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Month: December 2018
Winter Solstice Sonnet II
Profound food for thought from Jane Woodman on this Winter Solstice. Enjoy and reflect.
With weight of Winter warming causing pain,
We long for snow and ice to come again
To bring protection for the soil below
And friendly freezing’s later soaking flow.
The birds know this warm Solstice isn’t kind
And mob each seed in feeders they can find,
Soft breezes telling them what we can’t hear:
All harsh winds, frost and biting cold draw near.
Come cold night, then, and even colder dawn;
This warm December should not, can’t go on.
All seasons have their purposes in turn;
Pale Winter balances Sun’s Summer burn.
This Solstice counterweighs its Sister’s light
With sparkling cold and deeper, lusher night.
Spiritual Coupling
Being Light
Recently I introduced the newly published book of spiritual poetry, Rose Petals Floating Downstream by Anita Neilson ( https://anitaneilson.com/ )
I picked up the book in an in-between time today and opened to the poem below, “If Thine Eye be Single.” Here it is, accompanied by what it evoked from me.
If Thine Eye be Single
“The light of the body is the eye:
if therefore thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.”
Matthew 6:22
Eyes twinkling
like headlamps dipping
o’er the brow of a hill;
silent messengers
through the mists of time.
Windows on the world
but also to the soul
if we look deeper.
Codeless truths blink
to those who seek
meaning en route.
An eternal clignoter
Clic, clic, clic.
If thine eye be single
a million stars
Will diffuse into one
and every twist and turn
a delight will be
on this path to eternity.
Anita Neilson
Response
The eye with which god
sees me is the same eye
with which I see god.
One seeing
knowing
loving.
My eye and god’s eye
are one.
Meister Eckhart
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
The light with which god
sees me is the same light
with which I see god.
One seeing
knowing
loving
One Light.
God’s light and my light
are one light.
rita h kowats
Rose Petals Floating Downstream
I recommend this lovely new book of Anita Neilson’s spiritual poetry:
https://anitaneilson.com/2018/12/07/its-raining-rose-petals/
Advent God
The Innerness of All Things
You create yourself in
ever-changing shapes
that rise from the stuff
of our days-
unsung, unmourned,
undescribed,
like a forest we never knew.
You are the deep
innerness of all things,
the last word that can
never be spoken.
To each of us you
reveal yourself
differently:
to the ship as a
coastline, to the shore
as a ship.
from The Book of Hours II, 22
in A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke
by Rainer Maria Rilke, Anita Barrows (Editor), Joanna Macy (Editor)
Response
Photo Credit: pexels.com
Advent
Darkness is a gathering time, a state set apart from the glare of light in which we can see what is real.
In the dark we sit with the energy generated in the light and try to make sense of it. We sift through, “clinging to what is luminous in ourselves, in others, and in life itself,” and releasing unwanted ego energy. We brood our way through the darkness back into light, illuminating the way for fellow pilgrims, each bound for their own Bethlehem.
So we begin. Advent 2018. See you on the way.
Spirituality Without Borders: Reflections on Spiritual Practice 