Poetry Qi Gong accompanied by Bach

Qigong demonstration by Mingtong accompanied by four movements of Bachs Flute Sonatas in E minor and E flat major playing in the background. Alongside the demonstration are four poems by four different female poets: Ann Taylor 1782-1866 The Star Twinkle twinkle little star How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high Like a diamond in the sky! When the blazing sun is gone When he nothing shines upon Then you show your little light Twinkle twinkle all the night. Then the traveller in the dark Thanks you for your tiny spark He could not see which way to go If you did not twinkle so. In the dark blue sky you keep And often through my curtains peep For you never shut your eye Till the sun is in the sky. As your bright and tiny spark Lights the traveller in the dark Though I know not what you are Twinkle twinkle little star. Mary Oliver One The mosquito is so small it takes almost nothing to ruin it. Each leaf the same. And the black ant hurrying. So many lives so many fortunes! Every morning I walk softly and with forward glances down to the ponds and through the pinewoods. Mushrooms even have but a brief hour before the slug creeps to the feast before the pine needles hustle down under the bundles of harsh beneficent rain. How many how many how many make up a world! And then I think of that old idea: the singular and the eternal. One cup in which everything is swirled back to the color of the sea and sky. Imagine it! A shining cup surely! In the moment in which there is no wind over your shoulder you stare down into it and there you are your own darling face your own eyes. And then the wind not thinking of you just passes by touching the ant the mosquito the leaf and you know what else! How blue is the sea how blue is the sky how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is even you even your eyes even your imagination. Hadewijch 13th century All Things All things are too small to hold me I am so vast. In the Infinite I reach for the Uncreated. I have touched it it undoes me wider than wide. Everything else is too narrow. You know this well you who are also there. Rabia al-Adawiyya 717-801 I carry a torch in one hand And a bucket of water in the other: With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven And put out the flames of Hell So that voyagers to God can rip the veils And see the real goal.,

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