I once read I think in a book somewhere that the word “sin” really means to miss the mark like a perception gone askew with much relief I might add I found this out for I once thought sin meant I wasn’t ignorant but “bad” nonetheless one might feel compelled not to be stupid I mused if well-intended ignorance leads to death and destruction anyhow one can imagine my concern when I missed honoring the book collector’s birthday with a gift of appropriate measure it was after all his eightieth plus two and I hoped my failure to mark it wouldn’t hurry up his time here or my own (even though it wasn’t my fault damn that deadly innocent ignorance) what do you give the creative genius anyway whose birthday came as stealthily and silently as the color permeating leaves in an unpretentious but blithe October? this man has everything and creates much gives much mostly himself all away to his friends seemingly numerous as the books on his shelves and unlike so many who just let books sit there gathering dust he has read most of his, his books and his persons and has kept their stories alive he is the most responsible and caring book curator in all the world I feel he has a way of adding to whatever he reads and whomever he meets seeing more extracting more than the written or spoken word can exhume or tell he is in fact a creative reader who once left a treasure map inside of a book about hidden railroads and secret tunnels for me to come across later as if to help me find my way home again whenever I needed the refuge is not hidden treasure the most appropriate gift found right where we left it already inside one another? and so I’ve determined the only gift I can give in proportionate measure along with my own story is a thank you for his and to assure the book collector that he unlike some of us never “misses his mark” or ever fails to leave its impression because he forever engraves and leaves LOVE on the inner pages of our hearts
I am the tree my branches heavy with fruit the taste of my wine is sweet my branches curl in the sunlight grasping at that only which the eyes cannot see send me your laborers through heaven’s gate so that I may not die in the flesh but upon your table
merit road
we walk along it
like fine king’s men
our head’s held high
when will we venture
to safety
seeing our kingdom
through half strewn eyes
those in attendance
like couriers
breaching the beach
with their sand
inextricable
the guardsman,
I laugh
but I am lonely here
at the darkest side
of the table
make sure you
abandon me
that we would reunite
in a next life
endurance
the forgotten virtue
that fruit of the vine
in that time
the forgotten kingdom
come
for everyone
to wake up
the frightened philosopher was afraid to come in here he said as he gently tucked a loose tendril of wisteria back into itself they were always coming loose like wisps of hair escaping across my forehead from the tangled vine in which they grew hanging over our heads that marked the entrance to the garden his movements were swift too swift to see and I wonder vaguely do angels do such things with a hand or a wing oh yes! I said smiling I love it in here now you know once I realized from where the light was coming is it always like this? do words mean more than themselves and the events of the day do they always sing in such glorious alignment? for even when I seem to die I know there will be something in me that seems to float
some voices are thin some voices ring in my head like imposed cacophony but my voices are not like hers so I remain in the sheets my head singing my heart longing for the ones that remove all assumptions perhaps if I stay in that place that delicious place built between heaven and earth I can figure it out perhaps apologize for not incarnating today but as I roll over to hit the snooze alarm unambiguous says get up now
Eve…what a beautiful name. And New Years Eve…the expression would inspire hope. It seems so tragic this past year has been marked by many deaths and funerals, that we couldn’t even attend in person.
But there are people saying this New Year’s Eve of 2021, despite the pandemic and all we have endured or perhaps, because of it ~ they sense a shift in the force.
This includes me.
I will go further and state I believe humanity is in spiritual labor, that despite everything, mankind is about to die to something to give birth to something, something better described as a non thing ~ or Substantive, Universal Awareness.
I find myself pondering the “Eve” in Genesis.
I wonder if the word translated “Eve” really meant not a gender, not a woman, but womb-man or mankind with the free will to conceive things, or realize things, from within. It also could mean “labor before New Birth”. She is vulnerable, but with vast potential.
Certainly today, more people than myself have woken up to the reality that outer material systems and authoritative institutions often fail to serve those very humans they were designed to serve.
And I believe when the material, pre-evolved form of a thing, or a letter of law (like a literalist approach to Scripture) is put before the invisible spiritual, or human good it is supposed to serve, it becomes an inhumane monster, an idolatrous “graven image” serving itself.
The older I get, the more I see this phenomena happening all around me. Corrupt police force (that was supposed to defend all human life, assuming it vulnerable and innocent) and the Black Lives Matter movement, is an example of it.
Real human beings – sacrificed for or abused by inhuman systems, powers or beasts of man – are often the first to realize that true Love and Unity, what we universally recognize as the higher “God or Good” force in all of us (regardless of whether or not we even believe in God) can only be conceived from within. Perhaps the pandemic is serving to remind, in allegory, that old, outer forms must pass away and if they are rebuilt, must be built in a way that protects that which is invisible and lays within, or is at heart and is spiritually substantive.
We as humans have long tapped man’s intellect, or material perceptions, for outer discoveries and material “goods” as the answers to life’s problems. But what if mankind’s survival rests not in outer attainment, but individual, inner enlightenment, and intuitive communication with one’s higher self, or Divine within, including within those persons we are in “habit” of perceiving as the enemy?
For what really kills – if not old habits, that die hard?
Old “shells” are comfortable. But we will surely die if we don’t shed them. They keep us from communication with, and even seeing, others of our kind. The artificial or “material” self-produced division gives the false impression we are separate, above or beneath others in importance.
One would think in a world in which conspiracy theories and assumptions abound, and sometimes are even glorified like new religious dogma – used to justify cruelty or irresponsibility against our own neighbor, human beings would also be able to conceive that we all experience a Christmas, a Passover, and a Ramadan. And perhaps those of us best equipped to inform or aid the other in understanding the “true nature of things” are not those who are most educated, or who have things, but those who most represent in their life journey the Universal Christ ~whether they be Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist or agnostic.
My Christmas/New Years wish for all of us is that there will be a moment in which this realization of true, undying unity comes to fruition in all of our hearts.
Whether we be on one side of the globe or the other, whether we be practicing a religious tradition, or not, whether we be serving soup to keep someone warm and alive in a practical sense, whether we be seemingly alone, with only our guardian angel’s wings wrapped around us, or searching our corner of the sky for that new Christmas star (because we do not want our loved one’s to catch COVID-19), may we feel that Golden Light, that Divine Invisible Substance, which truly unites all of us, and issues in a New Day and a Love that material or mental viruses can’t ever kill or destroy. We are approaching the brink of an event horizon.
Can you see it, can you know it, without utilizing material perception?
For in the end dust is dust, but Spirit sings in the new Nature…of things.
And even though my own material expressions fall short when I try to describe what I observe and hope for from “inside”, I will dare to describe it in allegory:
The Last Funeral Mass
let’s build in matter’s image said man and construct forms, byways, strategies, and laws they will be necessary for if not man who else will save the world? but the sound of Woman weeping troubled them so, for she would not hush nor accept their offer of plea bargain she had not contributed to her own demise nor was she blaming them for theirs worse (it was rumored) she conceived without them did away with genders or reflected them both inside of herself and they held meeting to determine if they could still call her a her anymore because a song had been born from her tears or perhaps The Song had been born like a burbling brook, crystal clear water, a river or the motion in it damn it grumbled the men it is just like the wind this background noise it is persistent but elusive some freak deja vu the men couldn’t put their finger on it what they feared about this sound that wasn’t a sound and this mere woman who wasn’t mere woman from whence The Song sprang without effort or strategy and they did fear it like sorrow, or discomfort, unplanned and unexpected a beautiful, yet plaintive funeral song that’s what it was that she sang, that’s what it was they figured, and asked is not this sort of thing illegal, heretical, or contagious? they wondered if her song was somehow about them though it bore no actual resemblance and she seemed sad but happy at the same time while the song seemed to grow and expand echo back at them out of their own heads perhaps they feared it and hated it so because they couldn’t hold it, or touch it, to make it definable, and containable or give it a label a form, a package or box to make it safe for human consumption hell it was too unpredictable, too vulnerable, too wild, too free, too rapid for thought or human logistics like she had already shed her own shell without authorization or permission from higher command who did she think she was? and they did think it must be stupid, foolhardy, this fruit what woman had birthed but actually swifter more direct than them and their inhuman prodigy as if this spirit this spirit of hers this non material thing this conception always had a mind of its own or worse was a mind of its own different than theirs free from their plans for her and the child-song’s greater good didn’t the woman and child know they were in danger? in fact she and her own seemed quite at home in their lovely place in the woods where her table was set with invisible fine things and she invited them to dine on invisible abundance, the invisible laughing a beautiful, tinkling, dinner bell chime how crazy was that how inappropriate they felt it was for a funeral how dare she who was she how was she even still alive yet alone, they wondered, wearing a white wedding veil had not they created what really mattered a material body of knowledge and she borne only what couldn’t be seen the ghost we thought we eliminated centuries ago for her own sake when we condemned her for understanding the fruit of the tree the first time around? I know said one how to fix this (for they were after all men, did I mention) let’s burn her house down set fire to the trees that hide her child from us that way he will have to come out and show his face show us who he really is that which we cannot contain or reflect in our own image a likeness that we can’t even see and they came at her with weapons of mass destruction but the fire would not catch, or light, or burn those living trees that she had nurtured with her own hands only their black suits and their own instruments of death caught fire they noticed their hands now matched their clothing and were dirty and marked with inky black soot while she calmly reproved them telling them hurry and wash up for dinner she said you are like soldered clocks ticking no time, while my labor is complete for this last funeral mass this one last time we are not celebrating the death of my son, my song the Love of my heart who is not made of matter and cannot die but celebrating his rebirth at the death of your own for yours is what is no longer useful the empty chalice, a rusted metal vessel all along
oh Lady of Wisdom of the desert of the woods this is your castle. library, refuge and home send torrents of angels like rain upon us adept in your science and mathematics of grace and sacred geometry so that in the morning light we might find ourselves like our true labor and true rendered garments complete and combat ready not with weapons of mass destruction men use in their killing fields but with Love for it is only She who realizes her own Revelation who gives birth to the one power mightier than the sword. Amen
my mother has mirrors like those intricately carved and gilded in gold what a queen might have used or film stars of the 1940’s who without their mirrors and stories of old the scrubbing never ended the scrubbing of dishes, and pots and plates it could never be finished what I mean is one was always Cinderella’s jealous step sister with too big feet or the second one in line for the throne the third runner up for some kind of film star award no matter what one’s royal lineage until one took off one’s apron to relax for a bit perhaps mom took off a pink one the one with green stitching and pointed and starched black lace that she had sewn all by herself from scraps she had retrieved from the rag bin and found herself content to cast image onto something or someone else for awhile and that’s how it all got started so long ago the spell casting of images Mom’s magic mirrors the mistaking of her own reflection for a daughter in the silverware or the dinner plates Mom still holds things up for inspection wherever she finds her magic mirrors and sees reflections and hears voices that seem to make life not shiny enough or make the neighbors gossip and point and now all I have to remember rememberher by Mom’s true self is my own grief when she casts with such impunity and purpose like a professional to make me the object of all that she despises in her imagination inside of herself
I left her in Southgate a rose dahlia she had something on her mind something to keep the Missouri moon rose o’er me a lantern in the sky telling me secrets that she couldn’t speak isn’t it ironic mortal men find her brilliant as reflection of the sun but just as morningbeckons she weeps like Mara whose waters we cannot drink Missouri moon caress my face mediatrix to mitigate a divide Missouri moon I beg you guide me home for I still sense paradox only you can guide me to a journey without grief
Unraveled and the Birth of Joy 