talk

The queen of Sheba and I were discussing hummingbirds yesterday. She has a passion for spices and herbs, which gardens attract glittering flocks of the miniature birds. They are like her other love: gem stones, and precious as gold. The more one sees of the birds, the more one wants to capture one to hold and speak to and learn its language. She must now find out how to keep the birds alive and well, if the taming of them is possible.

Morning muse

The dawn comes slowly, lingering over nightly dreams in a dark sky. At the quarter hour before seven, still the hint of light comes in a sulky dark grey mood. This in a Western sky that always begins this way, only to give way to light that steals across her broad face like a smile. The sun sends out his first piercing rays before she can say no and soon the morning breaks through the grey and the whole sky glows rosy for one momentary glance at the rising sun.

The Doctrine

Obey Me, the first commandment with promise,
The last To love Me included in the first,
For to love is to do his will,
Obedient till death do us part.

Once in the homeland at heaven's gate,
Perfection acheived the prize reward,
Our treasures found stored on the shelf
In our house, jars of gold in rows.

Precious metals in the form of idols
Bear little resemblance to our desires,
The heart's longing for flesh-real loveliness--
Transparent cloaks of rainbow studded jems.

~Madeleine Dashwood

What Happened?

THERE ARE SOME DAYS upon which we ask ourselves, what happened to the beauty inside of me? Something changes from how one perceived oneself yesterday. Music inspires this question. A book generates thought to find the conclusion.

A Japanses poet says:
Like cherry blossoms
In the spring,
Let us fall
Clean and radiant.

Dawning

Do you know George Herbert? He writes in English, Greek and Latin in one volume of Oxford World Classics.

"Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead gather'd into frowns:
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:.....Awake, awake....."

the High Priestess

Christina Rossetti, high priestess of the Rossetti bortherhood, wrote poems in the pre-Raphaelite tradition. She lived to seek reclusion into the age of 64.
I found her words "Sleeping at Last" are ones that my king and I like to echo every night at bedtime:

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.

Alas, sleep this side of eternity rarely offers me the pleasure of dreamless sleep or that in which shifting fears cannot penetrate. Rather, dreams retell and then perhaps purge somtime the pangs and troubles of living days.
Of course, the sleep of death promises such absolute wiping of the slate clean such that we wake into the light of real day in our own chamber being prepared for us even today.

The vanished day

Emily B. says tonight,
"The evening passes fast away,
'Tis almost time to rest;
What thoughts has left the vanished day,
What feelings, in thy breast?"

'Twas one of Those

'Twas one of those dark cloudy days
That sometimes come in summer's blaze
When heaven drops not when earth is still
And deeper green is on the hill'
~Emily Bronte

Her poetry is wild and wooly and stares at one off the page. She is a kindred spirit, living on open moors buffeted by wind and extreme tempertures (I'm told). What else would one be but in despair if faced with such climate in such terrain? The very atomosphere either lifts one to itself or presses the body into the ground--as if we weren't bitterly burdened enough creatures already!

"...Yes, as my swift days near heir goal,
'Tis all that I implore;
In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure."

a few favourite things

This log is ideologically based upon the best re-told myth ever, Till We have Faces, by my spiritual mentor, Mr Lewis. After considering the waste of time this blog may be, and a long night's sleep later, I forge ahead with highest ambitions (as usual), low expectations, and no excuses for egotistical madness. Well, nothing to apologise for yet.