Month: July 2023

Life In Three Acts

Posted on by rita kowats 

 I. Light Bearing

Souls are stars conceived by light,
Blazing, bright-shining beacons
Casting assurance on pilgrim paths.

Bear the light- don’t covet it.
Light expansive,
Light exhaustive.

II. Light Lacking

…can become light birthing
When we befriend the dark.
Raise your arms in protest but cradle 
the shadow created by despair.

Call it by name and reignite it
With your love.

III. Light Birthing

Like the phoenix
We rise and rise again 
faithful sentries sensing,waiting
For Time to strike the match.

Don’t miss it.

C. Rita H Kowats 7/22/2023


Photo Credit

SoulCards” by Deborah Koff-Chapin. The technique Deborah has created is called “touch drawing.” The cards come in two decks of 60 images and can be used alone or with others as reflection tools. They have enriched my meditation for years and have helped those I companion with. www.soulcards.com

Used with permission from the artist.

In This Moment

Posted on by rita kowats

As so many of you throughout the world endure such disastrous weather conditions, I hold you in presence and send you spiritual energy for coping and surviving. May you experience relief soon.

This morning a brief episode of Krista Tippet’s On Being downloaded and feeling bereft of her once frequent offerings, I jumped on it immediately. This is what she offers us today:

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.

Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.

To withstand your own end is difficult.

The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.

Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.

If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.

What if we convince her to stay?

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.

What if we stun existence one more time?

When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin

with her ruptured belly tags along.

Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins
and the violent shape of their drinking water.

The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we
are nobodies.

Been born from so many apocalypses, what's one more?

Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.

But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over

Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.

I’d follow love into extinction.

by Ayisha Siddiqa

Ayisha Siddiqa is a 24-year-old Pakistani-American climate justice and human rights advocate from Coney Island, New York City. She is the co-founder of Fossil Free University and PollutersOut!  She calls herself a storyteller and uses poetry as a form of protest. She read one of her poems about climate justice at COP27 and she was one of TIME’s Women of the Year in 2023. Find her on Instagram. (https://www.theecojusticeproject.com/submissions/all-ive-got-is-another-love-poem)

photo credits: pexels.com