Quiet reflection is essential for deepening and enriching our understanding of God and his World, ourselves, others, and the work we are being given to perfect through the resources of our intellectual and spiritual gifts. We may enter into this quiet state through contemplating the beauty in God, in nature, music, love and the arts. Quiet is profoundly restorative and what we find there are spiritual riches.
Meditation
Love
When I touch you as I must
I touch the elements of earth.
In you I find birth, rebirth,
unity, and human being.
Source, source and mind
treasure that I seek, converse
with me in revelation.
Touch me that a star that shines
for me I shall bring forth.
Lead me to the clothes of dance.
To the leaving off of cerebral dancing. To the step and thrust
of limbs into warm space,
bold and questioning . . .
to the thrust into the pace
of rhythm, out from the unfeeling
throng. To explore the wings of
the body's enchantment in dance
and longing.
Love
When I touch you as I must
I touch the elements of earth.
And new worlds, new lives, new
covenants. True knowledge of the
one and lasting humility, the
anchor of all earth . . .
and Love can be the only choice.
Music
...the cadence beneath the surface of the poem
beneath the words' arrangements
beneath the reverberating images and memories
beneath the questions and the absolutes
beneath the assumptions and the attempts to explain
beneath the anonymous and the ridiculous
beneath the myth and the sublime
beneath the successions of ideas
beneath the pauses and the pose
beneath the sentiment, the argument, and the ring...
beneath this all there is the melody that once was Dream.
The Stars
The stars
the mind turned inward: these, the dwellings of silence,
these, the rich defiance of time.
The sad gods, the clowns turning us from our lines.
The evergreens. The arrangement of the wilderness.
The real, the new, the changed, the beautiful old.
The uncivil tongue raised in wonderful expression.
The unsaved, the merry chord of reason, the flirtation
of poise.
The exactness, the remarkable proportion.
The dream, the find, the be-coming of pleasure.
The striving, the very high flying ride.
The rare and unconverted innocence.
The always colorations, the flood of things blending.
The impatient victory, the almost sacrifice . . .
the familiar rendition, the unwrecked hope,
the first heart-song.
Runes
º Rock Garden
A swan, runes, and stone poems
surround flowers
on cliff-ledge at Monatoulin
º Plumica Soundings
At Georgian Bay breadstones,
rounds, and layered beds
bake at water's edge, water beaten,
their silence stolen.
º Blind Prophet
Feels the sun
Fingers the sand
Tastes the winds
Speaks in images to them
º Testament
By whom we live,
hymns, chants
call through the human voice
We rise, greet death by loving-chance.
º Song of a Saint
Even wordless I sing.
Your air, my breath.
Singing thee my troth.
Jungfraujöch
In the thin air one does not forget to breathe
all pant and gasp, some faint from it;
yet brought back gaze stand transfixed
in awe of miracle and magic; this work of unseen hands
that brings us to the Summit, the point of highest mountains--
In the interior the mountain's lungs breathe an
ice kirche*, curvaceous tabernacle, monuments and passages to
walk in. In one grotto-blue, the compelling deepest
blue overtakes the mind,
the blue of sea, heaven and ice frozen above the earth.
*church
Switzerland 2000
A Kwanza Meditation
We are captured in the moment we meet form which clothes the spirit and we are born human…
--And we capture the chance for wisdom; we learn from birth to grave that nature’s balance is to save the universe without favor…
--And we learn that good and evil have equal energy until we choose the good that leads to fortune—and we learn that to choose evil leaves us oppressed as its reward…
--As earth’s people we are led by the spirit of time and sympathy and regrettably by our fears and hatreds…our instinct for survival often leaves no sympathy for peace and for reverent kinship with others who are different…
--And we learn that making war and engaging in aggression against others makes us cruel masters; and we shift our hatred from state to country and onto color and the person of others…
Yes, we are captured in that moment we meet form and color clothes the spirit’s wisdom. Yet, may we continue ever rising, rising, rising, and question when we distinguish ourselves from others…”what is color? what is dignity? what does it mean to be fully human?”
And we learn there are separations from loved ones: between mother and child, husband and wife, sister and brother, friends from each other—ourselves from a former sense of ourselves. And these cause heartache and confusion…
But we also learn there are sacred rivers for our crossing and our passage. Like a vibrant stream of conscience these rivers capture our thoughts and the meanings of our actions and keep them flowing and flowing. Even when we are asleep or distracted from them, these rivers keep us going in a natural direction. It is only when we struggle against them that we lose our footing and feel as if we are about to drown…
Know your river! Know its direction! Know its path to your center, to your spiritual oasis, to your inner spirit home! Like waters stirred up in a storm, these rivers speak to us. But also, there is wisdom in a silent sea because it has reached a state of calm despite all that is in it. Learn what it is like to be a silent sea, listen! listen! Be brave, set out to discover what it means to be child, man, woman, and spirit—what it means to be the subject of your own humanity…
And we learn that God is at hand observing our creation, observing our actions—being a God, a definition of all that is sane and wonderful about us. “In whom we live and breathe and have our being”…as if our lives were a room and God is the house that contains us…a house of Holiness and love. Some of us fall out of love with God and damage our room and His house. We become enchanted with “mind science” and the fascination of winning a place above all others. We forget the links, the interdependence, the charity, the shared shouldering of burdens and the soul’s inspiration of agape love…when we forget the Almighty Love and go it alone, we smother our spirit grace and ultimately, our joy and spirit home…
At the close of this Kwanza Festival from the eldest to the youngest among you, let there be more than the sharing of candlelight. Let there be love, respect, hope, joy, discipline and courage for being the best humans, the best children, men and women that God has brought forth. For we have come from a mighty long way—a wandering people who have sung our songs in a foreign land. Our offering of first fruits is the harvest of ourselves and our children and ancestors. We must take off the old clothes of our ancient despair and capture the moment of a new year with wisdom: loving ourselves, each other, our land, the universe, and every living soul within it. Agape Love! Amen
