I've been promising for some time to feature guest editors and contributors. I like to think of them as guest muses. Happy to report today I'm making good on that promise.

I met one such muse lately, and reading her words was like taking tea with Rumi, while Rilke handed me a plate of scones and Clarissa Pinkola Estes gently placed a cloth napkin in my lap.

Yeah. Like that. A perfectly calm and civilized meeting, but laced with power and beauty, rubies in pearls in the bottom of our teacups, shining.

Meet Lisa. And her shrine. The one we all come to know once we venture out into the unknown to find our true voice and vision. Enter, if you dare.

*************************************

Entering the Shrine
by Lisa Chun

I.

It was a tough week
not just for me
but seemed like it was tough for everyone.
Nic said she was deep in the thick of it
with her relationship. I said, I’m deep in the
same thick of it and I’m not in a relationship.
It’s bad, it’s really bad.
Then she pulled out a koan her teacher
had given her that week. It spoke of being
caught in a rain storm and finding a shelter
for oneself, a shelter
which for the sake of this discussion
could also be seen as a shrine.
Who is the Self?
What is the Shrine?
Such is the nature of koans.
I had to admit I didn’t get it.
I said, you gotta help me out here.
I said, I went to the movies and I cried.
I went to the library and I cried.
I cried driving home from the library.
I cried when I got home.
Everywhere I went this truth:
that I want to write poetry
and read poetry, eat poetry,
peddle poetry, sleep with poetry.
If this is god speaking to me
then god has asked me
to be as vulnerable as I could possibly be,
wants me to be all exposed, and publicly, too
and just the thought of it is making me feel
ill. Exultant and heartsick at the same time.
Like running to and away from love.
And at risk for homelessness, too,
cause I believe in miracles but I haven’t met
that many rich poets and Nic said

You need to enter the shrine of the park bench and
I need to enter the shrine of the grouchy relationship.


II.

And so it goes.
You enter the place you are most afraid to enter.
You enter the shrine of your vulnerability and
the shrine of your own beauty
    (surrounded by frothy white
     cherry blossoms and snow beginning to melt)
and the shrine of your mortality
    (protected by gargoyles with eyes made of rubies and fire opals)
and the shrine of your hunger for things not of this world,
for a deepening
and
the shrine of your fear that there may be no one else who gets this and
the shrine of your utter aloneness
    (in the Japanese design aesthetic, three irises arranged
     skillfully in a simple vase
     on a simple table
     next to three smooth black stones
     as an artful display at the door)
and the shrine of your own hands
making something true
making something beautiful
that endures
and the shrine of all your dashed hopes,
the dreams which may never come true and
the shrine of your earnestness and
the shrine of all your love that got squandered
because the hands and hearts of others remained closed.
The shrine of perpetual forgiveness.
The shrine of waiting.
The shrine of arriving.
Again and again.
Here.
Here.
Now.
The shrine of your refusal
of your resistance
and your denial.
The shrine of your addictions
    (both obvious and subtle).
The shrine of all things out of your control.
    (it’s all out of your control.)
The shrine of your acceptance.
The shrine of your self embrace.
The shrine of your cool light.
The shrine of your genuine warmth
as a pink in your cheeks.
The shrine of something new arriving for you.
The shrine of your unexpected good.
The shrine of your spontaneous healing.
The shrine of laughter, joy and good food.
The shrine of your near heartache
when the thing you are called to do
is both the thing you want the most
and the thing you want the least.

And you do it anyway.

The shrine of your right life
entered through the door
of your disbelief.

*****************

Enter the poem-shrine of Lisa Chun at www.LisaChun.com