I grasped a stone

I grasped a stone
And felt it to be Real
Then I realized
I was chasing the Wind

I observed a Tree
It's branches outstretched
When I discovered
It was observing me

I looked to the Star
and immensity of Space
And I found
I was as vast Inside

I looked to the Globe
And it's vast curved Round
And found my eye
Itself was that World

Something Solid, something hollow
Became One in an instant
Just for a moment
I grasped the Whole

The running brook
Was the leaping doe
The cloud filled sky
The plain dotted by towns

Illusion, I found, was difference
Nature's accidents encoded in Man
Made me seem other
Than you or the sky

But Discovery wrought some miracle
Awakened me to another Dream
Asleep, yet aware of sleeping
I broke through to the Day

And rested on that lonely shore
Where only the bravest souls meet
And found Solace in Knowing
Is it's own Reward

Indigo Eyes

The lily stands in the field
Naked, unadorned, against the wind
It's spine curled against gravity,
It's petals swaying in the breeze

A pollinated tear drips from it's bulb
As it bends without breaking
Moistens the sweet Earth with it's water
Collected from the morning dew

The lily does not behold itself
But stands aright in the Sun
Following the Orb across the sky
Answering the All with it's' own intelligence

And I, standing alone in the plain,
Self conscious, vain, ignorant of All
Cannot take it all in, and remain in darkness
Beneath the glowing globe

Brother to dirt, dumb as a stand of trees
I stand erect in the wind so that
I would erode in ten years time,
My face the same as the Sphynx

Unbending, stoic and hard
My sunny eye scans the horizon
I always chase through the days
Thinking I will arrive at the terminus

While the lily scans the sky not in hours
Or in days, like a vegetable swan
Glides through the days like a bird
On the water...

O that I could stand so Beautiful!
O that I should be so Wise,
Lily, lily, clothed by Nature, I by Art
You kill me with your lack of Pride!

Mystery

Two points separated in space by what? We will call it Distance. In the metaphysical universe, God is other than man, separated by what? We will call it Mystery. Not just in the canonical Bible does God retreat from man when man first gains knoledge, with one foot in Paradise, and soon to gain immortality as well. 'Behold he will become as one of us' Genesis states.
So it is a law that our knowledge shall always be limited. Not just concerning things around us, which seemingly must become ever complex, but of those Divine things as well.
Even with modern meteorology, we cannot know when a superstorm is going to develop, how large it is going to be, when and where it is going to hit, so that tremendous amounts of energy, time and money must be spent in order to avoid the wrath of Nature.
We have seatbelts, yet folks still die in auto accidents. The plethora of factory recalls on various products show we don't quite have complete knowledge when it comes to being able to produce a simple, safe product that will not harm us.
There are limits to Reason, and certainly we are limited in our experience.
In short, we still yet are human.
How does something as Sublime as Spirit have congress with something as vulgar as Flesh? The mystics call it Emanation.
But in the sphere os Space, in which bodies are extended into apparently even more than three dimensions, Mystery is what connects us to God.
How ubiquitous Mystery is! You don't know for sure what is around the corner. You don't know your Aunt's secret ingredient for her chili. You don't 'see' gravity, but rather can only measure it's effects.
Mystery, Mystery, upon Mystery!
The fact to me that our knowledge IS so limited, that our experience is even more limited, and we still by and large are able to carry on in spite of our very limited selves points for me to something that is much greater than us that is Providential, Benevolent and concerned with what goes on in our sphere of humanity.
This I call God.
God can be limited by Dogmatic terms, where He can become tribal, gender specific, parochial and 'on our side'.
But the evidence shows this Providence helps those 'other' than ourselves avoid accidents as well. There are many near misses for the Muslim, Jew, Pagan, Christian and so forth.
When we say 'God is Good', we have transcended the Jealous Yahweh who told Abraham to go in and take Canaan from the Pagans for his own, and have shifted into that greater aspect of God that is Universal, all encompassing and ever Benevolent.
This is the Invisible God, the God, in my view of Spirit. The God that is as close as he is far away and the distance between is called Mystery.

CERN and LH collider

Am I the only one who is slightly concerned about the goings on at CERN? We are allowing scientists with seemingly little or no oversight from democratic corners to mess with stuff on a subatomic level and recreate conditioins that were around just a few seconds after the so called big bang.
Now, from what I've read, things were pretty unstable and violent during these moments, so why risk opening oursselves up to possible malevolent forces that have since been bound and stabilized? Life is obviously evolving AWAY from those first few seconds, so perhaps there is something we need not, or are not supposed to go back to for the sake of vain knowledge.
Look at the space program and all the resulting space junk and even casualties and deaths that have resulted from it. How much foresight now can scientists use when opening up such new vistas?
Finally, when have men, once they have gained knowledge, not used said knowledge to the benefit of one's own ends? It's human nature, isn't it? 'Knowledge is Power', is it not, and apparently we are about to open ourselves up to a whole new, I guess Brave New world of knowledge and power that is going to reside in the hands of a few international scientists.
Does this sound all good to you?

Paean to a Dying Sun

Great Orb, you have been with us now six months,
But now you are leaving to your resting place
From Tropic of Cancer to Tropic of Capricorn,
You are making your way again to the netherworld

Your mighty potency has been greatly appreciated
You have struck the earth and made diamonds,
Caused the fair winds to blow and the grasses to flourish
You have pushed the waves of the seas and shaped the sands

Beneath your broad, liberal power, the Earth has fecundated
The planet has remained in it's starry orb in it's dance around you
And the heavens have sang your octave in summery breeze
We, your people have warmed our hearts like hands to the hearth

In Northern might, you have shone forth your great power
And without Pride, have reigned over your Spring and Summer
Gently now, you make your way to Winter where your presence
Yet will be felt, even though weakened by the stars coming in their depths

All Earth now rests, the fruits of your labors being harvested
For glad times of Fall and Winter where your Fire now will burn
In our fireplaces and open ovens, the heat that ignites the spark of all flames
You will still be felt in our midst, radiating through our hearts to merry minds

Farewell and soon to see, Great Sun, as you also will rise with Easter
Having been died and resurrected through December and January,
We will once again see you appear through your Springtime Solstice Door
But till then, rest happily on your oceantide, Great Potential yet to be reborn!

Reason and Beauty

In the pythagorean tradition, Reason is the ability of a soul to perceive Beauty. What is Beauty? When one works day in and day out, raises children, supports a spouse, keeps house and pursues a career, when does one have the time to be Reasonable and enjoy Beauty?
This is one sign of modern times not spoken of in many Religious texts, but is covered more in schools of philosoophy, from what I see, where man at certain times must race at breakneck speed in order to keep up with the technology he initially created, but which is now outgunning and running him.
Mac Davis, a famous seventies singer told us ya gotta stop and smell the roses.
Well that's a good start. Roses are beautiful. Five petalled and the color of Eros, the Rose is often asssociated with philosophers, magicians and mystics. Five is the number above the four cardinal elements, the quintessence, the Spirit.
Just talking about Beauty in terms of the way it USED to be talked about sounds old fashioned, anachronistic and perhaps even occultic.
But from the fifth century B.C. up until the turn of the twentieth century, the beginning of the industrial revolution, this is one way gentlemen expressed ideas concerning Beauty and Reason.
With the most recent secularization of civil life, where the everyday has been stripped of the sacred and even philosophic, man is not considered 'reasonable' unless he is talking in terms of length, mass, charge or time. It is Physics, and not contemplation of the Rose, that got us to the moon, and what a terrific feat, right? Why it's pure nonsense to talk in terms of Spirituality or Beauty, or something that is not concrete but rather abstract in polite company, is it not?
Pixels, not people, have become the topic of interest and now some of the most meaningful discourse people have is through texting via telephone, where the warmth of a human voice is eschewed for the cold precision of the graphic user interface.
To be human and free no longer entails a good grounding in the seven liberal arts, but rather is now being in command of machines, for a large slice of our population it would seem.
Sad.
But I'll let you in on one little secret.
There are certain of us sensitive souls who have been repulsed by 'modernity' with all of it's trappings, where I use the word 'trappings' in a most literal sense here, and have looked backwards to those great souls who came before who knew the true meaning of Reason and Beauty, and who have consequently remembered and carried forward this notion into now postmodern times.
Outwardly, we may seem to be nerds, but you'd be surprised at the rich inner lives we have developed, and where the very soul of Western man still gallantly survives.
Plato did not conceive of his cave in order to be forgotten by a race of expresso imbibing, spouting off of the mouth about the veritities of reality t.v. shows hipsters.
There are certain folks who through the ages who simply and perhaps too quietly take on the mantle and carry forward certain ideas and notions, if for no other Reason than for their sheer Beauty.
Suggested readings:
1.) Plato's Republic.
2.) Psalms and Proverbs along with the New Testament.
3.) The Gospel of Thomas.
4.) the Hermetic literature with Poimandres being a good start.
5.) The Harmony of the Spheres edited by Jocelyn Godwin.

This Heaven

A bird takes wing, swinging through air,
The planet moves around in its orb
The great dome rises and falls
From East to West through Heaven’s door

The rain falls and the rivers arise
The storm bellows in airs likewise
Lightning flash across Western skies
Below the shadow suddenly lights

The beginning is kept in the end
Preserved in the primal message sent
We attempt to drown out the primary buzz
Of how things were, how Creation was

New dalliances, new spectacle
Short circuit the current in receptacle
Like all stories tell, all is fallen
From past our present remains walled in

Like Life, Death must be won
An end to something fearful begun
Without restriction, chaos would increase
Without night, sun would burn without cease

Truth is the sap to the tree’s sinew
Branches expand to absorb the sweet dew
Love’s mist falls on a new golden Earth
At last the new from the old gives Birth

A Truth hard won that enthralls the victor
A sweet honey that dispels the hard bitter
Harmony and Life await the ignored
Darkness dispelled by a Sun moving swifter

Such is the promise of hard won Truth
That ignores the ignorant hard lived Youth
To the old, the mature the Secret unfolds
The same Story before a thousand times told

What is the Secret the naysayers hiss
What golden crown crowns the ignorant in bliss?
I’ll whisper a parcel I once well received
That all is lost to expect more than this…