Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

12 July 2012

Ode To A Cloud



The clouds have been so fabulous this summer,
so I thought I'd write them
an ode.
Here goes:



You dance and turn and sing
O wispy thing
have you substance more than lace?
So quickly to dissolve, trace-
less, and yet your bulk 
can shudder the ships of man
almost to the point of breaking.



We should not underestimate you,
oh ghostly friend.  Only
praise and awe-fully gaze
as you drift across
                         the silent sky.






(photos by me)

11 July 2012

bushels



. . . and Jesus said, lest you be dead
don't hide your light under
bushels.
That bushel, friend, is the skin
you're in:
the woven textured artifice
often
mistaken
for who we are meant to be.



The light, dear friend, grows dim each time 
you deny its luminosity.
It guides yourself
to your
Self,
It is the christ within.

As long as you resign your Self to pine
away in the vehicle given
for living and doing on
the earth,
you are destined to
die,
and live and
die,
and live and 
die

again and again.

via artnet





the work of Artist Shoichiro Matsuoka, found at createyourcosmos


Meditate.
Dive in.


Have no fear,
when you let your light shine,
the body, too, 
will follow,
magnificently



Also with gratitude to createyourcosmos - a fabulous blog! and the artists Daniel Franke and Cedric Kiefer 

09 July 2012

return to the garden

(all photos by Makropoulos)

At the moment when the infamous residents
of the original Garden Eden
ate the apple, something happened:
the human brain began so quickly to grow, so
much so it began to rival
God's
.

And not knowing this new power they so quickly had in hand,
they panicked.
If they had not panicked so
A + E may have discovered,
far too early,
 the distinctive 
pleasure of mind, the intense
satisfaction one can gain
from imagining worlds.
Ultimately, they, both woman and man,
might have gotten lost
in their own individual revery.
Like two fools in front of a TV,
they would have climbed inside themselves
-- godlike, indeed, one and only --
and that would have been the end
of the human race,
before it even began.

But that was not the plan.




God had intended all along for woman
and man
to make manifest the many dimensions of Him/
Her/
(Whatever pronoun we must deploy
to speak of God.)
But if so early in the game
the human players got distracted,
it would be the end.
Amen.

So God, in Her infinite wisdom,
put an end to that:
He decided that humans, 
more than any other species,
would have the distinct ability
to take intense pleasure in the act
of coupling, and presto!
it worked. 
Man and wife produced
legions, and with that too came
                         jealousy
                         pride
                         leachory
                               treachory
                             and 
                         falsehood =
all the products of minds misused
and bodies abused, in the 
lusty quest for self stimulation.
But meanwhile we have reproduced
indeed, and invented History
(written by the few, not always the wise;
the wise, in solitude, advanced technology).

And here we are now 
at the crest of infinity.
In our spare time,
we have created a facsimile 
of God=Expansive Mind,
but in our limitations
and morbid manipulations
we cannot see
that God is with us
and in us
right now.




O man, listen to birdsong.
O woman, cease your labors.

The earth pulses with life;
we are her masters.
It is our responsibility to care for her
as it is our appointed duty.



In the word huma, hu represents spirit, and the word mah in Arabic means water.
In English the word "human" explains two facts which are characteristic of humanity:
hu means God and man means mind, which comes from the Sanskrit mana, mind being the ordinary person.
The two words united represent the idea of the God-conscious person; in other words, hu, God, is in all things and being, but it is man by whom He is known.  "Human" therefore may be said to mean God-conscious, God realized, or God-man.    from: The Music of Life, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

06 July 2012

Rainbows in the Trash



And as the sweet cicadas call,
in this, only early July,
I wonder if the world will
ever be the same again.

The bees have burrowed in the soil,
and herbs have gone to seed;
will August bring an early fall?
Will autumn quickly recede?

Then I found these rainbows in the trash
and captured them for you.
Do not despair, it's only hiding
the earth, we know, will renew--



It's just waiting for you
too,
to renew.