Easter

Holy Week 2019

Posted on by rita kowats

 

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It is time.
We sit on our designated hills
overlooking our private Jerusalems
watching the malignant intruder slither
toward the Holy City.

Holy Week?
So they say.
They say it is a holy thing
that one chooses to die for all.
So we remember and choose
to muddle through our own dry and tattered times.

Like stark, barren limbs
giving way to bursts of chartreuse leaves
and sweet-smelling blossoms
that waft on winds of promise,
we too shall bear luscious, ripe fruit.

© Rita H Kowats

 

 

Photo Credit for Magnolia tree: photo credit: jennifernish <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/15004954@N03/6968390159″>sneak peek at spring</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

In Search of Abundance II

Posted on by rita kowats

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As the creator of this photograph, I instinctively positioned the leaf one way and have only seen it from that direction.  Until now. I decided to let the photo speak to me from all four possible positions.  I invite you to do the same.  You have my permission to position it as the spirit urges. For my first meditation I wrote from this position

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Lenten Meditation Two

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for BL

The bone-weary phoenix
emerges from his marrow yet again
with wings worse for wear and poised for take-off.
He hitches a ride on Spirit Breath,
animated and ablaze, drunk
on the sweet elixir of life.

But
“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”
And
Borne on the wings of grace
we reach into the marrow of our souls
and pull ourselves back to
Abundant life.

© Rita H Kowats 3-17-19

In Spring

Posted on by rita kowats

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in spring
infant leaves emerge
tentatively from buds on stark white winter-limbs
like tentative souls
emerging from the dark night
enthusiastic
expectant
leaning
into resurrection.

© rita h kowats 4-7-18

 

In meditation on this magnificent Rilke poem given to me by my soul-friend, I realize that it is both an echo and a fulfillment of my own attempt to grasp the depths of our spiritual journey.

 

God speaks to each of us as she makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame,
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

Rilke’s Book of Hours

 

Sacred Cycles Once Again

Posted on by rita kowats

An invitation from years past to meditate on brooding-baring-bearing in the now of these troubled times.

“The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.” Meister Eckhart

Sacred Cycles

While resting beside Echo Lake,
A thriving refuge tucked aside from concrete carvings,
I am summoned to attention by two red-winged black birds.
He perches atop a winter-withered reed.
She plunges deep into the safe bosom of branches and she stays.
The primordial rhythm endures
Echoing the sacred cycle
Set in motion by bits of star dust
Burst from the verdant void before time.

Bird eggs into birds
Pear seeds into pear trees
Nut seeds into nut trees
Human seeds into humans
God seed into God.

In humans
God-gene generates godliness.
Like red-winged black birds
Hatching eggs,
Human souls echo the same cycle:
Return, return, return
Return to the God seed
To brood and bare.

© rita h kowats 2014