[Downtown Dharma Listserve] a collaborative Downtown Dharma Love Poem (a product of our retreat last weekend)

Dear Sangha members,

We had a wonderful retreat last weekend, November 20-21st. For those of you who couldn't join, I'm hoping that the poem pasted below and attached as a pdf will give you a taste of the love we shared and inspire you to join us next retreat!! I led us in a practice of creative contemplation (a twist on Lectio Divina) where we took turns reading aloud a contemporary poem in which each line begins with "I love..."  After which we meditated on it, and then spent 15 minutes composing our own lines, some of which we then shared aloud.

What you see below is a selection and arrangement of some of the lines written by those who participated. Please enjoy our love poem for Downtown Dharma and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

With love,

Brandel

www.brandelfrancedebravo.com

https://www.compassioninstitute.com/teachers/brandel-france-de-bravo/

Downtown Dharma Love Poem

                                                                          (after Alex Dimitrov)

I love that elephants listen with their feet.

 

I love sharing a park with children—but not getting too close to them.

 

I love screaming underwater.

 

I love when someone notices there's something different about you.

 

I love old Halloween candy.

 

I love that each star is really a sun. And if that's not actually true, I love thinking it.

 

I love it when stains come out in the wash.

 

I love learning to live with stains.

 

I love the anticipatory buzz of stepping out for the first time in a foreign city.

 

I love the feeling of being ready for an excursion.

I love the exhaustion of being finished with an excursion.

 

I love how some primal part of me recognizes the sea as home, and I love that we were all once fish.

 

I love when the yoga instructor does hands-on assist in shavasana.

 

I love that we share 92% of our DNA with fruit flies.

 

I love that word for the mass movement of thousands of birds: a murmuration?

 

I love when I can take my time.

 

I love how moss turns a deeper shade of green after a rainfall.

 

I love salty then sweet, then salty then sweet.

 

I love the dharma, which is sometimes sad, often true, and all the people who practice it.

 

I love the fact that earthworms poop as much as they do.

 

I love that I will never be able to read all the novels in the world.

I love that writing is so slow and arduous for me but that I can really get in the flow once I actually get started.

 

I love hardwood floors.

 

I love it when people drive by with their windows down, stereo turned up to max—even when the bass shakes me. Especially when the bass shakes me.

 

I love people who are earnest.

 

I love it when a dinner party guest shows up with doughnuts.

 

I love introducing two people I love to each other.

 

I love subtly breaking social conventions—so subtly that people are confused rather than flabbergasted.

 

I love finding a cheesecake in the community fridge.

 

I love watching TV in a hotel room.

 

I love dancing by myself when I find an empty, open space.

 

I love that government employees (or their contractors) sweep the leaves and mow the lawns of the parks that serve as my unofficial backyard.

 

I love wrinkles.

 

I love how, because of computers, my handwriting has degraded over time.

 

I love the excitement of a new formulation of dark chocolate.

 

I love linen sheets, high-thread counts, but not what it says about me.

 

I love looking straight up as snowflakes fall.

 

I love when siblings or best friends have similar mannerisms.

 

I love how my dad gets me an annual subscription to the New Yorker twice a year so they'll last even after he dies.

 

I love how life can give as many second chances as we are willing to bear.

 

I love that there is so much to love.

 

 

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