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The Gate Opens
BOTANIC-GATE TO ENGLISH GARDEN I wrote ( journal 1985) that what is visible is visible and also what is visible can be chosen not to be seen. The depth of perception depends on our courage and capacity to deal with impending events.
But only as we observe and have knowledge that life is never ending, is everlasting and the challenge is in the journey, no matter what worlds we inhabit, destiny is ours to write. What happens in the world we inhabit is but a reflection of the greater worlds and in greater degree elsewhere.
Unless words find a bed in us, like everlasting and forever come alive, we simply walk a death path and cannot give houseroom to what our actions by omission and commission work upon life.
We repeat the cycle with a difference now. Circumstances will not be as favorable nor the planet as hospitable as it has been. But mistakes will have familiar names and our mistakes will have our names attached.
As children we are taught that unless it can be measured in a laboratory it isn’t real. Yet when we dismiss a vivid experience which changes us, we cheat ourselves when we say it isn’t real. And when our slights or mistakes are not noticed we dismiss those with a who cares?
When we discount a larger reality that physical life cannot include with its linear measure, we are as a non entity but still responsible for our actions. We close a door that has given us a glimpse to this larger reality from the Divine Within.
There are connections between us and our material world. Perspectives are unique, we construct our own realities and connect by shared principles. When we see those connections, we will be able to see the connections between the visible and invisible worlds. And speak of them.
What we struggle with in our country, other countries also struggle. Just as the injustices are rampant here, Russia has jailed 1400 persons for demanding justice in municipal government. Hongkong is in turmoil as is the United Kingdom.
The Universes also tremble. They reflect what happens on our hearths. Strange to our thinking, but here again familiar to those whose eyes and hearts are open. Where is safe? Your head? Your heart?
There is an overriding good that belies the insignificant. The invisible good overshadows all. There is that so good in All that includes us, that nothing is impossible to us. I said long ago , or maybe yesterday in quantum, man is basically good because man has Divine Within. We can enhance life in all Universes.
Because as the boy child said of the Blue Cloths, we are watch-ed. We are watch-ed.
photo by Joe Hallissey Sr.
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The Wait Is Too Long. . .
From my eyes. . . .
Father, I said, go greet your son.
And the father did and their arms
wrapped themselves about each other.
And the world was then all right.From my eyes, from my eyes. . .
And from my heart, I hear . . .Why did they wait so long?
Heart had given its yes when the son
was given his father’s name.At this moment,
the stars call you by name,
and the moon searches for you.The heart has already transposed its own heart
by the songs written and sung
through the night skies.I hear you love, I hear you and you are singing my song.
March, 1991
artwork by Claudia Hallissey
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One World At A Time . . .is enough?
Our focus is a small world. . .
When I read this poem I take on another perspective. It is a small world that we focus on here. Never aware that there is another world to the left and one to the right and beneath . Vast. . . I see me holding tight to the frame of thought simply to get through. Still conscious of too many things. I feel like a stick figure when taking on this perspective. And yet my head feels ‘out there.’
I wish we were in class so I could hear your thinking.
We Trod The Path . . .
We trod the path, hunched
and pull our faces in.
We bend our heads. The wind
is strong when you walk into it.But I take your hand
and we struggle against
the icy rain pelting our faces.We’ve walked this route
in centuries past, guarding ourselves
from saying too much.We were different then.
Simple, direct and not fashionable.
We were honest in our appraisal.We’ve become alien to our prior selves.
And I can’t say it improves us much.What do you think?
October, 2012
photo by Joe Hallissey Sr.
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Conduit For Good. . . .
Conduit For Good. . . .
We have all heard go back to where you came from in the past weeks and have been hurt and scarred and taken umbrage with the phrase. For me, being where I am in life, I say, Sir, we all go back to where we came from eventually.
Today being Sunday, a large portion of the world will be in different houses of worship. And in our minds is the final appointment we all keep and it will be a similar place we meet. In what condition we arrive will depend on the route we travel.
Some of us today will meet in cathedrals, some in abandoned stores, some in plain houses and some in a corner where we hope for quiet to think. We kneel, we stand, but we all lift our faces to our Source from where we come. Our Source is cosmic, Sir.
I, at the end of my life hope that I have been a conduit for good. Uppermost in my life I have tried to fulfill what I saw to do and hope that I have. I have been conscious of commitments of obligation and love. My Teachers have stressed their lessons of do what is directly in front of you with the adage of what good to save the world when your own house is falling apart.
That does not give awards to hang on your walls but they do hang on your heart. And one also has the gratitude of the hospitals, the police, the civic halls of justice, the remedial teachers and social workers and all those who play hammock to catch the fallout when we neglect what is our responsibility.
Besides the gratitude of our children who need the presence of a parent or grandparent or someone waiting for them to come home. Welcoming arms are a blessed gift to coming home.
This conduit for good doesn’t buy exotic trips, 5 star hotels, red carpet treatment in countries with laundered monies to buy decadent favors, but we teach values such as respect for family and neighbors and life in various forms. We teach how to be careful of rituals where cultures have strived for centuries to survive, but mostly we have loved one another and held life sacred.
Because what comes out the front door of homes (not houses) where children are raised and taught in love will determine what happens on world stages. It is a small world after all. And the devices have become deadly.
It is a simple thing to be a conduit for good. It starts with thought to do the kind and decent thing now. We all can do that. You find loving the hard thing to do? Fake it till you make it was the phrase when I was growing up. It works. But conduit for good? Starts right now.
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In The Quiet Of This Night. . . . . .
In The Quiet Of This Night. . . In the quiet of this night,
come to me and we will hold hands
and talk, and I will show you
from how high up you jumped.The night will love you and
envelop you and you will find that
in the cold moon there is a heat
that sustains to show you where your home is.Within the skirts of who you are, you will
gather the children around you
and we will love each other.
The heart knows its own Amen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Artwork by Claudia Hallissey
From the Psalms of Love for sale on Amazon
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Worn Like A Second Skin. . . . .
The Teacher says do not worry about what others think. They just think differently. And this difference lends a diversity to life that will peal our heart and make us wish to be among humans living time and again.
We will wish to work within the limitations, knowing that the things we have learned are tied to the heart and not to the outward conformations. That what we have learned has been written into the fabric of who we are, that no matter who we are, we will not forget ever.
For a time things are lost but they are found time and again. And at some time peace is made with who and what we are. What we’ve learned we’ve worn like a second skin.
The application of a philosophy is hard work. And the hard work must begin with the stripping of who we are and what we do. When we send crossed signals and the emotional response is too extreme, we are not getting our story across.
When our mouths are saying one thing and our actions another, the disparity will be seen especially by our children. When the dichotomy is healed within because the philosophy has been worked on, the memories will help us survive during our last times to make life of better quality.
Medications keep our hearts going but not in the manner where the operation of the brain would be intact. Our brains need our footwork.
A good place to start is with the word ‘why?’. Always a good place. Open a book and start running.
In These Sweet Hours. . .
In these sweet hours of the morning,
I sit in my chair, borrowed
from another room, where old bones
had not yet broken it in;
missing the familiar one,
much loved but grown musty.Like me, I think old and
with thoughts well worn but
suitable for the mind
inhabiting them.
They’ve stood the test of years
that proved their mettle.They’ve worn their courage
to the extreme and now will go
into the pages and take their place
as reference to a time long gone
but stable. They worked.They upheld customs and behaviors
and civilizations. And families
when they could have crumbled
never to be restored.But when hand crafted was
a work of pride, so was the work
of the mind. . . .stored now like vintage wine.. . .
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Across The Mind’s Eye. . . .
Across The Mind’s Eye. . . .
Laying like whipped icing
on the wedding cake,
the drifts of snow
across the mind’s eye
left a clear path
to the heart’s memory
of the other winters
when love closed the doors
of the world and cherished me.What were the winters like
when the snow stood high
and like lover’s swords
sliced a pathand found where I was?
Photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr. -
Emmanuel, Emmanuel. . . God Within. . . . Us. . .
It was 1941 and I was ten and warned every time I went out that God was watching me. And seeing me pick up a nickel from the wooden church floor and go across the street to buy a coveted pack of Walnettos. Word followed me home of course and I was punished.
Why was I watched but not 6 million cries for help heard? I asked.
How can one man with one idea ruin a world and a whole world of praying men cannot save it? And I was punished for that too because we were Polish and Hitler had overrun Poland and our relatives turned in friends and family there to avoid being killed for concealing those who were Jews.
No one was asking out loud that question. Not the Polish priest of the church and not my mother and father gods. So I ask again what I asked when I was ten. How can one man with one idea ruin a world and a whole world of praying men cannot save it?
And the reason is that the one man had himself and his idea to work on all men who adopted his idea and worked the power in themselves and the praying men depended on an outside god to do their work and not themselves. Simple and as complicated as that.
Emmanuel! Emmanuel! Biblical. It essentially means ‘god within.’ We were told that and we knew it. We knew and yet we chose not to remember.
Jon Meacham on the Morning Joe program in March talked of man’s better angels and initial work of the church to keep primary man’s first job which was to journey back to where he came from, which is our heavenly home. Give thought world, give thought. It was the Augustinian journey talked of through the ages.
I do not say man holds the final sparklers because we as the All That Is, are becoming. I do say that Within Man is the Divine Spirit which waits for man to wake up and acknowledge that only he can bring justice and do good to this world. That only by realizing what he can become can the steps in evolution accelerate and Mankind, humanity’s condition, be enhanced.
As AA preaches, There No Spot Where God Is Not. . . .That includes the Divine Within the heart of man. We are the life force, the intelligence undergirding in various degrees these universes. And worlds throughout are watching this classroom. If anything is not done to correct the injustices or the inequities, it is not done because we do nothing.
Doing nothing because of fear or because we are benefiting from them. So we are the cause and the cure.
I asked at ten and cried and nearing a hundred, ask again.
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When We Trash Our Souls. . . .
Our Connectedness. . . .
There is a connectedness I see and it weaves through everything. I am not certain where it leads nor if it ever had a beginning. But this I know. It is real and it is firm and it is gutsy. Not a word that is elegant, but true to its core. Gutsy. It has a vitality all of its own and the sweet thing about this, is that the connectedness is real, so real that I am not certain why it is not talked about as a normal, common thing.
It should be evident to everyone. Rubies are connected to stones and stones connected to moss if one thinks and can see that man and fish, donkey and gods are one of kind. It should be a part of our every day life because it is part of our everyday living.
I would start the talk with babies and show them how their belonging to us is a natural and provident thing. It and they are god sent. I hesitate using the word god because it has a grandfather Santa Claus image to it and the way most people think. But yet the feel of this god sent connectedness is cosmic as well as has a natural bent to it and there are no appropriate words in this language of ours.
It weaves through everything. The blood work of family puts all of us in such close connectedness that there is only breathing space. We are united and yet unique in our selves but the connectedness is vital.
This moves beyond family and puts all of us, one to the other, not so far but we know of the each. And we are known. There are no surprises and yet the exchanges are of palpable good. That what has happened before has the effects in our today and for the tomorrow our todays are already shaping the substance that will be a yesterday for someone.
One cannot see the connectedness unless the basis of each and their ultimate function depends on them being what and where they are. And the what could be anywhere and their where can be anywhere.
We must remember how we connect and why. Children have no problem with connections since their sources are similarly differential and have been accepted. They are blessedly blind to differences.
Our behavior is determined by conscience. Problematical prejudicial for some but especially for those elected to serve in positions of power lately, needing fusion of collapsed spines with steel. Wars only create more heartburn but who will redeem us when we trash our souls?
