Weathered wood, as white as the sand.
Wild-wet air whipping cotton and skin.
Sun light licking mornings mist
Sea pounds and sounds roll through me.
The River
Trillions of transparent trinities,
arise from the deep and wash over me.
Rapids wrestle over rock and rim,
as I try to hold it back, and harness it in.
But I am powerless, pushed down, drown,
baptized in a billion bonds, broken open and set free.
Like a vein in flesh, I am life in land,
giving rise to fern and flower, on bank and bend.
My rocks are slowly ground down, smooth and round,
as time takes from me what I what I thought I was supposed to be.
I have learned to love what is being made of me,
accepting my role, not as source or goal.
I am a journey made of land, cut away, growing deeper,
and still, with less of me holding more thee.
As I descend down into the plain, others flow into me,
and I in thee, as we grow closer to the sea.
My broken parts flow back down together,
embraced in a fertile bed, where new bonds are born.
There is no form left of me, no resistance to thee,
for I am now one with the sea.
Open Sky
A clear cobalt dome whispers wide open truth. Vast beyond grasp and full within. I surendar to blue wonder and the stillness within.
Where can I run from the wide open spaces? Where can I hide? Unfathomable depths I find in all direction. Nothing is ever hidden from His gaze or disconnected from His presence.
The blue is deep and translucent. The Infinite space echoes within that intimate place. A creator-lover is playing with me, hiding out in the open space and in the nearest place.
How shall I greet this presence so other and so intimate. So known and so unknown. Love will be my guide, and the ground from which I see.
October
They wrestle through warm days and cool nights, October pleading with September to let go.
September can be hot tempered, heavy with fruit, and full of self-harvest. But underneath there is fear, for the ground is depleted.
The October sky whispers truth in shades of blue and grey. Its okay to let go. All things must die so they can rise anew.
September cannot see past itself to what October knows. That a fall can be a grace full of golden depths.
October is not ashamed of its amber stalks and orange leaves. They are the prophetic colors of glory ahead, not weakness past. The last green of self is never lost, only hidden, transforming under the gold cloak of surendar.
Wind and Rocks
Written by a close friend who joined our family on our Tuscan Holiday–
A long, long trip, only to be at home again:
strikingly different locale, not with my everyday circle,
but still at home among friends as dear as family.
The heat of both midsummer and midday
more than compensated for by the constant refreshing breeze:
I am thankful for the wind, for the wind and the rocks.
The countless rocks!
walled cities and stone villas built right into the Tuscan hillsides;
massive churches built into and out of the very lives of ancient, heavenly-minded people—
each small town with a dozen of them.
The wind and the rocks—they both speak of the Deity:
He only is the sure foundation,
He only is the source of life and movement.
Day trips exploring timeworn edifices with timeless artwork;
good books drowsily read, and better conversations by poolside pursued,
with surprising segues and tangentialities, and genuine paradoxes…
Like the wind and the rocks:
the one strong and immovable, stable and utterly reliable;
the other free and constantly active, flexible and adaptable.
Like our dual need to be prepared, resourceful, proactive, and confident;
yet also always receptive and open to correction, waiting and trusting;
indeed, we must act in love, we must also wait in faith.
June 21, 2017
Humility
Humble-Hummus, grounded and rooted in truth.
Breaking down into simple parts and dying.
Seeping into earth and emptying self.
Not in charge, not in control,
serving and sustaining life.
At peace in the lowest place.
Feast of Nature
Begin with crisp-water bite of sun-green cells. Swallowing the light captured in time and space
Then raise up a libation, and let the golden fields of grain flow into me. The Sun-grown grain distilled down and absorbed into my cells.
It takes teeth to tear at the flesh of things, to get to the root, the elements. To taste the life, the essence, and to know the life enfleshed, infused and passing through.
This feast is endless and fills all my senses. Each element of matter vibrating with its own voice. As I listen I am fed, as I am aware I am satisfied.
Take wood for example, with its gorgeous grains, growing, standing, sheltering, shaping, bending, breaking, dying, drying, burning,warming, falling into earth and rising again. Formed and transformed from light above.
Pine needles, blue sky, textured bark of tree. Water on rocks. Single strand of grass.
Let us finish the feast with fruit. Sweet womb of hope surrounding the seed that must die. Swallow the Juice, and the joy, foretaste of the resurrection.
Still your mind and inhale the wonder. Come to the table of awareness and feast on His presence.
Winter Fields
Earthen Waves in rolls and folds
Crusty stalks and hedge rows
Trees naked, pencil sketched
On the canvas sky
Grasses golden and glowing
In the angled and thin winter light
Tweed-coated field wrap me up
In a warm breasted embrace
The winter silence of the earth is alive in me.
A fresh presence crunches under boot.
Long shadows, muted colors, winters humble-hidden service.
Field of Love, walking in me, sing out your Pascal mystery
Fatherhood and Mother Nature
Brother Oak and Sister Pine
I walk through a winter scape of hard and soft woods. The Oaks and Elms are defending their place and holding space.
Barren, angular forms, tense and tight-celled inside. The old ones thick with wisdom, trunks gnarled with knots, covering past wounds.
Their presence commands respect, and deep down they go, into the ground of truth. Deciduous, discursive, defining the forest space.
And by their side, the warm green conifers with their rounded, softer shape, create beauty in the barren space, and freshen up the place.
They receive the wind, allowing it inside them and it bends them low and vulnerable. Their brown needles cling together forming a warm nest, to nurture the forest floor.
All the winter-while, the leaves of the Oaks blow far and wide scattering in winter, as do their seeds in spring.
As I walk, I feel the forest coming together in me. The light with the shadow, the hard truths with the softer mysteries, the immanent earth and the transcendent sky, and sister pine with brother oak.
In the winter of my fatherhood I learn to walk with mother nature too.
A comment on the above Poem–
The feminine and masculine are in each person, and held together in a beautiful balance. Strongly masculine men as they grow older need to discover the feminine inside them or they don’t fully mature spiritually and discover their full humanity. If they are fathers, as their kids age they are called to discover the compassionate mother within them. To become more nurturing more accepting of the frailties of humanity that are now more noticeable within themselves and also reflected in their adult children. Nature shows us both the contrast of masculine and feminine and the mature integration. In nature we witness the pastoral beauty and goodness of God the Father.