I went

I went to the root of things,
and found nothing but Him alone.

~Mira Bai

What is dark..

What is dark clings to what is light and so enhances the brightness of the latter. A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine.

Thus the sun and moon cling to heaven, and grain, grass, and trees cling to the earth. So too the twofold clarity of the dedicated man clings to what is right and thereby can shape the world. Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when man recognizes this limitation and makes himself dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, he achieves success.

~I Ching

We are the guardians of His Beauty

We are the protector
Of the Sun.

There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:

To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.

Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying,

"Hafiz,
Don't just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing -

Help unfurl my heart into the Friend's Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!"

We are the companions of His Beauty.
We are the guardians
Of Truth.

Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved -
A harbinger of Joy,
The harbinger of Light.

~Hafiz

Invocation of the Trinity

At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it has,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along the path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness
And the Earth with its starkness,
All these I place
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of Darkness.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the Invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven,
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

I arise today,
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

~St Patrick

Watching gardeners

Watching gardeners label their plants
I vow with all beings
to practice the old horticulture
and let the plants identify me.

~Robert Aitken

Atum is the whole

Atum is the Whole
which contains everything.
He is the One, not two.
He is All, not many.
The All is not many separate things,
but the Oneness
that subsumes the parts.
The All and the One are identical.
You think that things are many
when you view them as separate,
but when you see they all hang on the One,
and flow from the One,
you will realise they are united -
linked together,
and connected by a chain of being
from the highest to the lowest,
and subject to the will of Atum.

~The Hermetica

The air smells good

Lord, the air smells good today, straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown
across the garden, free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise,
the first blue violets kneeling.
Whatever came from Being is caught up in being, drunkenly
forgetting the way back.

~Rumi

I want

Tent tethered among the jackpine and blue-bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese fying north. And I can't remember who I'm supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon myself, have mistresses in maidenhair fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday: a blank shimmering space forward and back.

I want to think with my belly. I want to name all the stars animals flowers birds rocks in order to forget them, start over again.

I want to wear the seasons, harlequin, become ancient and etched by weather. I want to be snow pulse, ruminating ungulate, pebble at the bottom of the abyss, candle burning darkness rather than flame.

I want to peer at things shameless, observe the unfastening, that stripping of shape by dusk. I want to sit in the meadow a rotten stump pungent with slimemold, home for pupae and grubs, concentric rings collapsing into the passacaglia of time.

I want to crawl inside someone and hibernate one entire night with no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant loam. I want to melt. I want to swim naked with an otter. I want to turn insideout, exchange nuclei with the sun.

Toward the mythic kingdom of summer I want to make blind motion, using my ribs as a raft, following the spiders as they set sail on their tasselled shining silk. Sometimes even a single feather's enough to fly.

~Robert Maclean

The day will come

The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

~Teilhard de Chardin

O Lady

O Lady
the hem of whose garment
is the sky, whose grace
falls from her glance, who gives
life from the touch of one finger
O Lady
whose hair is the willow, whose breath
is the riversong, who lopes
thru the milky way, baying, stars
going out,
O Lady whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes
eye sockets black imploded stars, who trails
frail as a northern virgin on the mist,
O lady fling your bright drops to us, emblems
of your love, throw
your green scarf on the battered earth once more
O smile, disrobe for us, unveil
your eyes.

~Diane Di Prima

Say quietly to God

Say quietly to God: "Now, Thee alone I seek. Send what is best."
~Sri Gyanamata

O Lord

O Lord,
I am caught in that moment of half-light,
the breathless point of balance between sun and moon.
As I bid farewell to the cold purification of the night,
in that same movement, I fling wide my arms
to be embraced by the warmth and glory of the sun,
knowing that in due time I will bow to the receding light
and open my arms to darkness once again.

Thus, O Lord, You come into our lives,
in the blaze of splendour, the certainty of Your presence,
in the times of aridity and isolation, even to the point of despair.

Throught this continuing journeying, from the zenith of midday to the depths of midnight
and back to the blinding noontide, we grow towards You,
the true light, that shines like the sun beyond darkness, forever.

~Ishpriya R S C J

In Praise of Atum

In a place open to the sky,
facing west at the hour of sunset
or east at sunrise,
I pray that the cosmos be flung open to me
and that all nature
may receive the sound of my psalms.
Open, great earth,
and trees, silence your waving boughs,
for I am about to sing
the praise of the One and All.
Justice, praise the just through me.
Goodness, praise the good through me.
Selflessness, praise the All throught me.
It is Your words
that through me sing Your praises -
for all comes from You
and all returns to You.
Accept these pure offerings of speech
from a heart and soul uplifted.
You of whom no words can tell,
no tongue can speak,
and only silence can declare.

~The Hermetica

From that which we fear

From that which we fear, make us fearless.

O bounteous One, assist us with your aid.

May the atmosphere we breathe

breathe fearlessness into us:

fearlessness on earth

and fearlessness in heaven!

May fearlessness surround us

above and below!

May we be without fear

by night and by day!

Let all the world be my friend!

~Atharva Veda XIX

We are Nature

We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vebetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other.
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we too,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

~Walt Whitman

No Words

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language

I went to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!

I come across the marks of roe-deer's hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

~Tomas Transtromer

I've known rivers

I've known rivers:
I've know rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

~Langston Hughes

Excite the soul

Excite the soul, and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear; the world itself loses its solidity, nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

To all that is brief

To all that is brief and fragile
superficial, unstable,
To all that
lacks foundation
argument or principles;
To all that is light,
fleeting, changing, finite
To smoke spirals,
wand roses,
To sea foam
and mists of oblivion...
To all that is light in weight
for itinerants
on this transient earth
Somber, raving,
with transitory words
and vaporous bubbly wines
I toast
in breakable glasses.

~Maria Eugenia Baz Ferreira

Happy New Year!

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

~Crowfoot - Blackfoot warior and orator