Within them, vessels of sacred oils broke, spilled, spread deep and down. Opening their eyes, they saw the world born in living flesh, felt the urgent pull of the untamed Spirit. In that moment they dropped - everything. What I might have seen, bursts of light, or felt, urgent tugs on my sleeve, have left me with fitful thoughts of life I might have missed along the way, lost, when once I had found broken bits of it. I turned them round and round in my hands, thought them lovely and then they were gone. __________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - January 31, 2022 Writing this, I had three of the Sacred Vessels in mind. They are the Buddha, Jesus, and Dorothy Day of New York.
Spirit
Songs of Winter
Now into the cold rain-laced wind letting fall on my ragged coat what comes - rain, snow, needles of pine, rare sun splash. Barely do I feel these gifts swathed am I in layers of wool and down. In the still shadowy silver days a gloaming presence unfurls, held in the thin veil of drizzle and chill fog - ghostly luminous, humming wind songs. I think to myself, "The Spirit?" An electric and vinyl turn playing tunes and lyrics from other worlds on my own worn and plastic hide? I, inside of my usual and ordinary life, hear, within the swirls of the winter-swept leaf-laden lonely and lovely air songs I do not know but wish to learn. _________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - January 11, 2022
The Spirit
The Spirit blows where she wills.
I believe I hear her voice…
I cannot see her.
I turn in circles, round and round,
waiting on whispers in the wind
wisdom seeking, beseeching…
her warm breath.
This is the how it is for us
who wake with wind in our ears –
born of the Spirit.
She called us then.
She will call us again.
Portland, Oregon – Feast of Pentecost, May 31, 2020
The Gospel of John, 3:8, the “original” version: “The Spirit blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, and you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The Matter of Spirit
I am closer to ALL than I knew
their symphonic pulses moving
harmonically through me over in
around me beneath and above
me tolling, trilling, drumming
singing origin songs of birth curving
in limb, bone, facet flowering
from cold spring ground spiraling
out of summer cirrus skies curling
in turbulent tidal waves flowing
in ground glacial ice and stone swirling
through the earth’s molten core.
The chill autumn sunlight found me
in the morning as I wakened.
The dark night sky spaces
felt my breath, shimmered in ripples
when I closed my eyes to sleep.
They have all along known me
offered themselves, wondered
at my blind and pleading steps
as I thought them only senseless
spinning reeling silent spaces
forms and movement that shared
no thought for me or my days.
I went my way to borderlands
to the high hills and long vistas
listening for voices in silence
whisperings of life, beauty, joy
waiting there to see the green ray –
signs in the sky, silver portents
in a gathering of littered stones.
They were speaking all along
singing sphere’s celestial songs
dancing – all fouetté, entrechat,
pirouette, grand jeté – brilliant
multi-colored, flowing, fragrant
sensuous as the evening twilight
on a summer’s spoken and soft eve.
Portland, Oregon – June 27, 2017
“For more and more people, the spirit no longer comes down from above. It emerges up from matter and is there for those who are willing to accept the earth’s complication and see the spirit in the storms [that] body and matter throw at us.” Attributed to C.G. Jung in an article from the magazine, Parabola, Vol. 42, No.1; “The I Ching and Synchronicity” by Annette Lowe.
All Hallows’ Eve
We are surrounded by a great cloud
of witnesses – hovering as ghosts
surging up from stores of memory –
whom we have known or been told;
encircled by once familiar sacred hands
held through all our years, as beads
strung on everlasting cords of love
lost, imperfect, unknown, remembered.
They wander through our dreams
endless phantasms in light,
shadows moving along receding walls.
We knew them who once held us –
stood by them in the aching pews
shouted down the long hallways
ran wild on the diamond fields
fled wordless through dark nights
of trouble searching for answers.
We are surrounded by heavenly hosts
who look so familiar, consumed
by life spent in small deeds
vanishing acts of work and laughter
mingled with that deep unknowable
life they carried in silence.
Some went before us on the road –
followed the curving pathways
vanished around the foggy headlands.
Others walk with us on the way
speak with us, see our faces
lift their whispered voices in earnest prayer
with outstretched hands of friendship –
unmerited grace in every darkness form
on this holy hallowed eve.
Portland, Oregon – All Hallows’ Eve, October 31, 2016
The Light, the Wall, and the Spider
Writing in the cold night-wrapped garage under a single light
clamped precarious to rough lumber hung on pegboard
over table meant for working wood, mind working instead.
Hard surfaces, bare and cracked concrete, cold cheap tools,
dust and blown in leaves, dead insects,
black widow spiders stealthy hidden in dark places.
The cold is close, biting at ungloved finger tips,
scratching to get further in, through thin walls
to reach some organic and pliant space, of flesh and doubt,
where it may infuse to a depth physical – imminent –
to grasp and pull back out through the wall
a flailing homebody, miserable excuse for an adventurer,
into spaces liminal and transcendent.
One light to hold back the claw and tooth of the dark
black against the window, empty even of stars.
Writing on an island in the sea of infinite mystery –
a light, a wall, and a spider –
protection from the encroaching sea-filled blackness
flimsy barriers against the chill waves of the cosmos and the divine
where exist no sharp edges, curved surfaces, or idyllic scenes.
No theology, religion, creed, or dogma tonight –
just what was, is, and forever shall be.
Portland, Oregon – February 29, 2016
Inspired by Karl Rahner in Foundations of Christian Faith (1978, p. 22):
“In the ultimate depths of his being man knows nothing more surely than that his knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it….Hence the existential question for the knower is this: Which does he love more, the small island of his so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery?”
Black Narcissus
When the wind blows for seven days
and my eyes burn with sharp vision
so that I see beyond the far mountains
I know which paths I may take –
I can turn away
fly down the green slopes
or give myself to its holy breath wholly.
Probable, Carson City, Nevada – Circa 1981
Black Narcissus is a terrific movie. Its visual, psycho-dramatic, and spiritual imagery are never far from my awakened imagination. This movie, as well as the winds that were ever present during the years I lived in Nevada, were the inspirations for this short piece.
Spirit Reconsidered
Is there a Spirit –
a path through a dark and folded landscape
a wanderer in front, another behind
one to lead, one to be our rear guard?
I’ve failed in imagining Spirit
that damn dove –
ill-conceived white radiance and wing.
Where, the grim-reaper of a Spirit
who knows what has gone before
what is to come
without platitudes deceptive, tangential,
or words, shouts, running, or flying?
Spirit – girding presence of longing
of desire held, released, remembered;
guide through the veil of life
into a deep and dark river
that carries away all the stones, old bones –
take my hand and lead me where thou wilt
O holy, dark, sublime, careful Spirit.
Seattle, Washington – October 2014
In Cascadia 