird and felt the same inexplicable happiness I had felt a lifetime ago on this same farm.

I was 15 then, Riley 20. Riley had wanted to get the ploughing done and was working all night.  I had just learned to drive the tractor and was eager to help. We took turns ploughing and sleeping in the haystack. The hired girl would bring us coffee and sandwiches at midnight.

When I awoke at 11:30 the three-quarter moon had risen. The tractor droned powerfully, its light eating into the furrows. At the end of a row Riley would jump down and hold a book in the light for half a minute. He was memorizing a poem, something by Walt Whitman about "... rich, apple-blossom’d earth! Smile for your lover comes!"  He was a great reader; the librarian used to say he checked out more books than anyone else in the county.

As I was watching the scene, some strange sort of light seemed to turn on for me. I saw the moon, the tractor, the field, the trees, the house, the haystack, as if from all sides at once. It was so beautiful, so magical, I feared to breathe lest I change something. Time seemed to stop, and I wanted it never to start again.

And now, sitting on a log many years later, I felt the same ineffable happiness. I heard the bird, the leaves. I was in the scene, part of it.

I tried to explain to Riley but knew I couldn’t. I recalled the tractor, the moonlight. I was there, I said. The moon was there. Oh, it was hopeless trying to put it into words. But Riley nodded, and suddenly I realized something. Riley knew all about that magic. He had experienced it often.

“You know the secret!" I cried. "What is it?"

Riley smiled and put aside his whittling.

"No-one can explain it," he said. "Oh, I’ve found hints in many of the books I’ve read. But first I felt it, just as you did.  And so did the men who tried to write about it. They felt it independently, separated by oceans and centuries; yet they all shared the same experience."

"But what is it?"

"If I had to put it in one sentence," Riley went on, "I would say, ‘Full consciousness brings joy.’ One of the mysteries is that the Universe contains innate joy. Once you fully open your senses to anything—a sunset, a waterfall, a stone, a blade of grass—the joy comes.  

“But to open the senses, to become really conscious, you have to drop out of the future and the past and remain for a while on what T.S. Eliot, in his poem, ‘Burnt Norton’, called ‘the still point of the turning world,’ the present. The only true reality is the present. The past is gone; the future is not yet.  

“That long-ago night was beautiful to you because of the unusual circumstances. Waking up at midnight in a haystack turned you upside down. You stopped planning into the future and thinking into the past. You were there in the Now.  

“Children have these moments frequently. But they grow up and lose the capacity. Yet, with the dim memory of ecstasy and the hope for more, they pursue this hope for the rest of their lives, forever grasping and forever analyzing. They’re on a journey which has no destination, except death. For this reason, most men do actually live ‘lives of quiet desperation’.

"Schopenhauer said that most men are ‘lumbermen’. They walk through a beautiful forest always thinking: ‘What can this tree do for me? How many board-feet of lumber will it produce? Last year I netted such and so; this year I must do better’. They are always in the past or future; they are always becoming, they never are.

“Then through the forest comes the artist, though maybe he never painted a picture. He stops before a tree, and because he asks nothing of the tree he really sees it. He is not planning the future; for the moment he has no concern for himself. The self drops out. Time stops. He is there, in the present. He sees the tree with full consciousness. It is beautiful. Joy steps in, unasked.

“It is not important how you explain this; it is the feeling, the experience that counts. Some people believe everything in the Universe—a field of wheat swaying in the wind, a mountain, a cloud, the first snowfall of winter—has a being, an intelligence and soul of its own. When we can think of things in this way it is easier to love them, and love is the prime ingredient of these experiences. But our love must not be possessive. William Blake put it perfectly when he said, ‘He who binds to himself a joy, does the winged life destroy; but he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.’

"Martin Buber says we can learn to love the world— things, animals, people, stars—as Thou.  And that when we do love them and address them as Thou, they always respond. This is probably the greatest thrill of all—the response of joy to joy.

"I believe most men can have their glimpses of the eternal, their timeless moments, and almost any time they choose. Many of our little practical tasks—say we are hoeing the garden, picking fruit or trimming a hedge—require only 1/100 part of our consciousness. We use the other 99 parts daydreaming of tomorrow or remembering yesterday. If we can only watch the movement of our hands, the trembling of a leaf, feel the sun on our skin, the breeze in our hair and eliminate quickly the constant intrusion of thoughts of past and future, if we can successfully do this for even tens of seconds, the joy will come.

"The eyes will shine with a new light, and if a stranger passes during one of these moments and you exchange a glance, the chances are," said Riley, "that he, too, will share in the mystery."

Driving back to town alone, I stopped the car and walked down a winding lane. Pulling a leaf from a bush, I tried to "see" it. But I found immediately that I was planning tomorrow’s appointment. I studied the leaf, stared at it—and was remembering some trivial thing from the past.

Suddenly, out of the clear sky came a clap of thunder: a plane breaking the sound barrier.  In the silence that followed I heard, to the exclusion of all other perceptions, the musical call of

a meadow lark. There was strength in the loud, brief song and a flutelike delicacy, peaceful, plaintive; and, over all, there was a joyous acceptance of the eternal now, astride the centuries and millenniums.

Originally published in Reader's Digest, February, 1965

What is Jesus Kind of Love?

The kind that sees the ugly, abandoned, and unsanitary in the wash of humanity and has nothing but a gleaming compassion. A love that reaches out and touches and loves those who don't think themselves worthy of love. Jesus kissed sinners and hugged the unclean. He adores losers and rejects, and people who are broken and don't have their lives all together - sinners are his peeps. I mean Christianity didn’t even start with the "religious"or with those whose lives were easy. It started with rank fishermen, prostitutes, and tax collectors — people for whom life wasn’t easy. That's who he really dug hanging out with, eating with, doing life with. That's the kind of love this world needs - we need it like breath.

Arting

 June 27, 2018

Patti and I met at Carter's Hay and Feed to do some sketching, including the livestock. It was a beautiful morning as we sat under a tree in front. Patti opted to do several sketches as she continues to perfect her line drawing and tonal studies - which are getting really good! I did one sketch in my largest watercolor journal. Knowing where we were going, the night before I stained several pages in the journal with coffee to create a nice rustic tone to begin on. Usually you want to use different strengths of instant coffee, which I didn't have, so I just used leftover morning coffee. I was very pleased with the results and plan on doing this more to pre-tone the paper.  Here is my sketch of the livestock chilling out in front of the barnlike store. These were goats and a couple of Barbados sheep who had lost there winter wool, which apparently you can just pull off in a sheet so they don't need sheering. They staged an escape while we were there but sheep herder, Patti, foiled their attempt!  I'll post Patti's when she sends them to me. I'm going to miss these times with Patti when I move. 

Urban sketching at Carter's Hay & Feed in Encinitas with gal pal, Patti Slattery. They keep some small livestock to entertain children and artists! I pre-toned my journal paper with coffee which was kind of fun.

 I filtered some of the color out for a different look.

Love is a Curious Thing

  

(I wrote this for my boys in 2007)

Love is curious.
Some say it is a many-splendored thing,
like oxygen,
or strawberry shortcake on a warm summer day.
But it has little to say on a cost-benefit scale,
nor does it move the economy

yet it moves our hearts
for our heart thirsts for Anyone,
that essential someone who cares to know YOU

Without pretense or shallow expectations

Let me say, therefore,
beauty follows the path of tears—

Wrinkles and sags eventually ordain the shell

Riches are evasive and vanity a lack of pride. 

But children, I love you.
Yet I love you beyond the games,
beyond rules, performance, possessions

-- and beyond communication.

I love you for who you are and can be,
in the inner depths of your true self,
where this world cannot reach it or harm it,
and that love will never die.

You once laid beneath my heart as close as breath

but you are not me nor should you be

God knew you as you laid gently in the curve of his hand

And wrote in your book long before you were mine

So dance and sing through your days—

Generosity and pure spirit linger and make true accounting

Don’t play dress up and put on a show

Saying, “Watch me conquer the world and then,

Judges of the world maybe you’ll love me.”

I'd rather you spread your wings to fly, ...and fall,
than clip them to please the vultures of the world.
I'd rather you'd mature
so these words would not stir your passions.
I'd rather that the clamors of the masses would please you less
than the whispers of God

I want for you the essential – look for it

draw back the curtain of the world’s deceit

ride the winds of heaven
and taste romance's heartache – but be true

Love, Children--