Archive | Introduction

I at first thought that everyone can do anything.  But later realized that somewhere, someone has to show by example something that strikes home with another.  A something that is meaningful to another.

That will be of value to him or her.  Then when something comes up there will be an instant where there will be only one course of action and it will be the correct one for them.  And that will be the beginning of a value system that will guide all action.

And then you will have the beginning of a philosophy being built.  And then we go for home.

The Farm Woman. . .

Woman of the Earth, you are loved.
You gather the fruits of your labors
to your bosom and feed the children.

You’ve inched your way along the dusty path
with back bent in great fatigue
and cultivated the rows yielding wise fruit.

You would feed out of your mouth
those you think hungry and then beyond measure.
The fruits are the heart of your labors,
the harvest of your mind’s philosophy,
spilling indiscriminately.

Who is left to feed you, farm woman?
What commissary is left open
to feed your hungry soul after hours?

What bookstall will house the words
between stiff covers to increase your harvest?
Labor, till the sun closes its blinds on the day.
Restless legs will speed you through the night

to find the bins ever full.

We need to come to a place now and again when it is necessary to find a mind matched to ours so we can for all purposes say all that is heavy on our hearts.  With no explanation necessary because our route has been followed step by step;  to hear the words,  I held your heart in my hand for safekeeping and here it is, whole. 

And in a whisper would come the words,  I thought it fractured beyond repair!   We are embraced knowing instantly that we were not abandoned to do it alone. 

We prepare then to venture another time to come with the sweet knowledge that great songs will be sung again.

Great Songs Will Be Sung. . .

Should you find the need
to tell your story in words,
think mightily on them and
they will be caught up
in the air’s currents and carried
on the birds’ wings.

They will reach the ears
they were designed for.  You will find
that you are not alone in this universe
and you will be heard.

And when the thoughts reach
the places in the heart of an Other

great songs will be sung again.                                      

Long before the world ever was. . . .

As co-creator and creature both of the universe, it is man’s prerogative and innate yearning to stand erect.  To bow down all the time leaves one eventually on one’s stomach.  Man rose from the crawling position.  There are too many yet who find the child’s position too comfortable.

To stand erect means that certain responsibilities must be accepted.  And that includes responsibility for one’s person and attitudes.  There are worlds yet where man will find the child’s position more comfortable and comforting.

To be adult means that one has to survive the inner turmoil and the outward condemnation which the world applies.

You do not defame the heavens.  The heavens are not all that peaceful and without its own turmoil.  There are many cliques yet which aim to destroy what man in his finest moments tried to accomplish.

We continue to say at every life’s departure that we go to a better place.  Unless our life’s pattern has been to work toward that better place,  we may find ourselves again learning the lessons we failed to learn but in lesser circumstances.

Like primer on bare wood, being and doing good must be innate.  The Source of our impulses must be the Greater Heart.

The Roses Are For You. . .

I tell you true.  You were known
before you came here to this vast land.
A waste for some, a paradise for others. . .
for one a dim place, for another the sun shines.

You took upon your spirit a work, a job,
looking to make a difference.
You said to send you where your heart
could change the world. . .

You were given your wish, hard as it seems.
You have not failed.  Your ripples are felt
on unnamed shores and even the unborn
know your thoughts well. . . .

Come, be kind to one the heavens
sing praises for.  Your work is virtuous
and your talents creative.  We make bet on
the one winning the trifecta.

The roses are yours.  For keeps.

A Kind Of World I Hoped To Build. . . .

where hearts open to each other, where minds are keen on learning and where love intends to see its full bloom.  Where beings are intent on growing to their fullness and work becomes a blessing.  Do I want much?

I want only what I worked and hoped for. . .where parenting is approached with a reverence bent on new life nurtured. . .

where the talents are perceived with a reverence granted to the giver, where life is held in the crucible of love and needs are cared for when they arise and lovingly attended with appropriateness.

Is it much that I ask for. . . . it only costs of self. . . . .priceless. . . .

The Weaver. . . .

Standing on a shrouded hill, integrating
worlds in a body split, is a woman,
weaving the old and the new
to warm a world gone cold.

Walking and usurping man’s ego,
split from his metamorphic mind,
she knots her splendor with magic.
Jealously guarding the expenditures,

she weaves the woolen mat in metaphysical colors,
unidentified by he who walks.
Marvelously melding with utmost utility,
she embraces the fabric, whole,

with never a glance to see the world
spinning into it.  Splendid is she
at her task as she garners strength from silences
filled with howling voices.

She separates them in her mind
and makes more magic.  Look up, we say,
look up at the wondrous unfolding!
Rain ponders its drops as they fall

but the woman weaves and weaves
and weaves.  She will look up

when it is finished.

Once Covered With Dreams. . . .

Some may think there might be no choice on anyone’s part for any thing.   All things may be a matter of destiny.   Many think there are choices in all avenues.  But supposing there are no conscious options.  Supposing conscience already speaks on issues and there are no options.

But it is too much like work to think it through.  It seems with today’s role models it is better to form a gut reaction with no thought accompanying; that it may end up being nonsense is a fact.

Fear speaks through them and as time narrows its focus someone in their circle of beloveds will be caught in the crossfires of their fear and what then will they do, be it the very bias of what they think, gay choice or gay marriage, unplanned pregnancies or physical or emotional abuses?

Those of narrow thinking we know.  Too many times when voices carried anger I couldn’t speak without my voice carrying tears.  Yet silence often carries assent.

When I look at who causes the violence I think they also were loved at one time.  Brought into this world and fussed over and loved and no doubt covered with dreams.

Not going further than the newest greats or one of the many grands may be the child in the moment of courage who tells us that they always knew they were different.  Will we strike out and say you are not mine?  What will we do when the love for this child strikes us where we live, in our heart?

On Wings Of Hope. . .

I gather the day’s allotment
and present myself as altogether,
looking for your eyes
to shine with approval.

Spearheading into the day
with a visual containing
all that I hope
spells success in any language.

There is much riding
on wings of hope and I will know
the minute I see
your eyes fill with love

that I am cherished.

art by Claudia Hallissey

It was only in rereading the journals for August of ’17 that I happened to come across these words.  Oftentimes I don’t get back to entries long after they are written.  And then I  am often humbled by what is given.  I am in the midst of this mental conference and when fatigue overcomes,  I shut down.  When I go back,  there is seldom memory of what transpired.

When I put these words into format,  I can only say it is a condition of the heart and there is no reference.  These words have come at a cost that is prohibitive.  I read them over and tears form another ocean.   A favorite doctor counseled and wondered the mystery to him of mystics in modern times and how there had to be something invisible that tied the hearts of one to another.

Proximity to like minds would disturb the ongoing work.  It is often a life of isolation.  It is tolerable because solitude becomes the favored state when rejection accompanies the mystic.  Earlier times were easier on them because seclusion was more prevalent.  Laughingly I have said to my sisters of the cloth that no doubt I would be in their convents but heavily sedated.   Or in the monastery working in the vineyards.  Alone no doubt.

I posted Show Me in late 2017.  Speaking of prayers sometimes seems like public autopsy while one is still breathing.   But it is a way to show a route that heals the dichotomy within.  And we are in need.

Show Me. . .you are the more. . .

When I see you in your prayers,
you pull from me something akin
to obeisance of the highest kind.

I drop to my knees and want
to pray with you to the mighty of
All That Is who garnished upon us all
the sweetness that would turn the hearts
of stone awash with tears.

Tell me, how do you enter that
holy place so quickly when
your thoughts begin with the heart
of the child and take them to
the highest altar of the mind?

You almost take the highest and best
into yourself by some turn of mind
and close out the rest of us
like the door closing against the
onrush of minor thought. . .

How to get there?
Who lets you in?
Somewhere you go that closes us out
but yet. . . .your love includes us.

You step over what is invisible and
takes you to the promised land
which is not a place but a condition.
You know of what I speak and so do I.
I want it for me.

Because you are the more because of it.  Show me.

Journal entry August 27, 2017
(primitive art is mine)

The two of them trusted me with what they were seeing.  My mother, transiting said I could not live in your world and she cried.  Stick with it as long as you can though,  she said.  There is a reward.  And David transiting asked how did you know to do it?  How could you go on living knowing what you know?  And I did not know that I did anything except what I had done before, in a previous time.  And I had three sons who were more than reason enough to go on living.

I listened to people and read what bodies were saying and what they were saying did not match what was coming out of their mouths.  Everything seemed a coverup.  One learns what the silence is shouting.  One learns the love by the strength of the arms around one.  It is a sign that is hard to hide.  And by the evenness of the voice that sings in the air and the throat that does not gargle its sounds.

A favorite poet whose God quotes quietly the things of comfort , I envy.  And mine who thunders and rolls heavily the boulders down the grade to make roads, allowing what?  Allowing what, Veronica?

Otche Nash. . .potential. . .becoming. .

In deference to one
who mines the doxology,
I am in awe of his soft acceptance,
his protestant soft ways
as he whispers his way
to the altar,

accepting as
the silent snow falling and
his God quietly  speaking.
And I in my army boots thundering
and falling on my knees
in my approach to my god
rolling and thundering in my head.

The Great God moves
toward a no ultimate anything.
In motion always finding its way,
his way, her way, our way is
what a Great God does.

I, in my hard soles and
muddy high boots and
overly large coat lumber with him
toward an unknown potential.
Is that why I cry?

Otche Nash. . .
of undergirding intelligence.
I mimic the noisy business
of attempting to find the
Potential you chose. . .
to be undisclosed, a yet to be
discovered arrival

at perhaps another Star.

photo by John Holmes

My Sanctuary, My Earth. . .

What I found in the sanctuary of my yard, a church if you will,  and still do, is a pull, albeit a magnetic one, to a something that transcends the physical.  I function in the physical, but never seeing it in just a single dimension.  There is a height, a depth and an all embracing width that I try to gather into my arms.  You are in that embrace.

I have written where I see in a glance the essence as well as the result, the consequence.  It is admiring the garden and appreciating the gardener, seated at banquet and knowing its intricate preparation and thanking the farmer.  It takes away the spontaneity and surprise; both a curse and a blessing.  What it gives is a first rate conscience and sense of responsibility.  It has you working till you drop but chalking  few regrets with gratitude for life and thanking the giver for it.

You might ask, who cares?  What difference does it make?  One day you will care and to you it will make a big difference.  You are its prayer, its question and its answer.  In you are the answers to what your life means.  There are no other answers.  You are the answer.  You are the unsuspecting shoulders upon whom the answer rests.  You will be the answer to who cares.  And you will care a lot.

Our Hearts Speak. . .

As we enjoin the universal spirit
to entrust us with another spring,
another resurrection,
awaken within us the desire
to nurture the world
that has nurtured us.

Let our hearts lead us
to that place where
we intuitively cherish the mother
who feeds and clothes us and
gives us sustenance.

Let us not forsake our responsibilities
to those yet unborn but whose futures
we have already mortgaged.

Blessed Spirit, enliven our curiousity
about our daily world, remind us
that the bird’s song needs our
acknowledgement and praise,
that the sun needs our greeting
and the night wishes it bid good.

As we nourish those of our commitment,
speak to us of our commitment
to the home we know, our planet Earth.
Let our love guide us to make beautiful,
to make secure and to guard diligently
what has so faithfully harbored us.

In love we pray,  Amen, amen.
{scribed April 5, 1991}

artwork by Claudia Hallissey