One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing
you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help is the…
“There was a time when the language of the Earth was the language of our daily lives, of planting and harvesting, sunshine and storms. The words of the sacred were stars and seeds, mountains and rivers. The soul and the seasons of nature moved together; they spoke the same mystery, the beauty that is within and around us. It was all as natural as breathing, not needing to be remembered because never forgotten. How could you forget the wind on your face or the songs of birds? How could you forget the rise and fall of the tide? …
It is not that we need to turn against the Father and bring him down so that the Mother can reign supreme — there might need to be a correction towards the feminine — but it is time to bring Father and Mother, Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth together into a new totality of human enterprise and endeavour.
David Tacey
Edge of the Sacred
*
The free will of any person in the universe is through consciousness.
Because consciousness is an infinite, united and unchangeable State.
The total number of minds in the universe is one; in fact, consciousness…
Not one of the many adults interviewed for this book could answer in the affirmative when asked the following: When, as a child, you felt sad, upset or angry, was there anyone you could talk to…? In a quarter century of clinical practice, including a decade of palliative work, I have never heard anyone with cancer or with any chronic illness or condition say yes to that question. Many children are conditioned in this manner not because of any intended harm or abuse, but because the parents themselves are too threatened by the anxiety, anger or sadness they sense in…
Art is spiritual, too.
“I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. …
‘Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier — and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are…
We are mythic by nature and each person carries the thread of an essential plotline that tries to become known in the course of life. Our personal myth involves an energy laden, core imagination that has the power to orient our life and move our soul towards its destiny.
— Michael Meade
*
When it’s not us lacing a brocade of dominion-speak into a voidal dark, but that actually the words themselves may be the return journey of longing from the thing itself. That there’s a scrummage of inspiration that is not only human. This is a reality that has…
Sharing a Message…from White Eagle, Hopi indigenous on 03/16/2020:
“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole.
The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.
If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal.
Take care of your…
What does “I am here” mean? It means, “I exist. I’m really here, because I’m not lost in the past, in the future, in my thinking, in the noise inside, in the noise outside. I’m here.” In order to really be, you have to be free from the thinking, free from the anxieties, free from the fear, free from the longing. “I am free” is a strong statement, because the truth is, many of us are not free. We don’t have the freedom that allows us to hear, and to see, and to just be.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
*
…
The creative spirit creates with whatever materials are present. With food, with children, with building blocks, with speech, with thoughts, with pigment, with an umbrella, or a wineglass, or a torch. We are not craftsmen only during studio hours.
..
… if we keep drawing ourselves into center again and again, everything seems to enhance everything else… The activity seems to spring out of the same source: poem or pot, loaf of bread, letter to a friend, a morning’s meditation, a walk in the woods, turning the compost pile, knitting a pair of shoes, weeping with pain, fainting with discouragement…
David Price
I occasionally write fiction and also about creativity, loving, language learning and travel. I’m a longtime painter and reader.
