Monday, October 22, 2012

Body Revelations



Today I woke seeing
not with my eyes,
but seeing the world
through the heart.
The location of things
seemed to drop
from my brain
and was peering
out from my chest.
My forehead unwrinkled
its long years of worry;
my throat released
all of its grip;
and now there's a breath
that fills my whole being,
a breath so open and free
that instead of stopping
at the top of my lungs,
it pirouettes in the heavens above
and swirls inside middle earth.
And here in this body,
this small human body,
that's always and only 
belonged to God,
the secret of deep
abidance in peace seems
to be to live from the heart;
for the mind of the brain
seems to want some gain,
but the mind of the heart stays clear.
Who would ever believe 
that this very body,
the one I spent years to transcend,
would turn out to be
Truth's continual key
to abide as the One I am?
And who could imagine
it's possible to see,
not through eyes,
but the heart's pure intimacy?







Dorothy Hunt
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Sunday, October 21, 2012

Long Before We Ever Tried




To meditate is
to realize what has
always been meditating,
the vast and empty sky
in which the 
clouds of meditating
and not meditating
appear and
then disappear.
To meditate is to
realize this sky
that kissed the
clouds long before
we ever tried
to love what is.





John Astin
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Friday, October 12, 2012

What Can I Say




What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you 
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy four,
and the leaf is singing still.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers 






Monday, October 8, 2012

Ever Arriving




"At the still point of the turning world...
there the dance is...
Except for the point, the still point,
there would be no dance,
and there is only the dance."
T.S. Eliot 

I think of it
as the Swirling Radiance,
movement that never ceases,
ever arriving
from the last moment 
of eternity,
the plundered second
of all that will ever be.

And you, here,
are at the midpoint,
the demarcation
of what has always been
and what is perpetually approaching,
your seeing is that which sustains,
carries forth,
enables.

You are the perpetual 
witness,
heaven's link to time.
If you listen, you can 
almost hear it swish 
as it goes by.





Dorothy Walters.
Photo:  Peter Bowers







Friday, October 5, 2012

Journey of Return





When the Beloved wants to take you Home, 
extend your hand to His welcoming
even though your body may be trembling
and your mind may want to flee;
even though those around you grieve,
and you yourself have mourned, even before they,
the changing form of your body.
Tears are not the final truth
though they will come and go
like stars that need a dark sky to be seen.

Death is not a failure of a mind
that is not strong enough,
or positive enough, or pure enough.
Those who hold such views are simply
masking fear with ideas of being in control
We are being lived by the Creator of this life.
Do you really think a finite mind can change
the mind of God?  Jesus tried and failed.
"Please take this cup from me!" he begged,
as we all do in the midst of anguish.

But anguish, fear, or deepest grief
cannot alter Who you really are.
The beautiful Spirit that extended Itself
in space and time, and called Itself by your name,
is simply ready to return, unencumbered by a body,
to Its vast and spacious Unborn Self,
that kisses you at birth,
and holds your hand in death,
and never for a moment
forgets you are Itself.

The mind imagines you are leaving,
but where could you truly go?
You are Life Itself!  Unceasingly flowing,
moment to moment unfolding Yourself.
A body is born; a body dies; but you do not. 
Deep within your heart, you know this Truth.
Rest there.  Rest in the knowing that
opens your heart to all that IS,
that loves Itself in all that comes,
and returns to Itself in all that goes. 





Dorothy Hunt
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Marriage





To see your face
with the eye of emptiness
is to have your face
as my own, and to find
between seeing and loving
not even a hairbreadth.





Colin Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers