Savor

Savor

by Dunya Dianne McPherson

I woke from a nightmare, tired.
I came back to my self, saying
Be gentle, relax, loll about, savor...

Right now, to savor is my most continuous yet subtle endeavor. A balm. It is an action within a barely active action. To chew a morsel and put the fork down, savoring the flavor before the next forkful. To pause and savor the gold washing the treetops between the rushing gray cloud banks. To breathe out and let my body sink into the cushions that curve to welcome and cradle my haunches, shoulders, and spine. I had been walking blind through the woods, eating like a starved wolf, holding myself away from the massive oceanic magnetism of our planetary core. Savor is how I rescue my moments from the trash heap of unawareness. The central regret of my lengthening life is that I’ve cast so many moments onto that heap. Savor is a sweet flowering.

These Standings Bring Me Peace
Savor—in Sanskrit, rasa—is a capacity we must develop or reclaim. It seems difficult to do amidst the panic of self creation. And it is difficult to do during these grim days of climate woes and political angst. Miseries float in our electric ether, poisoners sidling into our dreams, turning them to nightmares. Some react with action, others with escape, but none of us are immune. Civilization stitches the hem of a very dark storm. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to the rock rim of an empty canyon or the winter beach. A borderland is a place of savor before entering emptiness. Of course, nothing is really empty, but as I stand on the mineral ground beside deathly flight or icy swim, such standings bring me peace. I savor sips of peace living in the in-between, murmuring throughout the subtle forest of self like mushrooms growing underground. Savoring feeds peace, coaxes it forth, and peace swallows worry. In bitter times, more than survival this is how we can thrive.

Subtle & Savor
Latif
—the Subtle—is a potent word in Arabic, so potent that it is an attribute or quality or name or, most importantly, a pulsing substance of the Omnipresent All-encompassing One. A mystic might pluck this word from the air, cast it into a poem to net the shimmering, impossibly unspeakable worlds which Latif most deeply means. Poetry is a favored way to celebrate and savor on the page but when words tighten or ramble the wrong direction, a mystic moves into space and time, and Latif, the Subtle, chanted by one voice or many voices curls in the tongue, balloons in a breath, taps the mouth roof, froths along the lips, rumbling the throat and bones. No longer a significance, nor finger pointing, the word is a song and a savor. It hums and churns and lays the mystic down to rest in its wake, and wake in its wake. All subtle passages moving from here to there are a way of traveling within incandescence like sun caught in a pink petal.

I am delighted that you are with me and appreciate your sharing these writings friends. Thank you!

My work and writing are sponsored by Dervish Society of America, a nonprofit organization helping people realize their human and spiritual potential by honoring their body and its movement ways using evolutionary Sufi Dancemeditation practices. Thank you for your gift. It’s tax-deductible!

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Anita Boeninger
Anita Boeninger
4 years ago

Utterly gorgeous. Drenched with wisdom. Thank you

Ruth Brownstein
Ruth Brownstein
4 years ago

I love deeply the turning towards savoring as opposed to the overused word awareness. Savor soothes my heart and gut and regulates my being.

Karleen Koen
Karleen Koen
4 years ago

I agree with Ruth. The word savor soothes. Lovely expression of what it is.

Pete Cormier
Pete Cormier
4 years ago

Thank you for sharing these eloquent words with us, Dunya. The verb, savor evokes the present moment so wonderfully. I’m grateful to be re-acquainted with it.

David Hammond
David Hammond
4 years ago

I taste the ting, the light, the tongue. . . . A subtle bow to you.

Grace Baird
Grace Baird
4 years ago

Dunya, your cultivation of the subtle shines in your words and is reflected in your ability to express the most precious, the fleeting, that moment of coming into being. To savor. It’s what helps me to keep my sanity, yet something I don’t do nearly enough. Thank you for bringing the remembrance of shimmering delight back to our mind’s eye and hearts. I see the truth of it, that to savor is to begin anew in each moment.