ancient pieces
float to mind
presenting impulses
prompting the pilgrim
to look toward home
time chastens
the victor
and yields the victory
to her who supposes
life everlasting
she has won the medal
and still covets awards
to hang on the wall
but they all hang on her heart.
photo by Joshua Hallissey
To those readers of my blog who have mentioned how much they’ve appreciated my poetry and writing, I have decided to offer my two books, Kiss The Moon and The Last Bird Sings for $3o.00, shipping included for the holidays. These will of course be addressed to the recipient and signed. We are currently in the second printing of Kiss The Moon and the first for The Last Bird Sings. I do accept checks as well as PayPal. Contact me here at my blog and I will get your message and set aside your books. We have just a limited number of books so if you are making out your holiday lists or looking to take a hostess gift for any of your holiday dinners, look here first and get a special kind of gift. Remember for a signed copy of Kiss The Moon and The Last Bird Sings together, both books for $30.00, order soon. I will be looking to hear from you.
Be Still . . . . . . . . .
Be still, this too shall pass
and let me tell you why.
The blue waters you take for granted
may dry up…….
and the grass beneath your feet
will crunch like
your breakfast cereal.
You may not live to see
another snowfall you have grown to love.
You may not see your sensate world
covering its sins
with the damask cloth
used on holy occasions.
But this too shall pass.
The faces of your private world
you have grown to cherish
will disappear from view.
You will miss their nearness
and will go looking to fill
the void they leave.
But I tell you, this too shall pass.
For when you realize that I
would take nothing from you
without giving something back,
I know you have learned your lesson well.
In its place will be
a knowing that in another world
what you have earned
can never pass away.
That is my gift to you.
(2012) (My God And Me . . . a book in progress)
photo by John Hallissey
Dear Dr. . . . .
I presume it is Dr. though I did not see the title, I feel it is richly deserved. If you would please excuse me for not offering my gratitude for your perusal and comments on my work. Life has a way of intervening and commitments cannot wait.
The work I refer to, just to refresh memory, was the poetry and the essays that my friend. . . so kindly asked you to look at. The material reviewed you said was challenging and intriguing and I thank you. Challenging and intriguing nowadays is not the stuffs of the marketplace. In fact, what can be easily identified, especially the familiar, is what is marketable. This is not to put the onus on people, though it seems that to massage the brain into greater activity is not thought of as fun. That is too bad. To my thinking, the purpose of this physical life is to learn but from the observation of the majority, its purpose is to entertain. The gods, I understand, even hide the lessons in toys.
With the challenges of earning a living, there is little energy left to try and change much of anything. To inject new thought or old thought spoken in today’s language, puts one on the defensive. The old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ seems to be what is propelling everyone. Except things are broken, old ideas, old habits and a first rate intelligence is not required to see that the results are no longer sufficient. Ideas and values must expand to fit the larger scope, not abandoned altogether.
Physical and mental boundaries are not finite. We often speak disparagingly of primitive religions. Simple observation tells us that as a technological society we have lost the spirituality that once united the simpler life with the cosmos. And we are the loser. We speak of life everlasting and yet are afraid to die. We speak of the resurrection and buy cemetery plots so we will be remembered. We send crossed signals.
When I wrote the essay, Concerning: Creation 101 I wished to bring forth several ideas to show we are Creationists. Individually and en masse we create the climate for what happens in our world. I came upon a book by Robert Nozick called The Examined Life. He wrote this while on sabbatical from Harvard and in it, to my surprise, he announces that perhaps we are in the creation business and are discovering one way it can be done. And he brings forth the idea that we are apprentices and perhaps will be in charge of something else, anon.
This again says that mental boundaries no longer exist. There is a Spirit afoot that will speak and to ears and hearts that are open , they will hear. There are those whose brains are open albeit a tiny percentage more than the average and to them will be given messages transformed into ideas that will be grounded in this world. To those whose eyes are open, they will interpret the writings on the walls.
I realize that my ideas are not new ones but I try to speak in the vernacular. All life is simultaneous. When a philosopher like Robert Nozick comes up with creation apprenticeship, someone like me, or maybe many someones also pick up the idea at the same time. Eden was Earth, everywhere. According to where one stood. Maverick thinking? Possibly but I think not. My scope had to broaden to contain my commitments.
Thank you for your time and effort. I did want to explain myself further. Whether my lifetime will bear me out, I leave to the heavens. They still hold the sparklers, contrary to what Man thinks. I bless,
(I came across this copy of a letter to a Professor of Theology and Philosophy of a large university who was a friend of a friend. It was in a journal entry of 1991. The mills of the gods grind slowly.)
Fairy Dust
Will the children find
how shaky all things are
and the gods who are their parents,
all illusion?
What will I say then?
“All of it, my dears, all of it
is nothing but fairy dust
created by a head
in search of its own dream.”
Where would I be then?
In the midst of this day
or at the end of it, charged with life
pulsating within me.
Tired to be sure
but marveling that in spite,
despite everything,
life is sweet in any dimension.
I am as real as these fingers
on this keyboard, as real as
the smile that crossed my lips
when the computer commanded
“please wait”.
Or as real as the work I see surrounding me
that I may never get to.
I do what I see is mine to do.
I am committed as clearly
as I more nearly see.
I write as I more nearly think. I think.
And I hear what is mine to hear.
So am I real?
Only to arms around me.
Only to those in whose memory I live and
will continue to live.
And as alive as I am in my progeny
whether here or elsewhere.
As I walk, I am. As I think, I am.
And as I love, I am.
This is how real I am.
And if what I participate in,
including this,
is illusion, so be it.
I would hope it would be a life giving illusion.
In the face of no hope,
I would be hope.
To know when one demeans one’s own value system, is to debase the Spirit within. It is all a value system. And a value system worth its salt will not be maligned in any manner, not even by systems beyond what one knows. The value system of behavior based on high premises will be honored. But the source of the system so designed must be investigated and must be researched. You cannot adopt a belief system based on an others’ work. It must be within the frame of reference of the individual who espouses the system.
At what point do we decide on a value system? We can decide at any point whether we be patrons of the library or of religious conviction. Do we need a boundary or do we think that we are innately good and require no other to tell us when we do wrong? It should always be a choice and understood will be the consequences. When we decide on a value system we are pointedly within a system we have adopted and are living with it or by it. We simply have not named it. Is it necessary for us to name the system or are we happy simply to live it? These kinds of questions we answer as we move from day to day. It is the dailyness of living that prods us to abide by what we consider to be good or not. The normal day to day living already comes with its own set of lesson plans. The heavens note the bright thoughts that are moving within the Earth boundaries and here we are surprised when heaven’s thoughts match ours. And it is then we shout revelation! It is interesting as we march into our tomorrows we find that our steps lend themselves to our own adopted behavior. We are already living our beliefs by our actions and our thinking. And those who gravitate toward us are already responding to our belief system or our philosophy. They say the apple does not fall far from the tree. Here it can also be said that the friends of one’s walk in life are like us and if we find that there is a one who holds different ideas, we are then free to either walk along or subtly dismiss the one from our circle. What we do will be very telling about us. Should we embrace the one whose thoughts differ we might find at first to be frightened. If terror compounds our fright we will lose the friendship quickly but we might see, if we try to incorporate different ideas, that our boundaries move apart and our premises broaden in scope.
This is about growth. It is about evolution and it is about being human. Life is exciting and it is an adventure. It is about growing up and growing old and wise and a leaning post for the young. And it is about losing our focus on this world at the end of this life and focusing on a new one. It is still about growth and evolution and about being other than human that our vocabulary has no words for. But it will still be exciting and an adventure because life is sweet in any dimension.
How much better it would be
for this noble planet
if we cherished her like a lover?
Or loved her as a mother
who adored her child
and wiped the tears away
with a soft linen?
Or as a father
whose arms surrounding the child
are as steel beams supporting
the frame of the tallest building?
Who would not want these for himself
if he could articulate
what would heal
the dichotomy within?
Too few of us around
who love our home so fiercely
we would protect her vital organs.
The sun sometimes
is hidden from man
and the moon embarrassed
to see its light dimmed with shame.
When patches of earth split
from the shock of no rain and dust rises
and rolls across open land,
we wish then not to shake dust
from our boots but to greet
a sunrise in splendor.
Offer me this, the Earth Mother says,
that you will raise your arms
only to surround an Other in love.
Promise me this, again she says,
that the swords will be laid
at the foot of the evergreens, now
and a boot will never crush
an Other’s right to live.
And I will forever cherish your children.
August, 2013
August 13, 1990
I write and say. . . . . .
It is necessary for me to ask why;
otherwise the peeling of my heart has no purpose.
Why implies a reason, doesn’t it?
So don’t start by saying it is not enough
just to live and breathe and see and feel the anguish
of hurt that should never be;
implying that this life and earth are not enough
in themselves because we might get too lazy?
I can’t believe that.
Just looking and feeling the North wind is enough
to stir my senses;
to lift me from my bed to get on with living;
to raise the dust out of corners
too long neglected and lift
the filthy and sweaty labors and point out
that these are gifts of life in themselves.
These are the beauties along with the first snow
and the harvest intact and sealed and the
presence of souls who find a reflection
of what they hold dear in the eyes of an Other.
These are so. I say these are so.
I say because such a world exists
and there can be a large measure of happiness
in just such a world.
Or you think not so,
because what I dream is a rose in a field of weeds?
When at the end
of the dog days of the Lion
and the garden is again
conducive to prayer,
arrange the knees
bent in homage to the winter.
It is time to pray
the garden into being;
the stage for the winter solstice.
It is time to oil the tools
to store in barns designed to hide
the hot and humid days
that made breathing difficult.
Spent flowers, weeping willows,
short term annuals,
having already died
their unceremonious death.
We pickup, clean up
the dried up dregs of the summer days,
and live to breathe again
the freshness of a cooling breeze.
Refreshed.
It was almost three quarters of a century ago that I was relegated to the kitchen at the age of 12 years to cook for my farm family because I could not work in the fields. I became sick (turned green) in the sun and my mother took my place in the fields and I, her place in the kitchen. Her brief directions were exactly that, brief. I learned quickly.
We took farm journals and farm newsletters and I scoured them for recipes. One of my favorite recipes was an oatmeal cookie recipe that the family loved and especially my brothers. The clipping in my scrapbook of recipes is brown with age and I think it has gone into public domain because it is so old and no name was attached to the article. It was also a time when cookies were not a snack but a valuable part of the day’s calories. It was also a time when children worked their chores and when the days were longer in the summer, had some time to play. This was a time for dreams and ideas and experimenting. This was a time when the word ‘boring’ was not part of the language. Because we knew that if we could not find something to do, an adult would soon find that something and it would be work.
The recipe can be doubled because the numbers are easy to remember. If you decide to double make certain you have a sturdy mixer. If you don’t, it is safer to do small batches like this one. You cannot go too wrong, (if at all) with this. A minute longer in the oven makes them crisp, too soon out and they are chewy. Both conditions excellent. A glass of milk is a fine accompaniment. I made these this week and I had forgotten how good they are.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Ingredients:
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs (added one at a time)
1 and 1/2 cups sifted flour (I scoop the flour and shake the cup to level)
1/2 tsp salt (I never add salt when I use baking soda. I just never do)
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups oatmeal (quick or regular)
Mix in the order given and drop by teaspoons. Do not bother shaping as these spread during baking. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets until light brown. (approximately 10 minutes depending on your oven but watch because they brown quickly in the last minutes) Wait a minute before removing from pan. Move to racks or waxed paper on counter to continue cooling.
Good food is something everyone understands, no matter the age. They will think you are a genius.
