The Haiku Foundation Forums

Quote from: sandra on March 12, 2011, 04:02:57 PM

I'd like to offer this one:

pausing also
at the sacred matai ...
a wood pigeon

- Sandra Simpson

winner, Kokako Haiku Contest (NZ), 2008


Sacred places, I find, have something about them. Perhaps it's the long period of reverence at one spot that adds an "atmosphere" ... or perhaps I am too suggestible! Some believe that the land has memories.

Best wishes,
Sandra

I felt like this in Kamakura, Japan, Sandra. You can feel the layers and layers of history almost everywhere you go where the trees are a thousand years old in the temples.

Carmen

Wonderful! Ruth Yarrow is also a Quaker like Robert. She would be a good person
to get in touch with, if you haven't already. Robert was in Haiku Northwest, as Ruth
and I are, too.

Carmen

Colin, I think a lot of Western haiku poets like to use suggestion and are not open to speaking or writing in a dogmatic air, so perhaps the Christians among us in our "haiku world" are not as apparent, but they are there. And of course there is an overlap of people from many faiths who are open to discussing religion and what is their worldview and so on. Certainly, almost all Western haiku poets have been influenced by Japanese culture in one way or another.

In the political front (at least in the US) discussion of religion has become as fearsome as the times of Henry VIII. Perhaps, most poets prefer gentler discussions. I certainly wish it was as easy to discuss religion as it was in my college days in Michigan. Later, when I studied, worked and lived in Japan (31 years), I found very few Japanese wanted to discuss religion deeply. It was a surprise for me at first. I thought, deciding whether you believed in God or not was a part of becoming an adult. Most of my Japanese friends followed their cultural practices like praying to/for their relatives who passed on, giving money to temples at New Year's and taking part in Shinto Festivals or Obon Celebrations. However, none of my friends went to temples frequently, the way my Japanese Christian friends attended church or mass. Not the way, that is common in some Southeast Asian countries like Thailand. There the temples are a big part of the communities, young people hang out there, and the young Thai men usually study and work at a temple in their youth.

Carmen Sterba

I'd like to share 6 more. Have you ever read Raymond Roseliep? He was a Catholic priest from Dubuque, Iowa who eventually studied zen, also (1917-83). Here's a one of his from the Mann Library's Daily Haiku:

birthcry!
        the stars
        are all in place

- Raymond Roseliep

the following are from Roseliep's last book, Rabbit in the Moon,

so small a child
pushing clouds
from the moon

what is
in light
is light:

And from The Morning Glory:

takes in
the world
from the heart out

There's a lot to take in from this small selection of haiku. Roseliep certainly has had a good following.

                                              * * * * * *

When I visit my niece in California, who is new age, we choose a Quaker Meeting which we both can enjoy rather than my regular church. Here's one haiku I wrote in California:

the Quakers' silence
spills out a wide-open door
--autumn woods 

Modern Haiku 35:

and another written at a pond near a Japanese Bible Camp:

an amber glow
through crimson maples
evensong 

Modern Haiku, Winter-Spring, 2005

Carmen Sterba
                                                       

Quote from: DavidGrayson on February 05, 2011, 06:12:19 PM
Hi Carmen,

I like your haiku. It also serves as a reminder of what Haiti continues to go through.

I was also thinking that it might be nice to find someone to translate it into Haitian French.

David

Thanks for thinking of that, David, I'd appreciate it. Your reply caused me to search for more
about her and found that her name is Ginette Sainfort and her song was "Don't be afraid of death, God is Here."
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/One-Year-Later-Singing-Quake-Survivor-113388304.html

Carmen

After the earthquake in Haiti, amid destruction and death, people were found alive long after anyone imagined their could still be life under the rubble. For the rescuers, friends and family, each person found was a gift of merciful grace.

island earthquake
from under the rubble
a woman's song

Carmen Sterba

Interesting thread on honey.

sunlit jar
the beekeeper's gift
on the doorstep

Carmen Sterba

This is not religious per se, but is one of those haiku that turned out to have a sense of awe and fulfillment beyond my expectation.

David, I admire you for leading the discussions on Religio. This is a subject
that is very important to me, but I have struggled to express my spiritual traditions
and faith in an undogmatic way. My passionate interest in Japanese history and literature
was not fueled by an interest in Buddhism or Shinto. I think that many haiku poets
love of haiku is interwoven with interest in or belief in Buddhism. I'm sure that my
desire to go to Japan as a college student and live there for 31 years had more to do
with my fascination with Japan and the affinity I felt with the Japanese (and in some
respects Asian) way of presenting the natural world through their art, poetry and gardens.

Mark Harris remarked the following:

God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." A world view at odds with the one usually communicated through contemporary elh?

In my view, I interpret "have dominion . . ." as "be a caretaker . . ." Like a lot of people from many parts of the world, I was fortunate to grow up in rather pristine nature as a child and was able to freely roam the acre of our home on a lake by myself at a very young age. I felt completely in tune with nature. In the woods near my home, I also sang my heart out in hymns and made-up songs. For me a love of natural creation and my childlike faith was not and is not at odds.

Back to the struggle with haiku and spirituality. I don't mind that it seems acceptable to write about the Buddha in English-language haiku because some of the Japanese masters did. However, I find it can look as imitative of Japanese haiku as writing constantly about cherry blossoms. On the other hand, for many of the Gendai haiku poets in Japan, writing about the cross or Mary & Jesus, like Arima Akito does, seems modern and cosmopolitan in Japan. It is an odd thing about culture, so in a way Elh often mirrors a desire for what is outside of Judeo-Christian culture. I understand that and respect that. There is always a desire in mankind to search for "greener pastures" and believe that another culture is somehow more gentle and deep. I have met so many Japanese who are in love with Western culture and/or who became Christians through their search for more meaning.

I'll end with two haiku that are published in my only chapbook: sunlit jar. I feel they express faith and tradition without being dogmatic. I am part Jewish, so the first one is about Passover. The second has Christian symbolism that will work for some people, like snowbird said, who have the same worldview/faith.

Passover week
a mother's gaze lingers
on her first born son

spring roads
after a three-day absence
the beloved returns

Carmen Sterba