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Excerpt 2 from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

"Men and Women: Talking Together" is an enlightening program with men's movement pioneer and poet Robert Bly and communications expert Deborah Tannen talking about the different ways men and women communicate.  Enjoy some of Robert Bly's exquisite poetry that he performs in this award winning program.

"After we had loved each other intently, we heard notes tumbling together in late winter.

And we heard ice falling from the ends of twigs. The notes abandoned so much as they moved. The notes abandoned so much as they moved.

They are the food not eaten. The comfort not taken. The lies not spoken.

The music is my intention to you. The music is my attention to you. And when the music came again later in the day, I saw tears in your eyes. I saw you turn your face away so that the others would not see.

When men and women come together, how much they have to abandon. When men and women come together how much they have to abandon. Wrens make their nests of fancy threads and string ends. Animals abandon all their money every year. That’s my best line. Animals abandon all their money every year."

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Excerpt from Robert Bly's "What Stories Do We Need"

The following is a transcribed excerpt from "What Stories Do We Need" -- a thought provoking and timeless recording by poet and men's movement pioneer Robert Bly.  "What Stories Do We Need" reminds us that we all carry a personal mythology, but the stories we tell ourselves may not be entirely true... Recorded live at The New York Open Center.

We’re talking about mythology today. And mythology moves towards the soul in the same way that philosophy moves towards the brain. In fact, I think Joe Campbell said the other day, all philosophy is a frozen form of mythology and if you really love a philosopher, then try to recognize the philosopher as being a kind of an ice over the water on which you could walk. And that’s nice, but try to go below and see what the water is doing down there. And in that case, he believes that every philosophical idea has a mythological image underneath it, including all those ones, Heraclitus, and all of that. They come out of centuries of wild mythological imaging.

Excerpt from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

Note: this award winning  title is Free through this Wednesday evening, Enjoy!

Men's movement pioneer Robert Bly and relationship communication expert Deborah Tannen help us understand how men and women communicate differently and how they can learn to appreciate the other's point of view, as evidenced in this transcribed excerpt from Tannen and Bly's terrific program "Men & Women: Talking Together".  Recorded Live at The New York Open Center.

In a way, a conversation is a ritual. And to come home and tell everything that happened is a ritual, and it’s a ritual that women have engaged in from the time they were very little. So to feel that life is going on as it should, you just want to play out those rituals because it’s not a ritual that men understand. It’s not one that they’ve done. And I want to say right here that all evening we are going to be saying women and men. And nothing that we say will be true of every woman and every man. There are a lot of cultural differences here, too.
 
So I do hear from couples who will say the husband comes home and wants to tell everything and the wife says if it’s not a problem, don’t talk about it. Stop complaining if you don’t want to do something about it. So you hear it from both sides. But because it’s a ritual that most women understand and most men don’t, he looks for the literal reason for the talk and he doesn’t see a reason for that talk. And it’s very frustrating to do something that you don’t understand the reason for. So I’ve had people say, “Well, you know, just say to him I don’t want you to tell me what to do. Just listen to me.” And that makes perfect sense except it will drive a person crazy to sit and listen to something that they don’t understand why they’re listening and what it’s getting at.
 
So sometimes, it’s just as reasonable -- I sometimes use my own husband as an example here. I don’t think he’ll mind. He’s sitting out there. He’s smiling so far.  So I remember I was talking and he said, “Well, I know you just want to talk about it and you don’t want me to give you the solution, but it’s too frustrating for me to sit here and listen when I know the solution. So let me tell you the solution and then you can keep talking about it if you want to keep talking about it.” So that is just as good a compromise, and I’ve heard of couples, too, that compromise in the following way. Not just as you said where they both kind of find different ways of talking but they may have an understanding where she will give him a half hour to not talk and then he will give her a half hour to talk.

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Excerpt from "The Glance"

Enjoy this gorgeous passage of Rumi's poetry from "The Glance", as translated and read by Coleman Barks.  Jalalud'din Rumi is one of the world's most revered poets and mystics.

Love is alive, and someone borne alone by it is more alive than lions roaring or men in their fierce courage. Bandits ambush others on the road. They get wealth, but they stay in one place. Lovers keep moving, never the same, not for a second. What makes others grieve, they enjoy. When they look angry, do not believe their faces. It is spring lightning, a joke before the rain. They chew thorns thoughtfully, along with pastured grass. Gazelle and lioness having dinner. Love is invisible, except here, in us. Sometimes I praise love. Sometimes love praises me. Love, a little shell somewhere on the ocean floor, opens its mouth. You and I make we. Those imaginary beings enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.

Coleman Barks Bio and Links

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Excerpt from "Poems of Rumi" read by Coleman Barks and Robert Bly

We are delighted to offer this excerpt from "The Poems of Rumi" as read by Coleman Barks, leading scholar and translator of Rumi poetry, and Robert Bly, poet, author, and leader of the men's movement. Jalaluddin Rumi is a beloved as a spiritual master and one of the greatest poets of all time. 

The dictionaries have no entry for the sort of love we have. If you can define a road, it’s not the lover’s road. The high branches of love shoot up into the air that exists before eternity and the roots grow down into the earth after eternity. This tree doesn’t stand around isolated on the earth. We have pulled the sober watcher from his throne. We’ve moved the said rules for animal and instinctual life. The kind of love that we know of is too great for this sober watcher, and for this simple instinctual life. Now, if you believe that your need can be met and you’re wanting, satisfied from the outside, you are really a tiger or a cougar. You pray any longer to wooden idols, then why do you keep praying to your desire? If you become the one you long for, what will you do with your longing? The captain stalks on the deck of his ship. The planks are his spears of the bad things that may happen, and the wood is his longing for marvelous things to happen. When the captain and the board both sink, nothing remains but the drowning. The teacher I love is the ocean and also the pearl deep in the ocean. His personality is the one secret the holy one never gave away. 

 

Lesson Two from Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Letting Everything Become Your Teacher"

Today we share with you Lesson 2 from

LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER:

100 Lessons in Mindfulness, a new book by Jon Kabat-Zinn. 

LESSON 2: Map Versus Journey  

This book is meant to serve as a map, a guide to you. As you know, a map is not the territory it portrays. In the same way you should not mistake reading this book for the actual journey. That journey you have to live yourself, by cultivating mindfulness in your own life. 

Reprinted from LETTING EVERYTHING BECOME YOUR TEACHER: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn © 2009 by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Reprinted by arrangement with the Random House Publishing Group.

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Excerpt from "Like This: More Poetry of Rumi". Translation by Coleman Barks

Jalaluddin Rumi is recognized as one of the greatest poets of all time. Through his rendering of Rumi’s poems and stories, Coleman Barks has established himself as one of the leading voices for Rumi’s work today.  Enjoy this excerpt of beautiful Rumi poetry from "Like This: More Poetry of Rumi", translated and read by Coleman Barks.

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. 

Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell, and the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling. 

At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. 

Breathe into me. 

Close the language door and open the love window. The moon won’t use the door, only the window. 

Watch the dust grains moving in the light near the window. Their dance is our dance. 

We rarely hear that inward music but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless. 

There is a passion in me that doesn’t long for anything from another human being. 

I was given something else, a cap to wear in both worlds. It fell off. 

No matter. 

One morning I went to a place beyond dawn, a source of sweetness that flows and is never less. 

I have been shown a beauty that would confuse both worlds, but I won’t cause that uproar. 

I am nothing but a head set on the ground as a gift for Shams.

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Coleman Barks Bio and Links