22 Comments

  1. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:20 am

    An Emanation of Prayer

    An emanation of Prayer

    Breathe gently, breathe quietly

    Burn
    steady as a flame

    Your alone Breath pervades

    As we strive toward a dimly envisioned prize.

    Moment by moment
    carried by the breath on a wave of possibilities

    Pioneers of transformation
    like seeds awakening with the dawn

    Hold steady in the light
    as we labour
    under the silent force of the incarnate word.

    anna farrell 22/3/2021

    Anna Farrell

  2. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:19 am

    LIGHT

    LIGHT

    In the infinite cold vastness

    the brooding dark frequencies of deep space

    the endless whale song of all creation

    beyond dancing interfaces of seen and unseen

    light rays forth

    to the furthest reaches of immeasurable

    stars shine suspended

    in universal candle light vigil

    to a Presence unseen

    whispering to all creation

    “I am here

    Source and Substance

    I hold you in Love

    beyond immensity’s reach

    a timeless fidelity

    to all dimensions as One

    and know that My Presence

    is evidenced as

    Light”.

    Ron Friedman

  3. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:19 am

    IT’S PANDEMIC TIME

    Songs boomerang
    in my head
    Cock-eyed Optimist vs The Eve of Destruction
    There would be time
    I imagined NOW
    to BE to do
    all the unsaid and unrequited.

    To burrow into the souls of trees
    and drink nectar from now-clear streams
    to meditate away
    from Samsara pain
    to pedal-push sweet lilting lyrics
    that would transform the planet.
    To paint a masterpiece for forever.

    To come to peace with that rascal
    Death who stands smiling skeletal
    He knows his catch is huge
    His nets are bursting
    So ready to scoop some more.

    But ennui ensues
    The couch beckons
    screens flicker
    Zoom voices
    boom like prophets
    of Apocalypse
    and perhaps
    they are.
    The blinds are drawn across
    the street
    The grass high and unattended
    No one comes out,

    Beyond the raging headlines
    the questions the fear
    Mistakes pile up like the
    lifeless bodies gathered in the dusk
    Missing protection missing masks
    Health workers working day and night
    Exhaustion and fear crease
    their souls
    Celebrations for those they can save
    The lost and losses haunt
    the empty sidewalks.
    Grief washes down like grey rain.

    But here it is still there
    Hands pump to restore life
    Feet march to deliver food
    The young look after the old.
    The friend who delivers baby goods
    to destitute mothers
    The friend who started making free masks
    in our town gathering volunteers
    all of us making masks
    first a few then hundreds
    then thousands
    one hospital then three
    then for everyone everyplace
    flying out like doves of peace.

    The children sing with balloons
    pastels and open faces laughs like
    silver bangles
    ride in cars past houses
    sing Happy Birthdays and Congrats
    Thousands march against injustice
    risking illness and arrest.

    The neighbors children
    paint in dayglo colors
    LOVE EACH OTHER
    FIGHT THE VIRUS
    shines and shimmers on the sidewalk
    We sit far from one another
    and warble our hellos
    muttered under masks
    Gardens sprout
    eating is conscious
    savored not gulped.

    I live now
    in the present, only now
    no future, the past hazy
    like my dreams.
    What meaning in this
    new beauty erupting
    on the streets roads and forests
    Trees like guardian sentries, sparkly water
    the sky more blue and clear
    And we humble creatures of God,
    of Earth of whatever strange Creator
    envisioned this
    feeble human experiment
    We limp on feeling our way
    through millennium
    repeating endless boomerangs
    leaving flotsam and destruction
    in striated
    layers anger war hate and greed
    but there it is there it stays
    sneaking through
    laughter, hope, beauty, compassion
    kindness and love….

    C. by Ellyn Joyce Rabinowitz 2020

  4. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:19 am

    At the Still Point of a Turning World

    At the still point of the turning world.
    Neither flesh nor fleshless;
    Neither from nor towards;
    at the still point,
    there the dance is,
    But neither arrest nor movement.

    And do not call it fixity,
    Where past and future are gathered.
    Neither movement from nor towards,
    Neither ascent nor decline.

    Except for the point, the still point,
    There would be no dance,
    and there is only the dance.

    T.S. Eliot

  5. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:18 am

    blessed mourning

    Father, my brother Steve stepped through the door this blessed morning.
    My heart is so heavy.
    Father, so many are dying from this blind and careless virus
    My heart is weeping uncontrollably.

    Father, you have made us for yourself,
    To know and to love and to cherish
    Each moment, every moment like the sweet fragrance
    Of our red roses in Spring.

    Father, why is so much dying necessary?
    Why do I need to weep so wildly?
    Why do the roses need to wilt?
    Why have you made such tears?

    In that place of tears and mourning
    In that place of emptiness and despair
    I am learning to greet you, to be embraced,
    To feel the fulness of your Presence

    In that place of tears and mourning
    I have discovered a key to an enchanted garden
    That has opened my heart, such fragrances,
    A gift that has brought me to YOU

    In that place of tears and mourning
    I now see the despair of millions, before I was blind.
    I now feel so many broken hearts, before I was blind.
    This is all a gift that has brought me to YOU.

    In that place of tears and mourning
    You have revealed compassion,
    To see a teenage suicide, to hear the cry of the homeless, the elderly,
    To feel the anguish of my black brothers and sisters.

    In that place of tears and mourning
    You have rescued me from me
    To know that I am born again
    To know the fulness of JOY born of blessed mourning

    Glory be, and thank you, Steve, my brother

    F. Gard Jameson

  6. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:18 am

    Our Light Bodies

    I am disappearing
    into my Self
    is disappearing
    into Isness

    The world is
    disappearing
    and doesn’t know it
    yet

    Myriad species
    know it
    and are leaving
    leading the way
    out of this
    into the vastness
    in which perhaps
    some other small
    island awaits

    I have lived
    my life trusting
    some large scale
    betterness will
    emerge as sovereign
    love prevails

    Do I still trust
    and what difference
    does it make

    I would live
    my life the same
    either way

    Light from light
    light in light

    The Earth is dying
    and so am I
    though we both
    will endure forever

    May we work
    as one in and from
    our light bodies

    Charles Gibbs, 15 October 2019

  7. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:18 am

    Of Love

    I have been in love more times than one,
    thank the Lord.
    Sometimes it was lasting
    whether active or not.
    Sometimes it was all but ephemeral,
    maybe only an afternoon,
    but not less real for that.’

    They stay in my mind,
    these beautiful people,
    or anyway beautiful people to me,
    of which there are so many.
    You and you and you,
    whom I have the fortune to meet,
    or maybe missed.

    Love, love, love, it was the core of my life,
    from which of course comes the word for the heart.
    And, oh, have I mentioned
    that some of them were men and some were women’
    and some – now carry my revelation with you –
    were trees.
    Or places.
    Or music flying above the names of their makers.
    Or clouds, or the sun
    which was the first, and the best,
    the most loyal for certain,’
    who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning.

    So I imagine such love of the world –
    its fervency, its shining,
    its innocence and anger to give of itself
    I imagine this is how it began.

    Mary Oliver

  8. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:17 am

    Earth Spirit

    O, dark holy magic,
    To steal out at dawn,
    To dip face and feet in grasses
    The dew trembles on,
    Ere its might of spirit healing
    Be broken by the dawn.

    O, to reel drunken
    On the heady dew;
    To know again the virgin wonder
    That boyhood knew;
    While words run to music, giving voices
    To the voiceless dew.

    They will make,
    those dawn-wandering lights and airs,
    The bowed worshipping spirit
    To shine like theirs.
    They will give to thy lips an aeolian
    Music like theirs.

    A .E. (George William Russell) in The Avatars

  9. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:17 am

    Catching the Light

    Carefully rooting out
    weeds, twigs, thorns,

    it is with ourselves
    we must be finally firm

    no motive unturned
    no hurt too dear

    to hold onto. Let go,
    let go, let go, I hear

    the Siddhas sing –
    in place of bitterness

    plant an imperishable tree.
    Then go quietly

    leaving it small and green
    to catch the light.

    Sw. Shraddhananda Saraswati

  10. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:17 am

    Entheogen

    On winter’s night in a cove remote
    dance the midnight moon and the sea,
    Writhing in their blind embrace
    caring not which the victor shall be.
    Half-buried on the distant shore
    is a mirror encrusted in sand,
    Its jagged patterns, sights obscure
    awaiting a polishing hand.

    That hand with sweeping gesture grabbed
    the looking glass and touched desire;
    In wondrous ethers rose the steam
    of Other, Self, and Fire.
    Though we might pray for gret or grace
    it’s Choice alone we bear —
    Misguided fools.. we cannot pray!
    We must BECOME the prayer.

    Beware that love’s entheogen
    brings warriors to their knees,
    Betrays the holy, crushes time,
    Imperils the birds and the bees.
    It also is the drug of choice
    for those who would wrestle the gods —
    As aeons, cultures, planets shift,
    We humans are playing the odds.

    In midnight cove a vigil stands
    o’er treasures wrought with tears —
    The righteous causes, symbols loves
    compiled throughout the years.
    The sea, the spirit’s churning depths,
    Reflectors of a beam
    Above, within, without whose light
    the mirror is a dream.

    Barbara Ellen Fields

  11. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:17 am

    For Equilibrium, a Blessing

    Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
    May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
    As the wind loves to call things to dance,
    May your gravity be lightened by grace.
    Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
    May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
    As water takes whatever shape it is in,
    So free may you be about who you become.
    As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
    May your sense of irony bring perspective.
    As time remains free of all that it frames,
    May your mind stay clear of all it names.
    May your prayer of listening deepen enough
    to hear in the depths the laughter of god.

    From: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

    John O’Donohue

  12. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:16 am

    To Whom it May Concern

    Wherever you are, you give me life.
    To remember you, makes me smile.
    Whoever you are, momentary apparition,
    you illume my oblivion.

    When I find you, my night fills up with light,
    and a renewed outpouring of sparks,
    makes me alive again amid my entanglements,
    of pleasure, duties, talents and complaints.

    Whenever you appear, like a bouquet of smiles,
    you bring serene breezes of God’s breath,
    and we laugh briefly in an eternity of always.

    Life becomes anew, recreated in your dancing eyes,
    gliding unheard like the notes of a silent song.
    Whoever you are, flash of hope and joy,
    you make bright days of my dark nights.

    However you materialize, in blue or green,
    dressed in clothes of blooming spring,
    or naked as a starry night.

    You are everything for me, with or without a name,
    within time and beyond time,
    in any color of the rainbow.
    Whoever you are, you animate my soul,
    when you come close,
    and leave me colorless when you depart.

    Then, you take away, even my pain,
    my poetry, my laughter.
    You take away joy and sadness.

    When you are not here, when you are not,
    when you go, when you don’t come.

    Whoever you are, nameless one,
    I am grateful for these moments of being.
    Wherever you are I remember you always.

    I am yours without complaints or fanfare.
    Naturally, like sand to the shore,
    like clouds to the sky.

    My reality is defined in contrast to your passing by.
    You are the love of my life, the theme of my stories
    the context of the path, my destination.

    Arsenio Rodriguez

  13. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:16 am

    Where Is God?

    It’s as if what is unbreakable—

    the very pulse of life—waits for

    everything else to be torn away,

    and then in the bareness that

    only silence and suffering and

    great love can expose, it dares

    to speak through us and to us.

    It seems to say, if you want to last,

    hold on to nothing. If you want

    to know love, let in everything.

    If you want to feel the presence

    of everything, stop counting the

    things that break along the way.

    Mark Nepo

  14. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:16 am

    Fragrance Bound

    Fragrance bound
    We cling to this hallucination,
    possessed and possessing.
    Yet we suspect, we intuit who we are,
    we infer the light beyond the flash.

    Our genes, twirl and curl,
    as currents from the silent surge
    spill over the sacred, within our hearts.

    And we find each other again,
    and decide to walk, hand in hand,
    while time lasts.

    Fragrance bound.

    Arsenio Rodriguez

  15. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:15 am

    Hide and Seek

    How can you capture the light of lightning?
    It passes by like we do.

    Today we meet, we exchange glances and smiles
    Perhaps share a thought,
    maybe a dream or two,
    but do we really know who is me,
    and who is you?

    This passing through is ubiquitous,
    we all seem to suffer from it.

    Yet, some are more self-assured than others.
    Some are not even sure of anything.
    Some do not even think about the merits of this knowing.

    Still, we have to move in this forest,
    and love and enjoy,
    and pretend and posture.

    Till we merge with the urge
    that brought us forward,
    and meet the source of the whim
    that love be expressed.

    So, my dear other,
    let’s just embrace and try to be happy,
    while we decipher,
    the riddle of this infinite game
    of hide and seek,
    that we play with ourselves.

    Arsenio Rodriguez

  16. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:15 am

    Out Beyond Ideas

    Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
    there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

    When the soul lies down in that grass,
    the world is too full to talk about.
    Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
    doesn’t make any sense.

    Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

  17. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:15 am

    Becoming Luminous

    Inspired by the painting, “Becoming Luminous,” by Marika Popovits

    Becoming Luminous

    Despite turbulent seas

    aflame with wave upon wave of imploded desires gouged in history’s scar tissue

    layered across terra nostra, washed in blood and seething water,

    beauty’s enchantments still flourish in these green hills of our Earth home

    where we struggle to reveal how healing takes softer, subtler shapes from shared breath

    and outstretched limbs of coexistence, calling us now to dance a new community of being.

    We rise through this our suffering. We rise from loam to light.

    Lux aeterna, the spiraling pool of luminescence in the heart of all being, the light

    that crawled out of primordial seas and flew its way to the human soul, the light

    that could not be extinguished by every hell we invented

    until we were ready to come home, to bear our breasts

    in final exaltation of the light that we are – at last made visible by the light

    that magnifies the miraculous conjunction of Heaven and Earth

    and which shines its guiding radiance

    on the fierce journey to becoming luminous.

    James O’Dea

  18. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:14 am

    How I Go to the Woods

    Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

    I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

    Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

    **

    If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

    Mary Oliver

  19. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:14 am

    Who We Truly Are

    Stop.
    Listen.
    Slow your self down.

    Drop deep into
    The soul of the world,
    Where the words are already written
    And the future is already spoken.

    We are, cause we are, cause we are.
    (Cosmos we are. Yes, stars!)

    This night is getting late
    And it’s still just morning.

    Our task is the incarnate fully
    To discover our soul’s gifts
    And deliver them to the world.

    At the still point, we remember.
    Our wild roots.
    Our ancient selves.
    Life’s original nature.

    And who we truly are.

    By Joshua Gorman (from the liminal space of late nights and newborn humans)

  20. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:14 am

    Soul receives from soul

    Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book
    nor from tongue.
    If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is
    illumination of heart.

  21. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:13 am

    Be Lost in the Call

    Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
    why did you create these two worlds?

    Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
    I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
    and I wished this treasure to be known,
    so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
    its darkened back, the world;
    The back would please you if you’ve never seen the face.

    Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
    Yet clean away the mud and straw,
    and a mirror might be revealed.

    Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
    it isn’t wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
    you must do a little work.

    My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
    You return just as you left.
    Where are the traces of my gifts?

    We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
    This Sun doesn’t want a crown or robe from God’s grace.
    He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
    a covering for ten who were naked.

    Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
    How could a zephyr ride an ass?
    Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
    Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

    Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
    Let the caller and the called disappear;
    be lost in the Call.

    “Love is a Stranger”, Kabir Helminski Threshold Books, 1993

  22. Garden of Light on December 3, 2024 at 9:13 am

    There is a community of the spirit

    There is a community of the spirit.
    Join it, and feel the delight
    of walking in the noisy street
    and being the noise.
    Drink all your passion,
    and be a disgrace.
    Close both eyes
    to see with the other eye.

    From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

Add Your Voice

You must be logged in to post a comment.